us pray eternal lord god our shelter in the time of storm as we return to the business of freedom use the members this body to accomplish your will strengthen them to never abandon the struggle and inspire them to  to the end and help them to press forward to the goal of your ideal for humanity may they never take the easy pa so the right road remind them that perspiration is usually the price of worthy things and that without the to washington d c june fourth two thousand and seven to the senate under the provisions of rule one paragraph three of the standing rules of the senate i hereby point to honorable jim webb a senator from the amendments in the managers will be working this afternoon to come up with a package that we can start voting on tomorrow there are what amendments that people who favor the immigration bill and oppose immigration bill want to move forward on their key amendments and we need to get them scheduled and disposed of and the managers need to get that done as quickly as possible we've had we had a good debate on this matter last week the last week we were here and everyone's been home and have been barraged on all sides of this issue there are people who think it's the best thing in the world and their people think it's worst thing in the world and we're going to continue to work on this and see if we can satisfy people so that they think  to welcome all of our colleagues back and members of the staff who are here in the room and others as the majority leader indicated we're in the middle of a big challenging contentious  issue there are many amendments pending and back over eighty filed at the desk a lot of work has been done over the recess in terms of some of those amounts and it's my hope that some of them can be disposed of without a roll call vote is also my hope that your day session the managers will be prepared to set up votes on the pending amendments so we can continue to make progress on the bill tomorrow this is a very significant piece of legislation as we all know we need to have the maximum pertain ready for the largest number of amendments to be considered before we entertain the notion of shutting down  debate on this important measure it's quite possibly the most significant measure we'll be dealing with this this congress and we need to make sure that all senators feel that they've had an opportunity to offer their amendments  working on this bill beginning tomorrow and regulations and for other purposes h r twenty three seventeen in act one man the lobby and disclosure act of one nine hundred ninety five to require a registered lobbyist to file quarterly reports entendre fusions bundles for certain recipients and for other purposes dealing with ethics reform i have had a number of meetings with my distinguished republican colleague and we're in the process of figuring out a way that we can get to conference with the house on these important issues this present i attended or as science and i do every memorial day a service at the southern nevada veterans memorial cemetery which is located in boulder city nevada and mispresent i  am struck by two conversations i had one is with a world war two veteran by name a can brown basically has lost his hearing he was a machine gunner on a destroyer and as as you know the noise on one of those ships was deafening and he certainly was deafened in the process but he told me and this the first time he's  ever expressed anything other than total support for what president bush has been doing as it relates to the military and he told me in no uncertain terms that we democrats were heading the right direction that we had to stop what was going on in iraq and then mr president a wonderful woman came up to visit with me she visited me year and a month ago here in my office wonderful one wonderful mother wonderful family her husband is so so gracious and nice and i'm grateful beyond my words to explain mr president for the sacrifices of the men and women in uniform from the sacrifice their other people and serve and sometimes not so glamorous positions but it's as a result of their service that we're able to conduct the military warfare as we need to this work period will continue do everything we can to honor the sacrifice of these men and women with a responsible and to the iraq war during the recess prayed i adopted a visit with many nevadans number one on their mind is the war number two is i as prices and we're vetter now in nevada gas prices keep going up are no longer number one number three in the nation i guess that's some distinction would drop down to eleventh or something like that and of course mr president immigration reform was all other minds and i sure do each element these issues iraq war situation with gas prices and of course immigration  know our on our radar screen we're going to be working on those in this work period on the first day of the hundred tenth congress democrats because we're in the majority we're able to introduce the first ten bills the first ten priorities as we saw them year overdue minimum wage that the president has signed we attempted to give medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices we were prevented from doing so because the republican filibuster we pass recommendations a bipartisan nine eleven commission after almost three years of these being set aside we expect to complete a conference on that within the next couple of weeks send that bill to the president stem cell research giving hopes to millions was again passed in this body and we expect to send it to the house in the near future after conferencing with the we expect to send it to the surprise and after conference with the house which we hope to the next couple weeks and we think in the senate we're going to send a veto proof bill to him in addition of that mr president we're able to pass what was one of the top ten something that we've been trying to do for three years disaster relief for the struggling farmers and ranchers in this country were able to sen the present something he signed dealing with giving katrina the relief they deserve for since their actual hurricane struck present gone their lot and has been refused to cooperate with us and sending the money we were able to send a down payment on s chip that is helping fund health care for children and of course we are able to send a billion dollars in homeland security that we fought with the president for years he needs and i have to say his people find us to the very end able we were forced to take some of that money off of homeland security but with the billion dollars we can least go forward and do a better job of checking the cargo containers coming into this country we can do a better job of checking for nuclear weapons coming into this country dirty bombs and others we'll do a better job of taking a look at what's happening with our rail safety so we're comfortable mr president that we've done some good things we passed a balanced budget restores fiscal discipline puts middle class first cutting the taxes on increasing investment in education veterans care and children's health care and we've begun debate on the complex crucial issue of immigration as i spoke just a short time ago and this week we're going to complete that legislation and we will hopefully bring the final passage a comprehensive bill that will strengthen our border security and bring twelve million undocumented americans out of the shadows and help our economy move strongly the days ahead will work to improve the bill to protect and strengthen family ties and produce a structure the temporary worker program that following immigration will turn our attention to the three remaining bills from the original ten an energy bill but take a crucial step toward wearing readiness problems in the military and that debate mr president be led by the presiding officer readiness ready as well be led by a distinguished junior senator from virginia someone who has an experience  battle and more than just words and so we look forward to following and stinger senator from virginia and making sure that our troops are ready and they are rotations are right they are trained  and they're not going back as happened in nevada two weeks ago someone going back for the fourth tour of duty with knowledge to his family that he was tired and really you know knew that he wouldn't come back and survive too many explosions to go back for another tour of duty and survive and explosions and he was right he's now dead will also reconfigure our national security strategy to better meet the threats and challenges we face today and that the president we believe is overlooking we've made great progress here especially when we've put our partisan differences aside to work with common goals for but for all the good that has come in the shadow of president bush's catastrophic tragic iraq war we need to do so much more ending the war will continue to be our number one priority and every single year i'm sorry every single day as the year continues the month of may two thousand and seven the third deadliest month in the war close to being the deadliest didn't break that record thank goodness but may was the third deadliest month entire fifty one months of this month's of this war june is off to a horrifying start sixteen americans have been killed in the first three days of them on presents troop escalation is now complete yet a new york times article this morning reports that security goals are far far far short of the military's hopes which just about one third of baghdad's neighborhoods and some semblance of order in the midst of this growing chaos the senate intelligence committee released a new bipartisan report just before the memorial day deadline my good friend and colleague chairman jay rockefeller working with the vice chair of the committee kit bond and mr president that intelligence committee has become a nonpartisan committee as it was set up to do they work on bipartisan method but the information they came up with is long long overdue because previously there was not cooperation between the majority and the minority and the committee basically stonewalled everything was trying to be done and that's reason we shut the senate down that information is now has now come forward my first colleague senator rockefeller deserves a normas credit for putting together this crucially important report further brings to light the administration's decision to go to war in iraq regardless of the facts and warnings issued by the intelligence committee the intelligence community foretold much of the chaos we now face a told the president among other things that installing democracy would be a long difficult and probably turbulent challenge in iraq and that was an understatement and or two that al qaeda would try to take advantage of us attention in the post war iraq to reestablish its presence in afghanistan and they've done that that iraq was deeply divided in its society and that would likely engage in the violent conflict unless an occupying power prevented it we have not prevent that the united states occupation of iraq would result in a surge of political islam and increase funding for terrorist groups that's been proven to be true that our action neighbors would jockey for influence in iraq including formatting still many strife among iraq's ethnic groups that's true that some elements in the iranian government could decide to try to counter aggressively the united states presence in iraq or challenge united states goals and they've done that and that finally ou other regional states to abandon their w m d programs or their desire develop such programs and that also has proven to be true clearly the intelligence community got it right and these warnings were not issued in a vacuum perhaps the most striking finding of this report is that all the key administration players were made aware of these were with these warnings doug feith paul wolfowitz steve hadley scooter libby all key bush officials at the national security council the state department martin advanced and the vice president were on a distribution list the bush administration cannot hide behind ignorance whether out of hubris incompetence the president and his man willfully ignored the experts and sent our troops to battle unprepared for the consequences some might say that the past is past and present pre war failure was a one time event we could maybe forget about it even though that would be hard but if president bush prewar failure was a one time event we'd leave it to his joints to study and judge the tragedy of the incompetence but even today after almost thirty five hundred american deaths and more than twenty thousand wounded the president continues to cherry pick facts in order to paint a rosy picture that's very misleading about iraq again after tens of thousands of injuries to our troops he continues to ignore the advice of experts after nearly well some say it's approaching a trillion dollars and maybe it's a few billion away from that hundred billion only from that but after a vast amount of our treasury has been spent in iraq he's still dreaming his way through this epic tragedy the country's eyes are wide open it's time for the president to wake up i understand that some americans are frustrated that we have not been able to move more quickly to end the war here in congress many voted for change in november november anticipated dramatic and immediate results in january mispresent they did get some dramatic changes this is what we've given them more than seventy five hearings on iraq the walter reed scandal brought to light and steps taken to make it right a supplemental bill sent to the president set a firm palsy to responsibly on the war only a small step but a step a second supplemental that's set benchmarks and voided the president's blank check the first one was vetoed this one was not and resolve has never been stronger with a razor thin majority and remember mr president it is a brazier thin majority an obstinate president and a republican minority that continues to bow to his we're nonetheless making real progress however under the senate's rules and our constitution there's only so far are determined majority can go especially with our forty nine to fifty disadvantage which is due to senator johnson's illness we can only end this war if the present changes course or more republicans join with us to force them to do so when we take up the defense authorization bill we will not just work to correct the present the glare of troop readiness infection will give our republican colleagues another opportunity to join us and bring a responsible into this war and fight for that every day this year so long as a president a few allies he has left here in congress continue to defy the reality that the rest of us see clearly it to the men and women serving overseas and serving here at home the families who await their return from those are overseas and all americans want to wreck tragedy fin and previous order the leadership time is reserved under the previous order there will be a period for the transaction of morning business for up to sixty minutes with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each and with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their design friend senator reid able democratic leader and majority later here in the senate that i hope that we don't continue in a debate about the iraq situation in ways that is destructive to our nation but we can conduct those debates in a positive way for example i know that there has been a intelligence  has been produced but it also had with an it project and of things of a positive nature some of which occurred and some of which didn't it had with any projections of things of a negative nature that did not occur and even with regard to its prediction of violence and persistent violence and sectarian strife that could occur that report predicted it would be phasing down after three or four years and  our protections i don't think anybody did not discuss those possibilities in the debate leading up to our authorization of the president to conduct this war to suggest that this an intelligence report was some sort of smoking gun that right issues nobody even discussed and that somehow the president misled the public is wrong it hurts the president united states whoever he or she may be who right now ali is saying will be traveling the world and meeting with leaders of foreign nations to make those kind of accusations is not healthy in my view and not responsible now we had a vote week before last fortunately to provide funding through the emergency supplemental for our soldiers sayto their men to moraines in iraq that was too long in my view but we did it and we voted to send general petraeus to execute the surge that the president has called for and that was the funding that we approve last week also to fund that surge he is to give us a report in september on how the situation is in iraq and we're all watching with great anxiousness because we're concerned about what's happening in iraq we know that there is only a limited amount of ability of this