Speech #1100065781

What I do not want to be a party to is trying to fool the American people. I value the trust my constituents have placed in me too highly to overpromise. which this bill does. when the American people have good cause and good reason to know we cannot deliver as advertised. The fallacious arguments I have referred to and the process by which this bill has been produced. which further inflame the skepticism of the American people. seem only to confirm for many Americans that the Senate is not serious about fixing our broken immigration system. If we are going to insult the intelligence of the American people with such specious justifications for this bill. how can they trust us? Moreover. how can they have any confidence that the various assurances on border security. worksite enforcement. security checks. and implementation of the provisions of this bill will actually work as advertised? We all know our broken immigration system is a serious threat to national security. Border security. after all. is about national security. So the question we have to ask ourselves is: Does this bill make us safer? The more we have debated the bill. the more I have become convinced this legislation is not only dysfunctional. but unless corrected. some provisions of this bill present an actual danger to our Nation. This bill puts such onerous burdens on our law enforcement officials and ties the Governments hands in so much redtape that it will make us less. not more. safe. Some of the individuals involved in the recently foiled terrorist plots at JFK Airport and Fort Dix were in our country illegally. Some of those involved had even been granted citizenship by our current flawed immigration system. Thankfully. these plots were uncovered before they could be carried out. But knowing that there are likely terrorist cells already present in the United States. how can we in good conscience grant sameday legal status to more than 12 million foreign nationals? Naturally. this bill does purport to require a background check. But instead of providing a reasonable timeframe for these reviews. an impossible burden is placed on our already overworked citizenship and immigration services to provide these checks in 24 hours. It simply cannot be done. Under our current immigration system. this office already does more of these screenings than it can handle. The Government Accountability Office reported last year this agency was stretched to the breaking point already. This has resulted in an unofficial 6minute rule. the most amount of time that can be spent adjudicating any one application. Adding an average of 48.000 applications a day more will further backlog an already overtaxed system. meaning less indepth reviews and more haphazardly granted visas. Again. more cases and less time for review of these applications can do nothing but increase the likelihood of mistakes. An article in the June 17 edition of the Washington Post explained that a large part of the backlog involved in our current system was due to FBI name checks. Delays in FBI name checks already force long waiting times for citizenship applications. The Post reports that of about 329.000 cases pending as of May. 64 percent were stalled for more than 90 days. 32 percent for more than 1 year. and 17 percent for more than 2 years. They added that the backlog appears to get worse because of a fee increase slated to take place in July which has prompted a 50percent rise in new naturalization applications so far this year. If a new immigration bill is enacted. millions of foreign nationals would also apply for legalization. This problem is even more apparent considering the difficulties the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have had this summer in implementing the new western hemisphere travel initiative. Of course. this legislation requires American citizens to have a passport for travel to Canada or Mexico. where that requirement did not exist before. Although the Federal Government had 3 years to get ready for this new stricter visa requirement and passport requirement. the Federal Government failed to adequately prepare. causing disruptions in the lives of tens of thousands of American citizens. If the Federal Government cant get it right with 3 years notice to process passport applications for American citizens. how will it deal with the increased complexities and burden of processing up to 12 million foreign nationals? I wonder what the Governments response will be to the even larger backlog this bill will create? Will we simply give up on background checks altogether. when the citizenship and immigration service realizes what an impossible burden has been placed upon it? As we overload our already fragile system and background checks are either too cursory to be safe or too delayed to meet unrealistic deadlines. we will be undoubtedly granting legal status to some individuals who should not get it. The potential danger is actually worse than it might appear at first blush.