Immigration Senate Floor Speech

Thank you, Mr. President.

Here we go again. Three weeks ago a significant majority of the Senate rejected this flawed immigration bill and the flawed process that lead to it. But now it is back. It just won’t go away.

One of the key reasons the bill failed the first time around was the flawed process, or the lack of process, that led to the bill. In the Senate, an idea normally takes months if not years to become a bill and pass. But instead of letting the bill develop through a deliberative process, a few Senators wrote the bill in secret. They held no committee hearings. There was no committee report. In fact, Senators did not even see the actual bill until several days into the debate.

When those of us who were not part of the secret negotiations finally saw the bill, we found all kinds of problems. But we were told the bill had to be finished by a certain date. We were not even allowed an open debate on the floor. The Senate prides itself on the rights of the individual Senator, but for this bill Senators were not even allowed to offer and get votes on amendments.

And so, with a few days looming before the July 4th recess, the few negotiators got back together and blessed another list of amendments to get votes. Apparently they believe that twenty or so more votes equals a full debate. What a joke.

As if that were not bad enough, the Majority Leader is taking an unprecedented step to shut off the rights of Senators to debate and amend a bill. That is not the Senate.

Now, Mr. President, the process isn’t the only thing that’s flawed around here. The bill itself is flawed.

In 1986, Congress passed an amnesty bill that was promised to be the last. And here we are 20 years later and the problem is worse, much worse.

Instead of punishing illegal immigrants and employers who ignored the law, this bill is a get out of jail free pass. It gives those who broke the law their own V.I.P. line to green cards and citizenship.

For this bill to work as promised, the government will have to process at least 12 million illegal immigrants in a matter of months. In this short timeframe, the government will have to conduct background checks, issue identification cards, and build a system to check every employee in America to make sure they are legal. The government will also have to implement new guest worker programs, eliminate the green card backlog, overhaul the green card system, and start issuing new visitor visas.

But I do not believe it will work and the American people certainly do not believe it will work. I am not talking about the far left or the far right. I am talking about middle America . I am talking about the people that are stuck in lines outside passport offices waiting on the government so they can go on summer vacation. Are we supposed to believe that the same government that can not even get passports into their hands is going to complete background checks on 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants, give them secure I.D. cards, check every employee in the United States to verify their work status, and secure the border? I don’t think so.

Unfortunately, this bill does not even secure the border. The 4.4 billion dollars included in the bill does not add any new border security. It only funds the trigger requirements of the bill, which does not even require implementation of existing law such as building 700 miles of border fence and 43 thousand detention spaces.

There are other problems too. The bill does not require background checks to be completed on the illegal immigrants getting amnesty before they get their visas. The bill gives Social Security credits to illegal aliens for work they did illegally. Illegal aliens with terrorist connections can get amnesty. And, they do not have to pay all their back taxes or learn any English for at least 10 years. What a deal.

The bottom line, Mr. President, is that this bill will not work. It is much worse than the status quo. Any chance of fixing it is being erased by the handful of negotiators and the Majority Leader. Instead of trying to fix the bill, the Majority Leader is using unprecedented tactics to ensure only a few blessed amendments get considered. We all have amendments, like the Senator from Texas , none of them will be considered. Mr. President, I will not support amnesty. I will not repeat the mistakes that were made 20 years ago. I will not be responsible for tens of millions more illegal immigrants coming to this country waiting for the next amnesty. I will not support this process or this bill.

Thank you, Mr. President, and I thank the Senator from Alabama for yielding the time.