united states to effect what we'd like to occur there we've done a great deal to help that nation a stablish itself and  we want to continue to utilize our resources wisely but this was a surge and we need a value right to situation in september what i would urge my colleagues on the other side to do even though they may be concerned about it that in the debate on defense authorization bill and perhaps a defense appropriations bill that will occur later on this summer we ought not to utilize rhetoric and a language that undermines what i saw all yours are doing right now but we directed them the day we have funded them today and that is to have three aged ability and more security for the people of iraq we ought not to do that debate in such a way that makes it harder for them to succeed don't we all want that to occur don't we all want to see a stable decent iraq occur they've had elections but they're ending a very difficult time bringing that country together in a stable fashion we all know so i just would urge my colleagues in the course of the by now we do it in such a way that we don't place that greater risk our soldiers to make our foreign policy  have in a bipartisan way authorized more difficult to achieve and provide any ability for the enemy to think that they are able to just prevail by lack of resolve on our part most front and i want to have a few minutes to talk about the immigration bill it's a force i think it's and the critically important piece of legislation the american people are concerned about it they are following quite closely they know we have a difficult time in iraq and they don't expect an a z solution there they know that we have difficulties  with energy prices and other difficulties and they want to do what we can in that regard but with regard to immigration they are rightly of the view that we can do something about immigration we can create a lawful system of emigration that serves our national interest if we desire to do so if we as a congress and the executive branch wants it to happen we can make it happen all that anybody suggest otherwise it's not impossible it's absolutely possible and we ought to be working on that that's what they've asked us to do and i hope that we will let me just mention the debate so far well it's been sporadic and devil tory it's not been very much of a in gauged matter last week we offered a bill maybe we were off last week for moral day week the week before that we were in debate on the bill and the week before that the all day all last year's failed bill was introduced and sat on the calendar until tuesday morning of last week before the race that they plop down a complete substitute a completely new bill last tuesday monday we talked about immigration i talked about it at some length but there were no senators here really we had no votes that so we had six roll call votes last week we didn't do anything friday we were in session a few hearty souls myself included came down and spoke nobody really listened and there were no votes and most senators had already gone home for the recess and here we are now on monday with various these senators here and no that we need a great deal more time the way the bill was brought up was a colleague senator reid on the roof fourteen just brought it up it did not go to committee and it was brought straight to the floor  really had only been written over the weekend and by i mean it was on the floor second people and i really tried to pass it the week before we left but there was a lot of pushback on that and now we're into this  week say the majority later same to think the bill can pass this week out suggest it cannot it's really not anyway that it can be done this week i think there are one hundred amendments filed again one brought up that was not easy you have to get the consent of the majority leader to get a man brought up and made pending so they're not nearly so many pending and there are many problems that need to be  fixed there are flaws in the legislation i'm going to talk about those at some length i'll be talking about at least twenty serious flaws in this legislation but i don't want that to suggest that flaws alone of the problem with the legislation we don't have a principle approach to the future flow of immigrants into america we haven't thought through philosophically what we want to do about immigration we haven't made the real commitment that i hope we would to a more merit based skilled immigration system and i'm concerned about all of that and i think the american people are to so the ministration and senator kennedy and the others who promoted to the legislation talked about some principles as a part of talking points that they banded about as the foundation for immigration legislation that they would be offering and i would first site to my colleague the bill does not meet the promises contained in those talking points and those principles it just does not if it did we'd be in much better shape than we are today because many of those princip or silence it contains is our will note a host of fundamental serious defects and flaws that make the legislation not one that ought to be passed now and finally as bill do not believe mr president i still do not believe that the why house and the congress has heard the american people they still think that we can just pass a piece of legislation here in the floor of the congress now we can let that go and get it off our plate and it will be some years before the american people find out that this won't work either anymore than it did in one thousand nine hundred six and it will be up to the next president or the next president and they will be the ones that will have to answer farts and that's just the way it's going to be so although i believe the american people deeply and strongly and intelligently are committed to a lawful immigration system this compassionate and that will work but i'm not sure that the  leadership in the congress is or the white house indeed we haven't had a president committed to enforcement and the last forty years of immigration law so those are some fundamental say well you can enforce immigration laws of course you can enforce immigration laws we're just not been willing to do the things necessary to do that but i reject that concept but this time we said ok if we give amnesty we've all and try to ensure that that the enforcement does occur and we're going to do that by having a trigger mechanism and is in for some mechanism will s that if you don't comply with the requirements of border patrol agents and fencing and other matters we don't comply with those mr praed the amnesty does not occur let me tell you why and that made some that to have a enforcement guarantee first why would that fail why would it fail does that suggest that some people are not serious about enforcement i think it does but look at this this year they said ok we didn't have a trigger on the guys who were voting the bill last year said oppose a trigger oppose a trigger no trigger this year will except one american people's adal worry we're going to have a trigger in this bill i just want to briefly mention some things about it benefit sampling the white on this trigger for the enforcement to occur after the filing of an application by a person here illegally under this legislation and waiting for just twenty four hours illegal aliens will immediately receive probationary benefits they obey lawfully in the united states complete with the ability to legally live in a work in the united states to travel outside of the united states and to return and to have their own social security card and that that's what happened within twenty four hours astonishingly if the trigger  requirements are never met that is these requirements is both to be met first and green card applications are permanent resident applications  never approved by the department of homeland security a probationary benefits granted to the illegal alien population still never expire and the new social security cards issued to the bob relations are not revoked and they'll be able to stay in the country indefinitely forever after this bill passes department of homeland security has one hundred eighty days to begin accepting the z visa and stay applications they'll accept applications for one year and extend the guest worker the temporary worker program that was in the bill as introduced earlier before away recess his amendment as he knows although i'm not sure a lot of people know brought a temporary guest worker program from four hundred thousand a year to two hundred thousand a year some think that's all it is but if you read the bill carefully you know it was four hundred thousand for the first year for him and they got to stay for two years four hundred thousand for the second year with an accelerator clause in it with a certain number bringing family members so in two years there would be almost a million people in the country under that mr president mr president first i think my colleague from alabama for his kind words and his strong support for the amendment that we offered a couple weeks ago on the guest worker i want to stake a few minutes and morning business today before the senate gets into its busiest period of the week which we all know begins on tuesday usually to talk about two other amendments that i am have filed to this bill and i hope we'll have a chance to have the senate vote on before the bills completed let me first talk about one of those amendments that's aimed at addressing a provision in the immigration bill that i think seem practical and that i really don't think makes any sense the provision that i'm trying to correct let me before addressing the specific provision let me just once again put this in context this bill the underlying legislation calls for three so called temporary worker program there is an agricultural temporary worker program and i'm not suggesting any change to that program that's part of the underlying bill there is a seasonal worker temporary worker program where people can come in for up to ten months and then have to leave the country for two months then can come back the next year that that one i do have a second amendment on which i want to talk about just a minute and then there is the new temporary worker program that that was the subject of my two weeks ago let me briefly describe how this third so called temporary worker program works it contemplates a new guest worker program it says that guest workers would be permitted to come to this country and work for two years at the end of the two years they have to leave the country for a year then that same worker could come back for another two years leave the country again for another year then come back and work two more years and then have to leave the country permanently so that for a over a period of guess about what it would be nine years there during that period the worker could be here up to six years but there would have to be two periods of a year each during which the worker was outside the country to mispresent my amendment which co sponsored by senator obama would remove the requirement that guest workers leave the united states before they renew their visa to work under this program it would it would not model not modify the total period that they could stay here which would still be limited to six it would not change the terms of their visa but the amendment that i'm offering would provide that guest workers would be given a two year visa that they could then renew twice and do their full six years of work and then there would be so what it would no longer permit them to stay requiring these workers to leave the country for a lengthy period of time between each two year work period is a problem for several reasons it's bad for the employers first of all it's also bad for american workers who might also want to have some of these jobs and these are generally construction type jobs these are these are not  agricultural jobs these are not jobs for teenagers in seasonal employment obviously another problem with this provision it is it's extremely difficult and costly to enforce and i doubt seriously if we have the capacity to enforce it at this point and it increases dramatically the likelihood that individuals are going to overstay their visas first let me talk about the employers it would be very costly and burdensome to require that employers rehire and retrain new workers every two years employers are not going to give an employee a one year vacation the employer will have no choice when it when a one of these so called guest workers leaves the job in order to comply with this provision of law the employer will have no choice but to go find somebody else to bring on the one year leave provision would be especially harmful to small businesses and it would cause enormous instability in the workforce if they actually depended upon guest workers for some of that work governor an apollo tunnel from arizona recently wrote a column in the new york times and let me just quote a couple of sentences from that column she says the proposed notion that temporary workers stay here for two years return home for a year then repeat that strange cycle two more times makes no sense no employer can afford this schedule hiring and training only to have a worker who soon soon is going to leave it will only encourage employers and workers to find new ways to break the rules now that was on june first in the new york times and in my view government policy absolutely correct the current bill is also bad for american workers american workers would be forced to compete with a constant flow of guest workers who would always be at the low in the salary scale by virtue of the fact that they would have to leave every two years so if guest workers are kicked out of the country every two years wages cannot increase there will always be a justification to pay those those workers the lowest possible wage requirement that these guest workers leave the country every two years w also result in an increase in the number of individuals who overstay their visas in order to avoid having to leave the u s for that lengthy period of time it would also create additional costs in terms of tracking these individuals and ensuring that they in fact do leave the country these costs of course would have to be borne by the taxpayer it also assumes that we even have the administrative capacity to track all these people here we're talking about at least one point two million so called guest workers under only this program i'm not talking about the other two so called temporary guest worker programs but under this so called temporary guest worker program we're talking about one point two million workers so we're saying that we would then have a ministry of responsibility somewhere lodged in the federal government to keep track of the comings and goings of these workers every year i have real doubts about our ability to do that and obviously that is an assumption it is assumed as part of the underlying bill that we do have the ability to do that so the question is if the program is designed in a manner that's bad for employers it's bad for employees it's difficult and costly to employment it will lead to an increase in the number of individuals who overstay their visas then obviously the question arises what is the justification for keeping this provision in the in the bill i think unfortunately the only justification i've been able to find is that it's being kept in the bill in order to fit this political montra that we i've been hearing now for months about temporary means temporary rather than to implement any sound policy when you look at these guest worker programs under law unlike the other existing guest worker programs such as the h two b seasonal program for non agricultural workers the h two a agricultural program which were designed to fill jobs that in fact are of a temporary nature the new why one program which we're talking about here is designed to fill jobs throughout the economy that are really permanent jobs these are jobs in the construction industry primarily the two one two one two requirement which is in the underlying bill artificially tries to turn these workers into temporary workers by kicking them out of the country every two years even though they will be filling jobs that are not temporary they are permanent jobs last year immigration bill s twenty six eleven allowed new guest workers to stay in the united states for a period of three years and to renew that visa for a total of six years there was no requirement that the individuals leave the country before they renew that renewed that visa i think that type of framework is much more sensible one of the primary goals of comprehensive immigration is to create a new and a workable system that would ensure that we are not in the situation we're in now once again twenty years from now i don't believe that the current framework of this so called temporary worker program advances that goal let me just also take a moment to address concerns that the adoption of this amendment will somehow kill the immigration bill