President. I appreciate the comments from my good friend from Texas. I wish to respond to the notion that this Chamber is not taking sufficient time in order to consider the issue of immigration and immigration reform. We have. indeed. been on a very long journey to try to grapple with this issue which. at the base of it. is the fundamental question of national security. It was last year. for most of the month of May. where this Senate debated a comprehensive immigration reform package. It was an immigration reform package that had gone through the Senate Judiciary Committee and was amended multiple times on the floor of the Senate. Now. for the last many months. perhaps as many as 4 to 5 months. there have been a group of Senators. Republicans and Democrats. working with Secretary Chertoff and Secretary Gutierrez and President Bush to try to come up with a comprehensive immigration reform package. which is now the package that is before this Chamber. I submit. in response to my good friend from Texas. that there has been ample opportunity for us to deal with the issue of immigration reform and to come up with a system that is. in fact. workable. On this specific issue. what we have done during this past week isthere have been 23 amendments that have been offered. There have been 13 of those amendments that have been disposed ofV of those have been disposed of with roilcall votes. 6 of them with voice votes. There were 10 amendments pending as of yesterday. there will be 4 more amendments pending as of today. At the request of many Republican colleagues. Senator REID agreed it was important for us to take an additional week to be able to fully debate this very complicated and very difficult and very emotional issue on how we move forward with immigration reform. We did not get to a conclusion of this debate this week because Senator REID thought it important to take another week to fully consider the legislation before us. Indeed. during the week that Members of the Senate are working back in their districts or doing what they may be doing during this next week. it is going to be another opportunity for Members of the Senate to continue to study the provisions of this legislation. But this legislation was not pulled out of the darkness one day and placed on the floor of the Senate. This legislation was crafted with significant input from both Republican and Democratic Senators and with the guidance of Secretary Chertoff. While it may not be perfect. and while the efforts on the floor of the Senate this week and the week after we return from the Memorial Day break will improve upon the bill. there has been a huge amount of energy that has gone into creating an immigration reform package that will. in fact. work. At the end of the day. I remind all our colleagues and those who are watching. what is at stake is moving from a system of a broken border and lawlessness that relates to immigration in this country to a system that works. We need to find a solution that will fix those broken borders. We need to find solutions that will. in fact. make sure the laws of the Nation on immigration are enforced. For 20 years. this country has looked the other way. We are a Nation of laws. We ought to be enforcing the laws as this legislation moves forward. making sure we are going to have the laws and the capacity to enforce those ]aws in our interior. and we need to have a realistic solution to deal with the 12 million undocumented workers here In America. To those who would be part of the "round them up and deport them" crowd. I remind them that Is an unrealistic solution.
Keywords matched
immigration undocumented