Speech #1100050516

I thank my colleague from Alabama. It Is true that we did have a very eventful trip to Iraq to talk about what needs to be done there. But today the opportunity arises to discuss the concern that I have with the latest attempt by some of my colleagues to push forward with a "comprehensive" immigration reform bill. We have been here before. Last year. the Senate pushed through a mammoth bill that sought to reform our immigration laws on a comprehensive basis. Yet. as predicted. that bill failed. It was a "do everything" bill that ended up doing nothing. Well. here we are again this year watching efforts to push through another "do everything" bill. What is more. this year the language has yet to be finalized. and certainly no Member of this body has been given the kind of time needed to review the proposal and analyze its provisions. Our immigration system is broken. But. apparently. so is our system for fixing it. That is why last year I tried to change the debate on immigration reform. Along with my colleague. Senator SESSIONS. and our colleague. Senator COBUJRN. we introduced a bill that focused solely on the most important component of immigration reform. and the first component of immigration reform. border security. Last year during this debate. I tried time and time again to convince my colleagues that a comprehensive bill would get nothing accomplished and that we needed to concentrate on securing the border first. Today we find ourselves right back where we were last year: Debating a comprehensive bill that has not been finalized. has not been given proper consideration. and that. again. will not achieve any of the goals we had. So. again this year. I emphasize to my colleagues we must concentrate on border security first. We can only hope to solve our immigration problems if we take it one step at a time. There are three steps to resolving this problem: First is border security. second is fixing legal immigration and the process of legal immigration. and third is addressing those who are here illegally. Now. we can take steps 1 and 2 at the same time. So we made some progress on the first step last year. We passed the Secure Fence Initiative. and the folks at URS have made some progress on fixing and securing the border. We should give the border security provisions a chance to prove that they will work and can effectively slow and stop illegal immigration. But instead we are being asked to jump to step 3 before steps I and 2 are completed. We need to concentrate on accomplishing border security first. as the first step for the first leg of this stool. We still have a lot of work to do to fix our current system of legal immigration. Why would we jump this step and reward these who are here illegally and effectively punish those trying to enter this country legally. the right way? The current immigration process has left so many people frustrated with trying to do the right thing and enter this country legally. Clearly. we should make sure to help those individuals first. As I have said time and again. we need to close the back door to illegal immigration while we open the front door to legal immigration. Instead. this bill adds more complications and more complexity to our legal immigration system that is currently overworked with backlogs and long wait times for people who want to enter this country the right way. We cannot change the letters for a visa from H to Y or Z and expect it to work better. We cannot add some complicated and difficult point system and expect it to work. We have to fix the system for legal immigration. not make it more complicated and even more unworkable. This bill will add more problems onto a broken system. We are digging ourselves deeper. Therefore. I believe only after we have accomplished the first two steps. which we can do. and can demonstrate that we have made considerable progress toward solving those problems. only then can we proceed to the third step and turn our attention to handling 10 or 12 or more million people who are here illegally. We must secure the borders so we do not have millions more illegal immigrants. If we do not. we will only encourage millions more to cross the border illegally in the hopes of being part of the amnesty offered under this legislation. From what I have seen and read thus far. I think this bill is only about half right. Since it has a series of socalled triggers. the current compromise certainly seems to recognize that we have to do border security first. So if we recognize we cannot solve our immigration problems without first securing the border. then why do we continue to insist on mixing in the comprehensive provisions at the same time? If we can understand the need for triggers based on border security and workplace enforcement. then we should understand that we cannot solve this problem all at once. Why do we continue to rush to pass some "comprehensive" measure when we can approach this problem one step at a time? I propose that instead of triggers. we should consider only passing those provisions dealing with border security and enforcement and those provisions dealing with worksite and interior enforcement. Instead of pushing through everything at once. we need to start solving the problem at the border and working from there. In conclusion. I will vote for cloture on the motion to proceed. but not because I support the underlying bill. I will support cloture only because I hope we can significantly improve this bill so that it addresses the problem properly: at the border first and then fixing the legal immigration system. If we do not come up with a bill that properly addresses the Issue the way I believe it needs to be addressed. then I will not be able to support the final product. I will vote to give us a chance to create a bill that focuses on securing the border first and that fixes our broken system for legal immigration. I will not. however. support a comprehensive amnestybased bill that creates more problems and that fails to secure our borders first. Madam President.