during the debate on the immigration bill questions keep arising about whether or not a particular amendment being offered by one senator or another is consistent with the so called grand bargain that has been reached i commend the senators who worked tirelessly to come up with an agreement on this difficult issue and this agreement was reached between a handful of senators and should not be considered in my view a substitute for deliberation by the full senate president one of the first amendments i offered was the one the senator from alabama referred to then meant that reduce the number of g workers under this program to two hundred thousand per year the number of new guest workers i should say despite the fact that that amendment was adopted by supported by seventy four senators  i've heard repeated questions about whether or not this was a deal killer sense thing to me that a measure which garners the support of three quarters of the senate somehow is considered a threat to the prospects of passing the legislation  frankly i believe where we're focused on the wrong set of issues here we ought to be trying to concentrate on getting a bill that has the broadest bipartisan support in the senate and i think that each of these amendments offered two weeks ago and this amendment i've just been talking about will help us to achieve that i urge my colleagues to carefully consider the consequences of leaving the existing procedures in place for why one guest workers i strongly believe that if we keep this provision in its current form we're going to create an expensive an unworkable program for employers a system that harms american workers and an incentive for guest workers to overstay their visas for that reason when the opportunity comes for a vote that my colleagues will for our amendment president how much time remains the majority is eighteen minutes mr president i would then continue to speak as if in morning business for another few few minutes here to talk about another amendment i have also today filed an amendment on another part of the bill the second amendments aimed at addressing a a different issue related to the why two temporary worker program now the why two program is a temporary worker program and it revises and incorporates the existing h two b seasonal nonagricultural program as i mentioned earlier this amendment would address the problem of people who we bring into the country for up to ten months allow them to work here whether they're working at resorts or working in some kind of seasonal employment nonagricultural seasonal employment and then we require them to go home for two months and then they can do that each year as senators have discussed this program and as it has been discussed in the press it's been stated that the underlying substitute amendment provides for an annual allocation of visas from one hundred thousand and the shelly to up to two hundred thousand each year depending upon the market demand i've got a chart that i could put up that that i think will  of the program and how you get from one hundred thousand up to two hundred thousand well that's the description this chart that is a fair description of this program as it has been reported in the paper however before the substitute amendment was filed the underlying bill called a substitute amendment because that's the technical correct name for it a provision was handwritten into the bill that provides that in any year from now on the returning why two workers who are present in the united states in the proceeding in any of the proceeding three fiscal years would not count against the cap so the whole idea of two hundred thousand is not right this is the yellow represents a two hundred thousand increase from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand but the red on the chart represents the potential pool of returning workers and you can see this is taken from a analysis that was done for me by the congressional research service we asked them to please look at this provision and give us their analysis of what is the size of the group that could come in under this program with this provision in it and they said well it could be up to about one point six one point seven million people over ten years would be eligible to come in every year now that's not a cumulative that's every year that many people would be able to come in the impact of this little notice provision i think is quite profound  obviously this is a high the high end of the projection because we would not expect that every single worker who came here to work for ten months during one year for some period during one year would choose to come back the next year but i think  a reasonably high percentage of the might choose to come back today we have about one hundred thirty five thousand this year in two thousand and seven we have about one hundred thirty five thousand workers in the country are expected in the country this year under this seasonal temporary worker program i have no problem seeing that increased to two hundred thousand and that's what the initial draft of the bill contemplated i do have a problem when when it might increase by well over a million i think that's not what the senate many members of the senate understand is is is going to happen under this and i don't think it is what should happen under this bill i think it's reasonable to require that the numerical limitation already in the bill actually mean something that's a two hundred thousand limit the amendment that i'm offering does not eliminate the returning worker provision by not by any means it says if you want to go if you want to change that number from the current law which is sixty six thousand up to one hundred thousand fine if you want to  say that it can grow from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand per year fine but let's not also say that anyone who has worked here in any of the three preceding years can come in on top of that because that's when your numbers just get totally out of control the amendment is aimed at ensuring that the bill does what i believe a majority of senators believe that it does that is it would allow the issuance of up to two thousand why two visas each year for the seasonal workers and i think that's something which i can support as a matter of policy again my amendment merely brings the the underlying language of the bill into line with what i believe most senators think the bill now provides and that is keep it under the two hundred thousand so that's a description of the two amendments that i have filed today mr president i think they're both meritorious amendments urge my colleagues to look at them to consider them and i hope of very much that i have an opportunity to get votes on those amendments this week before we conclude action on the bill because i think both amendments would each of the two amendments would improve the bill and make it much better public policy president i yield the floor which is a good thing and too little done in the senate but it's particularly important in this legislation where it's so so critical let me just say what i understood the whole deal was about very simple to me how we were going to have a new immigration system this year in this new legislation that was going to be better than last year the way i understood it from the talking points that were suggested and floated around and we were briefed where there would be a camp or a worker program that would actually be temporary and to me that means a person with far less than a year bucket come back repeatedly after that as long as the employer is happy and and they have work to come to and they not haven't got any trouble i don't see so that was what i thought we were talking about and then we were told that with regard to those who enter america harm to lay the coming into america to go the citizenship track the normal natural normal flow of immigrants that we've had to receive first permanent resident status and then citizenship that that would be a different system and it would be more skill based in other words the person would apply and they would compete for the slots based on the skills that they had and we'd have in the united states so i am concerned and share the concern of that the two years and three and then go and come back for one year and then come back for two years and go home for a year and come back for the final two years and never to come back again to m things less workable then a temporary seasonal worker program that we have today so i'm concerned about that remember we still going to have that constant flow of people to come in and get our green cards and become prominent citizens who will be workers we're not stopping that we creating a sad brit jeparit worker program i just believe that system of temporary workers needs to work needs to make sense needs to be consistent with common sense and also i'll get to be in a way that's practical and i'm not sure that the legislation is introduced  and we made a promise a we wouldn't have amnesty in a mall in a mall a baby that would just do this one time we won't do it again and asked the question of why we weren't hearing that said again and he answered it of course and they answer is of course because how can we say we're not going to have any more after having said it the first time and doing it again and presumably be doing it again after that accrue but a lot of things were left out things left out were quite troubling they make you wonder just how serious we are about creating a lawful system in the future if for example of the enforcement trigger that has the requirement that must be met before the new temporary worker program again does not require that the exit portion of the u s visit system that's the bio metric boarded check and check out system first required by the united states congress in nineteen ninety six be working that's a cause for concern because it's already well past the year two thousand and five when this bill was required that u s exit they use the exit system out just like you do when you're working at a job somewhere it's like you a lot of employment agencies and businesses have those kind of things it was due to be completed in two thousand and five expired if the exit fortune the u s visit system is not up and working we don't know it's a fundamental lou calls a monumental proportions it's the same to me and i'm surprised it's not in there and once again it suggests that we may not be those promoting this legislation let me say may not be really serious about creating an immigration system that works say maybe like this system that allows virtually anyone the term in they come here to be able to come here that is another matter that i want to mention in the trigger requirement  and it indicates something about the nature of the senate remember in one thousand nine hundred eighty six this senate passed legislation that required an exit the u s visit exit system be in effect by two thousand and five two thousand and five came and went it did not occur what does that mean it manes you can pass any law here and say you're going to do something in the future but if you don't fund it future congresses don't find it a future presidents don't fight for it may not ever occur that's all i'm saying that's why we american people need to be concerned about andy so another matter that involves what we're doing here involved bed spaces so we can end the catch and release at the border  we passed a law in two thousand and four that require r s forty three thousand beds to be in place by the end of two thousand and seven this is for the in the catch and release section of the bill that matter is those beds have not been completed so in this legislation it all required twenty seven thousand baht i would just say to you we passed the legislation in two thousand and four as part of the terrorism prevention act of two thousand and four to require much more bad space then they asked and they have not been completed so just because we passed legislation doesn't mean it's going to happen that i had many more than twenty five let's just look at number four aliens who broke into this country a mere five months ago are treated are provided permanent legal status in our country and are treated better than foreign nationals who legally applied to come to the united states for more than two years ago really and who can prove they were here illegally in the united states on january first  this year are a made early eligible to apply for men side the united states for and the benefits while foreign nationals that filed applications to come to the united states after my first of two thousand and five over two years ago must start the application process all over again from their home country a bill pot sponsors continually climb that this bill is necessary because illegal aliens have deep roots in the united states and are therefore impossible to remove they have families here they've been working here for many years and they can't be asked to leave and there's some truth in some of those situations for sure but it's simply not true in all cases is simply not true in many many cases the young man who ran past the national guard out at the border somewhere the last day center is going to be given and stay here in this country the american people want us to treat the illegal alien population compassionately do know and do believe but there's no reason to lump all illegal aliens regardless of when and how they got here or how deep their roots are into the same and the state program last year senate bill would have given illegal aliens amnesty if they could prove they had been in the united states since january seventh two thousand and four a lot of people say this is a tougher than last year's bill least last year they said you had to have been in the country by january seventh two thousand and four this year the bill expanded anderson went about three years to two thousand and seven and this year's bill illegal aliens that have rushed across the border in the last few years including those again just five months ago will be given all the and see benefits as those that have been living here for decades have u s citizens in screw and have been good workers a january seventh two thousand and four day why was that date selected last year as a cutoff date it was important because that was when president bush first gave his speech that we needed i lawful system of comprehensive reform of immigration in america and we need then when he gave that speech and he was talking about and steve of people here illegally that that would encourage more people to try to come into the country so that they could be provided amnesty to so they cut off the diet and said if you came in after the president's speech you can get advantage of the that makes sense i think then even more significantly just last year in may of two thousand and six president bush announced the beginning of operation jump start your remember that was the program to put the national guard at the border it called out the national guard so this bill says that if you know no word on outside that we're going to make a lawful system of comprehensive reform seven thirty first of last year you get to plat for full and stay you're here home free you're in now i don't think that's required i don't think that's good policy the bail drafters say line and will not be treated preferentially to those who have followed the law that is just not true in a number of cases and in this case the bill allows the illegal aliens that got here fab months ago to cut in line in front of people in the family green card backlog that file their applications after my first two thousand and five two years before illegal aliens that came to the united states just five months ago will get line may wonder why they didn't just come illegally also isn't that the message we are sending so this provision in the bill does not restore respect for the rule of law it really erodes it at a minimum as i may consume and to the extent that exceeds the limit for the majority in morning business i would ask the majority be accorded the same amount of additional time  the direction you were mr president this issue of immigration is a very passionate issue and raises the passions in this country in a significant way and i understand all of that i have described often on the floor  senate the circumstances of what has brought us to this point this is a remarkable country this country we live in if you have a globe in front of you and spin the globe and take a look at all of the landmass that exists on your globe you'll see there's just one little spot called the united states of america but it's a very different spot than much of the rest of the world we have raised incomes in this country expanded the middle class created a standard of scale of living that is really pretty unusual and pretty remarkable and because of that because we dramatically expanded the middle class and created a country that is very different than many other countries on this earth there are many who live in this on this planet that want to come here i described last week being on a helicopter flying between honduras and nicaragua up in the mountainous jungle area some long long while ago and we ran out of gas and i discovered on a helicopter when you run other gas we're going to be landing very soon we weren't hurt of course but the red lights and the alarm bells were ringing and going off and our pilots put us down in a clearing and while we were there i heard from some compazine those who came up to see who had landed in these helicopters and through an interpreter i visit with the compazine as i heard from them what i've heard in virtually every part of the world in which i have traveled i spoke with a young woman in her early twenty's and she had three children with her and i asked her what after we visited through an interpreter what do you want for you and your children oh she said i want to come to the united states of america that's not unusual i've heard that all over the world i want to come to the united states of america and i ask her why well there's opportunity there opportunity for a better life for me and my children we've built something quite unusual in this country and many from around this planet would like to come here i understand that let me give you an example of why if you live in china the average hourly wage for a worker and shiners thirty three cents an hour if you're in bangladesh thirty three cents an hour the average annual wage if you can find a job if you're in nicaragua thirty seven cents an hour and you average hourly wage india eleven cents an hour that's the average wage haiti thirty cents an hour if you could find a job and russia fifty one cents an hour i could go on but my point is there are people living in countries where if they can find a job they're going to be paid thirty cents an hour twenty cents an hour eleven cents an hour and they take a look at this country and they evaluate perhaps i need to go to the united states and be a part of that great country well because so many want to come here we have immigration laws and quotas we actually allow into this country under illegal quotas a good many immigrants every single year well over a million people come into this country every single year legally as part of our immigration quotas system we have quotas for various countries and regions of the world and we expect legal immigration from those countries we would have had last year over two million people come into this country legally with both agricultural workers and also under the legal immigration system but think for a moment if we decided to do it differently after what we have spent well over the last century building in this country to expand opportunity expand the middle class and create an economy that is really a the wonder of the world the real economic engine of the world is this economic engine of ours i think of the consequences if in fact we said this we have a new policy an immigration policy is that anybody in this world that wants to come here to stay here to live here to work here to be a part of the american experience come right ahead no restrictions come into this country and be a part of our great nation if we said that if in fact that were our country's policy we would be literally overrun by those who wish to come to be a part of this american experience  america with opportunity an america that offers hope to people living in squalid poverty to people working for eleven cents an hour we would be overrun as a result what we do have is a series of immigration laws that provide for legal immigration it restricts the number that comes in but we still have a pretty substantial number that come in legally into this country now we are told we have a new immigration proposal put together by a group of senators here in the united states senate with i understand the assistance of the white house or at least the involvement of the white house and they brought to the floor the united states senate say saying here's a new plan it is almost twenty years after the last plan which was one hundred eighty six it was called simpson mazzoli it was the immigration plan of one hundred eighty six and that was the plan that would backers then promised would end the problem of illegal immigration by choking off the demand for illegal labor through tough enforcement and through guest worker programs and also through amnesty of people who were then in the country at that point in time let me read some quotes for what was done in one thousand nine hundred six there are quotes in the congressional record quote the guts of immigration reform are all here all of it employer sanctions increased enforcement worker authorization verification legalization it's all here that's what was promised twenty years ago this will help the immigration and naturalization service to increase border person or border patrol personnel by fifty percent said one senator border enforcement employer sanctions well they said we're going to ramp up border security provided for your sanction so you don't you don't have the lure of a job and therefore we at the same time will provide amnesty this is one hundred eighty six to about one million illegal immigrants when amnesty was in fact granted following that it turns out there were three million or so  and everyone was pretty stunned to learn there was so little control over the borders then but now today fast forward twenty years we have a bill on the floor of the senate the promises almost exactly the same thing tougher border enforcement employer sanctions guest workers temporary workers except now twenty years later after we've solved the problem twenty years ago we have twelve million it's estimated twelve million people who came here without legal authorization we don't know that for sure we just know it's we think it's somewhere around twelve million people so we have comprehensive immigration reform comprehensive immigration reform well let me just go back for a moment and just show you that this issue of border enforcement and employer sanctions it's all a matter of in forstmann and will i've just taken a period here in one nine hundred ninety nine to two thousand for the current administration as you can see had almost no work site enforcement during this administration fact in two thousand and four there were three cases in the entire nation brought against employers who hired illegal aliens think of that in the year two thousand there were two hundred thirteen cases out of all of this kind of the millions and millions of employers in this country there were two hundred thirteen cases in two thousand and four to drop t three which meant there was no enforcement at all no will no interest nothing is it surprising then that the employers in this country would decide why don't i just risk it all hire illegal aliens because nobody's checking here the fines that have been levied with respect to employer sanctions and as you can see one hundred eighteen thousand dollars in the whole entire country you can see what's happened under this administration they apparently decided we're not going to enforce this at all and the result is a dramatic increase across the border of illegal immigrants and i know that that some don't like the term and i don't mean the term is pejorative term but that's what it is we have immigrants immigrants who come into this country some legally and some illegally and that's just a fact and so there's been virtually no enforcement by this administration or really any administration although the previous administration did much much better but now we are told that this new plan has a an ability to solve this problem we're going to have employer sanctions we're going to have border enforcement sound familiar yes that was twenty years ago that was promised and we're going to have temporary workers they now call it guest workers but it's temporary workers and i was interested last week that some of my colleagues when they defeated an amendment that i had by forty eight forty nine one vote defeat for an amendment that i had that would deal with the temporary worker issue first i wanted to abolish it that lost by a broader margin and then i wanted to at least sunset it and that lost by one vote and incidentally there was a lot of arm twisting to get that  i haven't seen any casts or anything on arms but i know through scott arm twisting mr president we were told during the debate on the guest worker provision the following the manager of the bill and the manager in the majority minority said said the same thing they said look if you don't have a temporary worker provision to allow those who are now in this country even as we legalize twelve million who are here with a work permit immediately if you don't all the millions more to come in four hundred thousand here now two hundred thousand a year with an escalator if you don't allow additional people to come into this country they'll come anyway they'll come as illegals across the border so i asked the question wait a second you're saying that we have to have a temporary worker program to bring people into this country who are now here and declare them illegals take american jobs because if we don't have a temporary worker graham they will come anyway i thought you said you had border enforcement what you appear to be saying is you don't have border enforcement so those that would come illegally lester's and let's just see if we can label them as illegal under temporary workers you can't have it both ways they're either is border enforcement or there is not and you can't say to me that we must put in a temporary worker program because if it's not there we will have illegal immigration and then the next breath thumbing your suspender say and by the way we have really effective border control if you have effective border control why then would you have illegal immigration that necessitates you to say there are millions who live outside this country that now must be allowed in that's on top of the twelve million people who are in this underlying bill will be declared legal to have legal status anyone who came across by december thirty first last year across the ocean or walking across the river or across any border anyone that entered this country on december thirty first or by december thirty first last year would be told you now have legal status in this country and will be able to work my colleague a while ago ask a very important question what about the people in other parts of the world who thought this was all on the level and that there was an immigration system and they applied to the quota system and have waited now eight years to see if they would be allowed to come to this country and then near the top of the list but now they discover something that makes them feel like they made a big mistake what they discovered is while they waited all of these years to get towards the top of the list under the legal immigration system that we have with the quotas that we have they should have snuck across the border december thirty first because those who did will have been declared by this piece of legislation as illegal and those who went through the process and have waited five years seven years eight years and are near the top of the list are told you're just out of luck and this make any sense to me quote this legislation is tough border security and tough interior enforcement provisions and then quote even if you have a secure border and we are hopeful of having secure borders it won't stop illegal immigration that's from a senator on the floor of the senate two weeks ago and support of this bill the fact of the matter is some workers will come here illegally or illegally one way or another they'll come in that's where the temporary worker program comes in if we eliminate this program you'll have these individuals that will crawl across the desert or you can say come through the front door and be given an opportunity to work so that's unbelievable that this is from the architect of the architects i should say of the proposal before the united states senate that comes here boasting that it has real security on america's borders and then says by the way if we don't allow in addition to legalizing twelve million people who came here illegally if we don't allow a substantial additional number of people who don't live here to come in and take american jobs they'll come anyway because they'll come as illegal immigrants which suggests to me at least that there's not meaningful border protection or border security in this legislation president let me describe this for a moment the the guest worker provision and guest worker these are temporary workers i don't know why you call them guest but temporary workers that would come in and take jobs at the low end of the economic scale and by and large to put downward pressure on income for american workers but here's the way it would work and you couldn't put this together it seems to me you just couldn't sit and think what kind of an approach could we use to put together a guest worker provision and come up with this sort of rube goldberg scheme it just i mean there's there's just no way that you could possibly put this together and believe it to be serious here's what they say they say will allow in the case of the original estimate  four hundred thousand a year now it's going to be two hundred thousand a year in the amount to one point two million over the first ten years and here's what they say you can come for the first two years you can bring your family to come for the first two years and you got to go home for a year take your family with then you can come back for two more years then you've got to go home for a year and you can go back for two more years so you can be her a total of six years you can only have your family here for two years and you'll have to leave this country twice that's unbelievable who on earth can sit in a room and construct that sort of nonsense side from the fact that we shouldn't have that provision in the bill we are told here's a way to work how many believe that you'll have two hundred people come for two years with their families if they wish and then all of them will go home and let's assume they all went home they get their own for a year and then come back for two more years and go home for a year and come back for two more years how many via believe that they're all going to leave they are not now there are several points that are made in support of this proposal they say that the guest worker program has nothing to do with the people who are already here illegally well bring bring in really literally additional millions of low wage foreign workers who've never set foot in this country and the proponents of the program they would just solve as i indicated earlier future illegal immigration by declaring it illegal and so creative approach but not a very good approach in my judgment the guest worker program they say has nothing to do with with agricultural work that's correct this doesn't have anything to do with with agricultural work that's a separate provision in addition to legal immigration there's a separate agricultural worker provision so these are not negligible workers these will be in manufacturing and in other areas and third the guest worker program applies in sectors of our economy where the vast majority of the jobs are done by u s citizens i mean that's a fact they say well that this is necessary because you can't find u s workers take these jobs that's just not the case these jobs are not picking strawberries that's in the agricultur worker provisions but these temporary workers are in construction manufacturing transportation all of which have a wide majority of u s workers eighty ninety percent of the workers are united states workers so don't tell me that you can't find u s workers to fill these jobs in all of these cases construction transportation manufacturing eighty to ninety percent of them are already u s workers  mr president there's been some discussion about what this does to american workers what does immigration do to american workers and one of the points i've made is this is a way of putting downward pressure on wages in our country this was from professor george for us the john f kennedy school of government at harvard he says on average the impact in one thousand nine hundred to two thousand on immigration on u s wages on average reduced wages by about three point seven percent i mean i don't there's much question that if you bring in a lot of people through the back door to compete for low wage jobs we're going to put downward pressure on income that's just a fact and here's an example of my concern and one of the things that persuades me we had to do better hurricane katrina hit on the gulf coast and we had a lot of cleanup to do and when hurricane katrina devastated that gulf coast coast rather famous others began to let contracts and try to see how we could create this cleanup and here's what happened october twenty second two thousand and five sam smith was an electrician he lost his house lost lost a lot during the  hurricane he is house was in the ninth ward it was destroyed by hurricane katrina this was an electrician aged fifty five who returned to the city for the cleanup the promise of a twenty two dollars an hour wage and guaranteed work for one year qualified electrician he lost his job within three weeks within three weeks let me show you why these folks stand smith lost his house lost his job and here's who the sub contractor brings in take a look at the barracks illegal workers brought in living in these squalid conditions can you get them to work for less sure you can do the right thing to do no of course it's n because an american worker who lost his house then lost his job sam smith deserved better but that is just a small example of what we face with respect to the downward pressure on income for those that work at the bottom of the economics ladder now the wall street journal ran a very interesting story in january of this year it showed that in an area where there's a sudden drop in the availability of illegal immigrants the wages for u s workers then rise there was a series of raids by federal immigration agents in still more georgia and this is again quoting from the the wall street journal a local poultry processing processing company called kreiter inc lost seventy five percent of its nine hundred member workforce when they were found to be illegal aliens illegal workers the company parent according to the story had a pretty good idea that a good number of its workers had been illegal one worker it said in the story arrived at the plant in two thousand and four and she fell out an application she tried to use a social security number to expert edification number the started with the numeral nine the company clerk stopped her and said well val social security numbers never begin with nine the clerk kept saying maybe you want to put down zero for six so the illegal immigrant wrote down the six and of course the application was accepted after the were raids and almost seventy five says the workers were determined to have been illegal immigrants the company decided that it would needed to find workers so they decided to raise wages and advertisement in the weekly newspaper titled increased wages quote unquote kreiter starting seventy nine dollars an hour that was more than a dollar an hour above what the company had paid many immigrant workers began offering free transportation nearby towns free rooms and company or order in company owned dormitories near the plant and for the first time in years the company aggressively sought workers from the area state funded employment office which is a key avenue for low skilled workers to find jobs continuing again to describe the wall street journal article said hundreds of local workers many of them minorities accepted the higher wages and were happy to take these jobs pretty soon this georgia company was apparently hiring back some additional illegal immigrant workers who had been previously caught up in the raid they turned to a temporary labor provider quote unquote will begin to provide the company with the same legal immigrant workers illegal immigrant workers who've been caught in the first race so the immigration officials conducted a second ra and the a company then finally agreed to stop working with temporary labor but the point of this story is very simple the point is if you have substantial amounts of illegal immigrant labor coming in it puts downward pressure on wages eliminate that illegal but labor from the marketplace and what happens is you raise wages at the bottom of the economic ladder mr president robert samuelson wrote an editorial in the washington post some while ago he said it's simply a myth that the u s economy needs more poor immigrants pointed out that in march the unemployment rate for college graduates in this country was one point eight percent the unemployment rate for the thirteen million u s workers without a high school diploma is over seven percent those thirteen million u s workers without a high school diploma compete directly with the immigrant workers who come here illegally and who do not have a high school diploma and that's what's put the of what puts downward pressure on wages in this country this is as i've indicated earlier a very difficult issue filled with fashion and i understand that i think that there are a lot of immigrant families living in this country perhaps many of whom who came here without legal authorization many came here five years ago ten fifteen years ago twenty years ago they've lived models lives they've gone to school here they've got jobs they pay i understand all that and i think that we should deal with that in a sensitive way there are many who who should not be expelled from this country we're not going to round up twelve people and deport them but it's not going to do that so we need to find a way to deal appropriately with these issues but that appropriate way does not say anyone who came across illegally into this country on december thirty first last year is deemed to have come here legally that is not the right approach you can't do that and second you should not be oblivious to the needs in this country of the low income workers we've got a whole lot of people today who got up this morning and are going to work hard all day long and come home with very little to show for it in many cases two and three jobs you know the people the people that know about second about second hand second mortgage second job second shift they're always in second place and they're the ones that have the least opportunity in this country to get a decent wage because their productivity goes up in their wages not as long as there are employers who are able to bring in across the border with that that leaks like a sieve when it comes to illegal immigrants as long as there are employers who are willing to put downward pressure on income for american workers we're going to see people at the bottom of the economic ladder in this country continuing to struggle and that's just a fact and the question is are we going to do something about you know what when we deal with immigration we have to two things first and foremost we ought to have a bill on th united states senate that deals with border security you can't deal with this huge this issue without stopping illegal immigration after all we allow nearly a couple million people into this country every single year under a legal system but if you don't stop at the border this unbelievable avalanche of illegal immigrants you don't have any hope of dealing with this issue first and foremost you have to deal with border security that ought to be the bill on the f states senate then after we've dealt with border security we have to deal with the question of the twelve million people who are here without legal authorization and i'd be the first to join those who say let's let's be sensitive and let's be thoughtful about that we're not going to round up twelve million people there are some who have been here a long while and raise families here that if contributed to this country we need to understand that that's a different issue than the issue of border security if we don't do border security and do it right this is just another way to say let's amnesty this time for twelve million people we did for three million people twenty years ago and by the way let's meet again fact not set a date let's set a date right now we'll meet again in ten years if in fact those that wrote this bill were telling me what they really believe two weeks ago and that is if you don't have a temporary worker program you're going to have people come here illegally anyway what that means is they don't have real border security or at least don't have the least bit of confidence in their border security in their bill that's just a fact there there is a generous amount of discussion on the floor of the senate about issues that are completely devoid of the well being and the best interests of people in this country who work very hard and show very little fo i would love to see a long discussion on the floor of the senate about international trade and the eight hundred thirty billion dollars trade deficit and american companies being given a tax break by this congress and future and previous congress american companies that shut their manufacturing plant fire all that work or ship their jobs to china or bangladesh or sri lanka or indonesia they actually get a tax break for doing that i've tried four times and shut it down been unsuccessful i'd love to have a debate about that in fact that's the same coin it's just the reverse side of the same coin shipping american jobs overseas is the reverse side of the coin of bringing cheap labor through the backdoor just a fact i understand where the impulse comes from it comes from many large enterprises many big businesses who have convinced this congress for too many in this congress that you can't fill jobs with americans you have to bring in people from across the border from around the world there aren't enough americans to assume these jobs i don't believe that i believe as long as you keep a constant supply of cheap labor coming into this country you can keep downward pressure on wages and the person across that convenience store counter that person that made the bed in your hotel room where you stayed last night the person that works in all those jobs at the lower end of the economic ladder they will never ever see a better income it took us nearly ten years to pass an increase the minimum wage in this congress one of the reasons for that is the same influence in this chamber that exists in support of this bill they just businesses in this country didn't want to increase the minimum wage they blocked it for nearly ten years the biggest interest in this country that want to ship jobs overseas want to continue to bring cheap labor to the back door and that's the genesis of this kind of legislation i'm not adverse to resolving the status of the twelve million who are here without legal authorization but i wouldn't do it this way i certainly certainly wouldn't point to december thirty first and say by the way if you got here last december thirty first good for you we declare you to be legal that's a thoughtless approach now the thoughtful approach to dealing with these issues mr president one final point it is the case that i come to the floor of the senate on this issue concerned about a lot of people in this country who work hard and who get little for it we've seen a dramatic increase in the large s of this country going to the top one percent in this country the top one percent of the income in this country is the top one percent i should say of the of the people who earn income in this country have seen dramatic increases in their income and yet the bottom twenty the bottom forty percent in many cases have seen that they have not been able to increase their income at all i think a and aggressive debate about how we improve the lot of all americans would be helpful but we don't improve the lot of americans who  done the work that they want to do to go find a job and get educated we don't do their bidding and help them by deciding when to keep downward pressure on their wages which is not going to do them this is the wrong approach and i know that  the the chair is here and the ranking member here and they wish to get from morning business to the bill and i let them do that but i know there will be many amendments this week but let me say this i would be very interested in voting for a piece of legislation that i thought was on the level that was going to provide real border security that is the first and most important need in dealing with dealing with immigration but two weeks ago the very people that wrote this bill said if we don't have temporary workers coming in under the temporary worker program they'll come in  legally anyway and i think that unmasks the fallacy of this bill there's not border protection here that's going to work there's not been a will to enforce in the past and i think what this is is a piece of legislation that will continue to put downward pressure on the income position on a monday evening of managing this bill for a little while i can tell our colleagues that we need to have them come out of the previous sort of the senate will resume consideration of s thirteen forty eight which the court report remember one forty four s thirteen forty eight and bill to provide for comprehensive immigration reform and for other purposes well i guess that's what i mr president was about to say but it needs to come from the from the chair and i appreciate that senator salazar will become behalf of the majority here but i do think that it is majorities desire that no amendments actually be laid down the seed knowing what we would like to do though is get members to come to the floor first thing tomorrow morning and begin laying down and then months we will in the meantime work out on or or of consideration of the amendments those which can be voiced voted those which will have to have roll call votes on and advise members of when those votes will occur tomorrow and we'll hope to do that later on this evening but we do want to encourage our colleagues to bring their amendments to the floor get them pending after this evening so that president mr president as we resume the immigration reform debate here in the u s senate this week i am a mindful of the fact that we have indeed come a very long way and that this u nited states senate in this chamber has spent a very significant amount of time dealing with the issue of immigration the last year we were on the issue of immigration for over a month this year through the dialogue and discussion of immigration we have been working on this for the last several months there on the bill for all of last week we'll continue to work through it this week and hopefully by the end of the week we'll be at a point where we will be able to act on comprehensive immigration reform for our country as i have often s the floor of the u s senate from my point of view this is an issue of national security it would be an abdication on the part of united states senate in washington today if we're not able to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform in the days  after nine eleven it has become clearer and clearer to all of us that we need to secure the borders and what our legislation does this to in fact secure the borders secondly what the let's legislation does is it make sure that we as a nation of laws move forward to enforce the laws of the united states of america the legislation that we have proposed here is a top law and order piece of legislation that will make sure that we have the right kind of resources so the united states does not look away a from  importance of our laws in that we enforce our laws here in this country and third our legislation also deals with the economic realities that drive so much of the immigration debate and the competence of the economic realities relating to the guest worker program as well as to the agricultural job workers as well as to other majors of the bill to speak to the economic realities that are that our country faces so i'm hopeful that we will be able to move forward to a conclusion of this legislation hopefully this week i will note that there was progress made on the legislation during the last week we disposed of thirteen of the hundred seven amendments that were that were filed seven of those amendments were accepted by roll call were  and work our way through some of the more difficult amendments later on in the afternoon mr president let me also just say at this point that as a president the united states has spoken out around the country on the issue of immigration reform he's taken a lot of heat for the position that he's taken and i know a lot of people both democrats and republicans in this chamber have taken a lot of heat on what we're trying to do here with immigration reform but i think it's a responsibility of the members of the u s senate the members of the u s house of representatives and the president to do what's right for the country and there are some who frankly will argue that we ought not to do anything that the answer really to dealing with immigration reform is simply to not do anything for a year two three four years and to do what they call an enforcement only approach we know that from a realistic point of view that that will not work that we will not be able to secure our borders and we won't be able to and force our laws within our country and we won't be able to deal with the reality of the twelve million undocumented workers who toil here in america today and so the comprehensive approach the bipartisan approach that we have brought forward for consideration by the u s senate i think is our best attempt at coming up with something that makes sense for comprehensive immigration legal reform here in our country and i appreciate senator kyl and his leadership the leadership of the many on the republican side of capacity and within the courage of the members of this chamber to get to a conclusion that is a good conclusion on immigration for the united states of america as the president you know before back to my young friend from arizona mr president let me  begin by complimenting the senator from colorado who frequently during the very difficult negotiations over the last several months was able because of his legal skills and sunny personality to bring contending factions together and i could not agree with him more that as responsible public servants we cannot allow this problem to continue to fester that surely working together in a bipartisan way committed to fairness and justice in the solution we can come up with a resolution of the problem that will work as as well as anything might work our colleague from north dakota s moment ago that he disagreed with this bill and then said we need to find a way and then describe pretty much what we're trying to find a way to do here and he's very he's right we need to try to find a way well we have tried to find a way it's just  everyone will agree with exactly what we've come up with and one of the reasons for that is that if you're not part of the process to try to reach a bipartisan consensus you might have the idea that you can get most of what you want without conceding anything to people who have a different point of view the reality is that this is one of the most current tensions complex emotional issues of our time and no one is going to get one hundred percent of what they think is the right solution we're all going to have to recognize that there are other points of view and that in order for us to be able to politically reach a decision and we might have to be supporting something that none of us like one hundred percent of and that's certainly  the case with me i i want to explain here that the seasoning a couple of things that came from my discussions with constituents during the time of the memorial day recess and why i agree with the senator from colorado that this is the time to try to track tackle this very tough issue i was asked by a reporter why i was doing especially since i had voted against the bill last year the answer is that last year i did not really have an opportunity to parse it to participate in the construction of the legislation which the senate voted on and by the time it came to the senate floor the dye was essentially cast we had several amendments that we offered some were accepted some were defeated but at that point it was not possible to substantially change the legislation i felt it was a bad bill and i voted against it but it is also true that the situation in the united states and in my state in particular is getting worse every day and if you represent a state like arizona on the border with mexico you simply cannot continue to ignore the problem hoping that it'll go away or some magical solution will  everybody can support you realize that you're going to have to get in there fight like heck to try to do the best you can and get the problem resolved even though the solution is not going to be perfect from anyone's perspective here's what's happening every day thousands and thousands of more illegal immigrants are pouring across the border and we want to stop that yes we have crime and violence increasing at an unprecedented rate much of it due to illegal immigration the drug smugglers are using the illegal the illegal immigrants as decoys to try to get the agents to chase the illegal immigrants so they can bring the drugs across because the border patrol is getting much more effective now at controlling the border the violence is increasing because the people smuggling immigrants and drugs are finding that their territory is now being contested by the border patrol and they're fighting back and they're fighting back with weapons including large caliber weapons and this violence is a scourge not just at the border but on our society as a whole we had a shootout on the freeway between tucson and phoenix where two rival gangs were literally fighting over the load of illegal immigrants why would they be doing that because those illegal rip illegal immigrants represented more potential income for whoever controlled them you see they're essentially kidnapped and ransom their families back in el salvador or mexico or wherever they might be from are contacted and said that if they want their relatives to be freed they've got to pay additional money and as a result a lot of money is involved and a lot of violence and the harm perpetrated on the immigrants and frankly some harm perpetrated by some of the coil days and smugglers and other criminals crossing the border is infecting our state to an unacceptable degree last year over ten percent of the illegal immigrants coming across the border from mexico were criminals or people wanted for serious crimes but these are not just nice people wanting to work in the united states though that is by far and away the majority of the people it's a national security problem we don't know how many of these people may have terrorist inclinations we do know that many come from countries that are on the terrorist list and again between ten and thirteen percent approximately we know to be criminals and as a result we've got to do something about the problem i was mentioning to a reporter this morning she said what difference differentiates arizona from some other midwestern or eastern states for example and i said well two things first of all the violence that's associated with this which which has a deleterious effect all the way from the people that the violence is is perpetrated on to the court system which can handle it to the jail system to the social network that has to be established all of this is enormously expensive and disrupted but i said secondly you've got the problem of the environmental degradation with thousands and thousands of people millions over the years crossing through our state the impact on the fragile desert environment has been dramatic we have national monuments national parks national game refuges military bases indian reservations as well as private land and the national forests right on the border and with this many people coming across with very little regard for the impact on the environment they have left thousands of tons of trash they've cut fences they've let water run they've let animals run loose they have for it and in some cases hurt individuals they've burned  property they have trashed the properties i've said and they've cut literally thousands of trails which will take thousands of years to revenge or take that's the least of the problems but you can see it in my state of arizona and anybody that says we shouldn't try to do something to stop that i think simply has no sense of responsibility especially if they're in a position to do something about it as we here in the senate are and that's what's motivated me to do something about this problem as best i could you can sit on the sidelines and complain about how bad the legislation is you should say as some of my colleagues have said we need to find a way to do something to solve this or you can try to find a way and work with your colleagues on the other side of the aisle do your best to come up with a consensus that has a chance of passing and being signed into law and that's what mr president those of us who have worked on this legislation have tried to do is it perfect no way are there many things in it that i don't like absolutely that my friend senator salazar doesn't like absolutely but that's the nature of attempting to reach a bipartisan consensus just friends in the next thing i want to do is talk a little bit about what my constituents told me the last couple of weeks it's very interesting that the same question keeps coming up over and over and over in my campaign last year same question why do you think a new law will be enforced when the existing law is not being enforced and that is a very good question because the truth is neither the current administration nor the previous administration nor congress is working with the administration nor the bureaucracies and people responsible for enforcing the law have done a good job of enforcing the law one can argue that in some cases there hasn't even been a significant attempt to enforce the law and when the law is attempted when we do attempt to enforce it a lot of roadblocks are thrown in the way and so it's a legitimate question why do we think that this new law might be enforced when the current laws are not being adequately enforced unless you can answer that question you can't really support some new proposal as we have here before i answer the question let me say something else it is absolutely wrong to accuse the people who ask that question who are skeptical of our ability to enforce the law and therefore skeptical of this new law it's absolutely wrong to call them bigots or restrictionists or  nativists or left wing or right wing nuts or people who simply want to obstruct the process the reality is these are hardworking taxpaying americans who believe in the rule of law and are extraordinarily upset that their government has let them down and that is exactly what is happening their government has let them down they have a right to be angry and they have a right to ask the question why should we believe the new laws going to be enforced when the existing laws not being enforced remember my colleagues we work for them they fired us they pay our salaries and they pay the president's salary and all of the people who work in the executive branch and they have a right to answers to these questions rather than having people suggest that because they may oppose what we're proposing here that somehow or other  we think less of them i think a great deal of them especially those people who disagree with me agreeably like one of my constituents with whom i spoke today she said i trust you but i don't like this new bill that's been proposed well i appreciate the question that she asked which was the same one how are you going to enforce it so let me try to answer that question first of all we understood that the experience of twenty years ago with the hundred six demonstrated that unless you took enforcement seriously you want to end up with something out enforceable and so we tried to do that in this new legislation the first thing we did is to ensure that several new things will be done for enforcement before any of the benefits accrue to people who are here illegally that's a way of ensuring that at least some enforcement gets done now what did we do we applied triggers we said that until the following things are done no temporary visa will be issued to an illegal immigrant in the united states one of those things number one we're going to increase the members of the border patrol and by the way this isn't the end of it we said eighteen thousand an amendment has now passed and take it to twenty thousand and that's great and we'll need more than that you know what twenty thousand border patrol agents represents mr president it's half of the new york city police department so if you've got about thirty nine thousand people the new york city police department and i don't know exactly how many square miles that is but you've got two thousand miles of border with mexico not to mention our northern border i think you can appreciate that probably twenty thousand border patrol agents is not enough but we at least get to that mark before any of those triggers are polled we do the same thing with fencing now we have an authorized seven hundred miles of fence and we're going to have at least three hundred seventy one of miles of that fencing complete before this trigger is pulled we're going to have over three hundred miles of vehicle barriers incidentally on fencing there's a rumor a myth out in the land that we only have two miles of fencing we've got over eighty miles of fencing and it's being built up several miles a day i've seen it being built and the border down by you might arizona we will have something like seventy new radars or maybe more than that i forgot the exact number we will have for unmanned vehicles we will have over twenty six thousand detention spaces so that there will be no more catch and release of people who are who are detained these are some of the things that will actually have to be done before the trigger is pulled and a visa can be issued to an illegal immigrant or even a temporary visa in addition to that we will have up and operating and ready to go the electronic employee verification system or s this was lacking in the bill in one thousand nine hundred six oh we had a requirement that employers check to verify the eligibility of employees and you know what they had to check a driver's license or social security cards which are counter all and i think it's about thirty to thirty five bucks apiece about sixty dollars for the two of them and in the player can hold them up to the light and say ah this is a counterfeit and it was a real one you cannot expect employers to do that as a result of which they suspect a lot of the people that are on their payroll are illegal immigrants but they've got the documents to prove that they're legal and the u s government very seldom comes to audit them to check to see whether or not the people they've hired are legal or not and of course we preclude them from asking in sensitive questions that might violate their legal rights like are you an illegal immigrant so employers are stuck in a catch twenty two situation that's the situation today now for those who say we don't like the bill i asked fine  situation we have today where you have a totally on in forcible employee verification system or would you like to see something like is in this bill put into place it is very effective it will require the government to do the validating not the employer and the government will have two different things developing number one it's going to clean up the social security system and the database and when an individual applies for a job that database is going to be accessed with algorithms developed to ensure the that not only do you ensure that the number that's been issued is a valid number issued to that person on that date but that it has been used by somebody else for employment purposes that the individual has died and so forth so you can determine whether or not the social security eligibility is real and secondly you can determine who the individual is and there are a variety of ways to do this if you have a u s passport that's the go standard because the information is typed in and the real passport that was issued will then be displayed on the computer screen of the employer and all the employer has to do is match that with the passport and his hand that the employer has given him perspective employee and determine that they are identical if the photographs are identical and he looks like the individual the photograph that's him if they're not then that situation is noted and the individual cannot be employed if it is a driver's license a real i d act driver's license the same thing the audit the photograph has to be matched to be the identical photograph there is a system in other words that will be put into place at this time will not rely upon the employer trying to determine the validity of the document but rather having that document checked through the database of the united states government or states in the case of driver's licenses or birth certificates and the employer able to verify that in fact it is the proper document very difficult sanctions if an employer violates this law well if an employer violates it more than once it's a seventy five thousand dollar fine as opposed to two hundred fifty dollars for a violation today this is serious and employers i think want a legal way a way that doesn't impose too big of a burden on them to ensure that the people that they hire are in fact eligible to be hired i think they will appreciate the speed and the ease with which this new system will allow them to determine eligibility of their employees and this will work so that the combination of strong border security and the inability to get a job if you're here illegally will reduce we believe right down to the bare minimum the number of people who shouldn't be here but are that bare minimum of course are the criminal element the absconders the gang or terrorist members and those people who have committed crimes while they're here today and it's going to be much easier to find and catch them tomorrow if they're the ones we can concentrate on instead of having to concentrate on one hundred percent of the people who are here illegally we can focus on that fifteen percent or so that we really want to catch so this is the second way in which we have anticipated that we need to enforce the law third amazingly in the one nine hundred eighty six law you couldn't even prosecute someone for fraud if they told you that they had been here for longer than three years or five  years and turns out that they had one last year there was a man temp to amend the bill to at least allow people that made such fraudulent claims to be able to prosecute them that amendment failed well needless to say the ability to prosecute fraud is in this legislation there are many other ways in which we have sought to ensure that this legislation unlike the past will be enforced but i would just conclude this part of my remarks with the statement let me answer the question another way about will the law be enforced if you're unhappy with the status quo if you don't like the way that things are today then why would you oppose a change that at least offers the prospect that the new law will be enforced when we know that the old law is not being adequately enforced and if you say well let's just enforce the current law i ask you with regard to the employer verification system that i just discussed how can you enforce a law that's not enforceable inherently not enforceable you can't prosecute for fraud you can to check the status of prospective employees you cannot hold an employer liable because you can't prove that that person knowingly hired an illegal immigrant you can't enforce the existing law at the workplace we've got to change the law that's the whole point of this legislation i think you have to argue that the status quo is better than what this bill offers if you're going to oppose the bill let me just mention two other things mr president  since i see that my colleague from mexico is here like me he appreciates the impact on our society of illegal immigrants who are imposing themselves who are using social services  who are stressing our court system and i appreciate the fact that the center senior senator from new mexico has offered legislation to add judges so that we least have enough judges to handle the cases that come before the courts but a lot of our colleagues say the problem with this legislation and the only reason we can't go along with it is that it represents amnesty and course everybody has a different definition of what amnesty is i don't think it's amnesty but it seems to me that arguing over whether something is or is not amnesty is a dead in argument the question is what would you like to see done so that it isn't what you don't like and i would argue this if merely allowing the illegal immigrants to stay here is amnesty which is what a lot of my constituents have said they believe that the status quo is amnesty because we're letting them stay here and we're not doing anything about it so if your definition is that the mere fact that you allow them to stay here is amnesty then i say fine you too are for amnesty i'm just trying to do something about it but what are we trying to do about it the first thing is that what we want to do is ensure that the people who came here illegally will appreciate that they did something wrong they're going to have to pay a penalty for it and for them to continue to stay they're going to have to meet serious conditions of probation they're going to have to say i came here illegally  if you find that i've committed fraud or you find that i am an eligible for the benefits of this program in any way i waive my right to contest that in effect and i'm going to pay a fine and i'm going to be on probation i'm going to have to not violate the law i'm going to have to continue to work if you're the head of the household if you violate any of those conditions you're going to have to go home and so are your family members and if you want to stay here permanently you're going to have to go home and apply like everyone else you're going to have to get in line you're going to have to pass and then blish test and that's all simply to get a green card after that of course if you want to be a citizen you have to wait the five years and and do the things necessary to become a citizen and that deals with the second point to me one of the definitions of amnesty is this automatic path to citizenship what we've done away with that here in addition to what i've mentioned we also establish a merit based system for green cards for those people who want them who are here illegally and finally one of the benefits of amnesty is the ability to change migrate your family we did eliminated that in this legislation you no longer have the right to change migrate your your family and by that what we are talking about is to bring in the non nuclear family somebody other than your spouse and minor children simply because you are a green card holder or u s citizen and we say no longer and when this bill goes into effect once the current backlog cleared up there will be no more chain migration of this non nuclear family and incidentally there was an error made in the description of the bill by one of our colleagues the visa that's going to be issued to people who are here illegally today does not allow any chain migration in fact it doesn't even allow the migration of your nuclear her family your spouse or minor children if they are in another country this present the last thing that i want to talk about is this matter of the amendments that we will have to way basis but strengthens the bill and there will be many other amendments that either do or do not strengthen the bill and we'll have a chance to vote on them but we also understand that there are some of them vents which go right to the heart of the negotiation that occurred to the agreements that were reached and which were they to be adopted and there are some members in the senate that frankly want to see them adopted because they don't want to see the bill passed they know their killer amendments and they've been so dubbed and i'd like to illustrate what i mean we we have a temporary worker program and we work very hard to make sure that it represented people that gave people an opportunity to come here temporarily and work and then return home and the amendment that would allow them to morph into legal permanent residency and then into citizenship would convert that program from a temporary worker program to a permanent worker program and that would violate the basic understanding of the bill we already have a permanent worker program now speaking of that we were very careful to try to balance that term that permanent worker program the so called green card program legal permanent residence based on worker visas to calibrate that with family visas and the need for high skilled versus low skills we developed a merit based system that establishes points for that and we allocated the different visas for different groups and it would be a deal killer a killer amendment a breaking of the of  the bipartisan agreement here if that is substantially altered and there's an amendment out there that would in back substantially altered by increasing by something like three hundred thousand per year the number of green cards that would be provided for employers to dole out to their prospective employees as a condition of employment basically this isn't a green card applied for by the individual this is a green card that the employer applies for and says to a prospective employees from another country if you'll come work for me for five years and take sub standard wages i will give you a green card at the end of that five year period i remember studying in school the concept of indentured servitude you come in you work off your debt for seven years and then you get to stay in the united states of america it's not the same thing but it's analogous what we say here is that we're going to make these is available for both the employee to apply for and the employer and we're going to substantially increase the number of those visas but we're not going to substantially increase it and then add another three hundred thousand on top of that that would break the deal moreover that particular amendment goes right to the heart of some other reforms reforms that i support that the presiding officer supports and would would frankly undercut what we've tried to do here in terms of worker rights we already have just to be real clear about it one hundred  fifty thousand green cards per year most of which will go to skilled workers because of the merit based system that we have in addition to that we've created another hundred seven thousand per year to clear up the we believe a five year backlog for those high skilled workers those so called h one b workers and we had another two hundred forty thousand at the end of eight years when they're no longer needed for family purposes and we have a merit based system as i said that will pretty much ensure that these green cards go to the to the best when the brightest the high skilled people who will bring with them the kind of things that we need to compete in the global economy now another  killer amendment has to do with the non nuclear family migration the so called chain migration we have decided that even though some people would literally never get to this country with a family visa because the is too long we're going to allow about four million people to come into the country over an eight year period this is extraordinarily generous for many countries well i'll just mention one i believe that the backlog for the for our neighbor to the south mexico is one hundred seventy six years you cannot argue that you have a reasonable expectation that you're ever going to get obese or granted and get to the united states and to have anything left of your life if the time lag before you could get it is  hundred seventy six years long and it's also long for many other countries nevertheless we said that if you had applied by may of two thousand and five you would be able to come into this country within an eight year period now we originally said two thousand and four because i believe in march of that year the department of homeland security sent a letter to everybody that was pending and said look we have stopped processing these applications because  there's no reasonable expectation we're ever going to get to them and so if you applied after that date especially if you're from one of these countries that has a long backlog forget it you're never going to make it here nevertheless we said we will allow you to come in in th year period well there's an amendment that would move that date from may have two thousand and five remember we moved it from march of two thousand and four in the spirit of compromise to may of two thousand and five this amendment would move it yet two years forward to today basically for another over six hundred fifty thousand applicants these people have no reasonable expectation ever being coming into the country and finally there isn't a member that deals with spouses and children both legal permanent residents and citizens are enabled to bring spouses and legal children and if you're a legal permanent resident there is a cap and there is some waiting period not substantial but it is a waiting period this amendment would eliminate that difference between citizenship and legal permanent residence for the sake of bringing the nuclear family and i think it's very important for us to retain the distinction i mean citizenship has got to mean some things in this country and one of the key things that we think it means is being able to bring your spouse and your minor children into the country when when you want to do that mr president my point in discussing these these amendments is to make the point that as anxious as i am to solve this problem by getting legislation passed that we believe really does offer the opportunity for enforcement to india legal immigration to end the employment of illegal immigrants and to ensure that from now on people who are here are playing by our rules rather than someone else's rules as much as we want to ensure that this legislation can pass the senate and the house and be signed by the president we also appreciate the fact that it represents a consensus based upon an extraordinary amount of negotiation and i go back to the point i made starting out nobody got one hundred percent of the of what they want and we all made sacrifices in the sense that we agreed to things we didn't really like the end result was a bipartisan bill which i believe can pass but if any of these other amendments are adopted then many of us have made the commitment that we will no longer support the legislation and i certainly would not support the legislation and i would do everything i could to get i because it seems to me that unless there is a bipartisan consensus that is that represents a balanced bill that can pass both houses and the president will sign we're simply engaging in an exercise in futility here and perhaps worse so i want my colleagues to appreciate the fact that i am very anxious to support some of their amendments all of those others that need to come down get their amendments pending so that we can get them voted on but there are some things which go right to the heart of this bargain and many of the people who will support those amendments know that and i'm sad to say that one of the reasons that they will be supported by some members is precisely to kill the bill i don't want to see the bill killed i want to see the bill passed and as a result i hope my present i want to express my appreciation for the valuable leadership senator kyl has given to this senate in so many different areas and i am normally one of his right hand guys but on this day all i can't be with him i don't agree that a small group of senators can meet in closed meetings and reach a compromise that nobody can demand in fact i don't believe let me start out i do believe we need a fact comprehensive immigration reform legislation and i support that and was hopeful that the legislation that was being discussed based on the principles contained in the talking points utilized by members of the president's cabinet and those senators who were meeting to discuss the bill those principles struck me as far preferable to last year's legislation and i said publicly i was most intrigued by how much sight however that i own reading the fine print in this legislation i have concluded that the legislation does not effect you're right the promises and principles announced beforehand for example they said this year we would have an effective trigger trigger being proof that if enforcement measures were in place before any amnesty would occur that was defeated last year the people this year assured us it would be in there but raiding the trigger it has very little in it very little teeth it's trigger locked it's not an affective trigger and i've demonstrated that in earlier years the chip they promised that we would end chain migration and move to a merit system of immigration however for the next eight years the number of people entering under the chain migration non skilled by status  it will not work and i will also note that it allows spouses to visit and parents to visit a spouse can visit a worker even if that worker even if that spouse they don't intend to stay in the country they are living in the foreign country some worried about how that will work who's going to apprehend those who don't return people who came into our country in the last five months who got past the national guard at the present bush called out got into our country day summer thirty first of last year will be given permanent status in this country and those who are members of m s thirteen an international gang who if they say they are a member of that gang and say they run out the friends of that gang will be able to stay of a given citizenship in the united states they said that the bill would have dried or emphasis on a similar position because we all agree when a to do a better job of assimilating those who come to our country but i believe is only mentioned once in the bill and that was at the three hundred and something page of of the bill almost the last page of the bill they said we would emphasize english much more but under the bill those who are they given amnesty won't have to status in the country not a z these even but the probationary status and the average recipient of their earned income tax credit is about eighteen hundred dollars a year and that is not chicken feed it was designed encourage work by working americans not to provide an incentive for people to come to our country illegally and the documents that are required to be able to prove you were here before january first of this year are simply a affidavit by someone and i would submit that the homeland security is not going to be able to check on those affidavits and we're going to have massive fraud in the most people probably that are working here today many many discrete specific defects in the legislation but the problem is that they defects and main man set by the legislation indicates a lack of commitment to creating a lawful and forcible system of immigration and in that case i have a lack of a commitment to moving to a more skill based system like canada which i would not to my colleagues the canadian system was favorably revered in the usa today editorial yesterday it absolutely should be a part of this so i salute my colleagues for working them to move to a more merit based system to taking some steps that would be better from an foresman side but out half the side our believe it's not sufficient i wish it were it's not we need immigration in america we are a nation of immigrants i do not oppose immigration i just think that we ought to create a system that serves our national and trust that i'll allows a talented people from the world to be able to apply and count here those persons most likely to flourish in our system it should serve our national and tristan it should be effective i just i'm afraid this bill does not present  the senator from new mexico thank you chair i want to thank my good friend from alabama for expediting his remarks so that i would not take so much time with the senate i know he's got an appointment also so i did not to i was not reluctant to wait and he didn't wait too long and some of senators thank you good to be with you and to talk this morning i did not get to hear all of the  speeches this morning in speeches of my good friend senator salazar from my neighboring state of colorado or even all of the speech today made by i'm very good friends from the other adjoining state of arizona senator kyl but i heard a little bit of both of them and i came to the floor after hearing some of senator kyl to tell him how i analyzed his work on this bill senator kyl i've known you ever since i've been in the senate as luck would have it i can call you my junior now that's only because the mexican sent me up here a few years before you in no other respects and you said the words would be appropriate because you think you are a terrific senator and it would have been a shame if you would have lost this opportunity with your talent and your ability to convince people if you had not been on the side of getting the united states of america a new immigration bill and i say that to my junior friend from the state of colorado the same goes for you the same goes for senator kennedy and whatever that group that work together but i sense the two of you are here i will use you as an example of all of those who decided that they had enough and they were going to work until they had a bill and let me say to you get on to elected to the united states senate to handle the easy problem no are you elected to the united states senate will let other people handle the problems and you argue that they can't do i'm right so you can be on the defensive all the time and argue against anybody that's trying to do something for the country we wanted elected for that even it happens that we have parties so most the time we choose up on on veils and amendments but let me suggest to the american people who don't get it and i don't say that in any pejorative sense something good has transpired in the united states senate one of the worst problems we have an immigration system that does not work i mean if there's anybody in the united states that believes the borders of this great marvelous state are being policed so that we can determine who comes in and who goes out in particular and more particular who comes in origin if they think we have we can do that then they're living in another world they're not even visiting in their home country because we have no border control left and we i know it in the state of arizona my neighbor by just going out and looking and we know it in new mexico because our border patrol people tell us all the time that thousands have come across and thousands more are coming across and we can't stop them because we do not have a comprehensive law so we get them we capture him they get out and come back we arrest them in side of the country we take him to be prosecuted they let him out the way to a three days they never show up and we never bother to go look for them so the truth of the matter is in this year this great country has a buyout reached a point where we have abandoned controlling the borders of our state as to citizenry occupancy and who lives here and makes a living here and who raises their children here and what influence they have over our society we have come very close to living under no law and i'll tell you for anybody that says to the united states senate or to a senator either a media person or citizenry that we don't want this veil because we don't like this or this is that piece of it that then just ask the question do you like what we have is that not right senator do you like what we have if you don't like what we're trying to do after years of work do you really think what you are advocating when you tell us don't do it and why are our office and call us long distance what are you asking us to do nothing we don't have anything so if you want to sit not pass a law when you want to do nothing and you want to leave us with nothing you want to leave the people of the country naked as to who can come in and how many and what they do with they get here and the kind of the kind of opportunity that we give them not knowing who they are where they come from or why we are doing what we are doing that's exactly where we are today and i say to senators who are who come here in the next few days and say well i had i looked at it with my staff and i had some and they told me i had to have an amendment i urge that you be very very serious about amendments and i know better than most that you can make an argument that a few senators bipartisan no matter how well motivated or how good they are as senators when they get together for months upon months and write a bail they have not given everybody a chance  substantially better than our current law and you think is there anything else that's apt to make it if this one died are we really going to go through this effort and do another one next year i think we're going to have to wait till there's a whole new group of senators before we write another bill so before you insisted that you're going to offer an amendment even if it kills this veil so you can exercise your senatorial rights urge that you get some serious thought to the proposition that you want just so that you can say you offered an amendment do you want to kill a bill which is dramatically better than we're living with without question that many people who analyze it carefully say if you give it sufficient resources if it's sufficient manpower give it the computer strength it needs and the law enforcement that it needs it has a chance of tying up our borders so people cannot come in unless they are supposed to it has a chance what we're living under has no chance at all americans what we're living under has no chance in it cannot be enforced what we're living under it is not currently with court interpretations and the like it is not currently in dialogue with the capacity to be inforced the current law of the land cannot be enforced in a way that will sustain our borders that's just not possible so don't wish for us nothing don't say enforce our current law there is no law to be enforced it is a bushel basket full of loopholes and full of opportunities for people to obfuscate and get out from under rules and regulations so much so that our border patrol is a are so frustrated that they've been for years crying out to us to give them help and when they say how they always say change the law fix the law so we can do what you want us to do and this is our chance now i went home for good recess like most senators i did not travel overseas i went home i spoke at six to six editorial boards in six cities and i then spoke to a couple of groups like the espanol chamber in albuquerque on about fifty to one hundred men and if i had time to answer questions on this bill and to explain the two principal provisions i sent nobody would say nobody stood up to challenge me this say that it was bad except one that one person insisted that i was defining amnesty wrong and i ended up in an argument maybe i should not saying it doesn't matter whether it's an the state here's the words is there something wrong with this accumulation of wards that we put in the statute that says when somebody can stay here after they have worked for thirteen years they can apply is there anything wrong with those words if there when we don't worry about an honesty where that we define it or not i believe there is no general amnesty in this bill the minimum time you can get here is work thirteen years under two different cards a z card and a and a green card thirteen years being a good citizen how much time you've already spent here we don't know and then in the end paying fines along the way for violating the law and then applying and only and having to know english situation english and sufficient civics at the end of that is that is that amnesty i thought i'm going to see was more like a gift there's no gift here you've got to work and you've got to learn and you've got to pass an exam and you've got it got to pay fines and and the first thing you've got to do is get up from where you are in half incognito and go turn yourself in and have enough trust in the federal government that they are going to treat you right that's the first thing we're going to do a lot of people are going to wonder about that and you're going to find out we're going to put plenty of resources into that we're going to go out and ask them to turn themselves in right that's one of the first actions in the first eighteen months or twenty four months those who have been hideouts because they're illegal aliens are going to be asked to come forth and not be that but they're going to get another kind of card so i i worked out at  with last time was not nearly as good as this bill i have not worked as long as as those who have worked the longest i've worked long enough to be sure that i've got something here i can tell my people it's much better than we've got now in fact it has a real chance of controlling the borders if once we've got it passed we won't throw up our ons and hands and abandon it if we will keep up with it and enforce it after we to it's done put the money into the equipment that's needed to do the kind of police work and identification and development of cards and the like identification cards if we do all those things when we've got this nation and we're going to have to do that in any event and we will have something we can be proud of and i will be glad to say that in fact years and this month i worked on and help pass and pass bill in spite of many people being against it in the media that we passed something good for the american people from a set of facts that were difficult from a law t hat we had to amend which had many many special interests it made it difficult to change i will be saying on and in that month and this month that they should hear we got it done i'll be very happy very proud meantime and for those who are working on the bill i have a lot of other things on other committees but i stand ready to be of help wherever i can during the week and you can put me down as one who is ready to help thank you very president senator from colorado as a president first i want to make a comment about the process that has been underway here on  sometimes think about what is the most important thing that we are given as united states senators but is a privilege that we get to exercise on behalf of the american people and representing our states will get to work on issues of enormous importance to civilization to the united states and to our respective states and in this country but one of the decisions that is made here by the majority leader is what kind of time is going to be allocated to what kinds of issues with this majority leader sen ator reid said now two months ago that he would set aside may that sometime in may for us to deal with the issue of immigration he did the right thing because what he did is he helped people speak to the fire to deal with this issue that some people would rather not deal with at all and yet he said that for us in the united states senate that the hundred members of this chamber would be spending a significant amount of time in may and now into june and dealing with this issue but the amount of time that we spent working on the issue of immigration really goes far beyond the current efforts that we have on this bill last year that we just sherri committee hearing that lasted for weeks prior to markup and then for almost a month here on this floor of the united states senate we labored hard day and night to come up with a comprehensive immigration reform package when all was said and done some thirty five votes were cast on that legislation and there were over sixty votes in the united states senate to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform that was a month of struggle of this chamber and trying to come up with a solution to deal with the very significant challenges that we face with immigration here in in this country and then the group that has been working with senator kennedy senator kyl senator specter and the presiding officer and others who spent so much time mr president trying to come up with  a comprehensive bill that would allow us to deal with this issue and move forward they worked very hard over the last several months so we've been on this legislation for a very long time we were on this legislation for all of last week there were thirteen amendments that  were made to the legislation during the week that we had on this legislation last week at this point there are fourteen pending amendments and we hope that that we will begin to vote on those amendments tomorrow morning and will continue through the rest of the day and through the rest of the week and it's my home mr president that at the end of the day we will have an immigration reform package that is adopted by the united states senate and will then move move forward  spresent i'd like to just make a comment on one of the attacks that has been made on this i just sation by many members around the country where they said that what we're trying to do is to get people at mysti with respect to th station is a far cry from a pardon this is a probationary status of people are being put it so i come from a law enforcement background i spent six years as attorney general i helped put thousands and thousands of people behind bars  prosecuted gangs in white collar crime and made sure that murders were serving their time in the prisons of my state you know it's part of what i did as a prosecutor as a as a member of law enforcement you know law enforcement we say if you know you do the crime you you've got to do the time you got to pay the fine but what is that we're asking people here to do we're asking them to do a tremendous amount work and and activity here to demonstrate that they are in fact entitled at some point on down the road to a green card first thing that you're asking people to do here under the new program that we're setting up is that they have to come out of the shadows into the sunlight of society and to register with the united states government that's not a requirement that we make of any citizen here the united states but it's a requirement we're going to make of the undocumented workers here in america that they have to register with the united states government and they have to do that and then go on to probationary period it's going to last for a very long time and at the time day is probably going to be somewhere the neighborhood of seventy five hundred eight thousand dollars per person at the time that they pay their penalty they have to face thousand dollars after they pay their penalty of a thousand dollars they have to pay fifteen hundred dollars to get their the card application and then three years later they have to pay another fifteen hundred dollars and then at the time after eighty years after eighty years of going through this perfect or where we require them during those eight years mr president to take english classes to make sure that they stay out of trouble with the law to make sure that they're gainfully employed if they survive that eight year period of purgatory at that point in time they have to pay an additional amount of money in order to get their green card so you add up all of that money that they have to pay and you're talking about somewhere the neighborhood of eight thousand dollars so mr president that is that amnesty that is people having to pay a very significant time and take on a very severe and significant number of affirmative action ultimately after after waiting for a period of eight years might qualify them to get a green card mr president for those who cry the word amnesty when we talk about immigration reform they are continuing to play into the hands of those who want to make this a political debate with no end they believe that if you label people who are for comprehensive immigration reform with the word amnesty that somehow it will never get done that's the do nothing crowd in fact that's what happened in the united states house of representatives last year when this body and the bipartisan vote democrats and republicans coming together passing conference of immigration reform the other body  house of representatives that decided they didn't want to take it up they don't want to take it up now because of the national security issues that are at stake now because of the economic security issues which must be dealt with in this legislation not because of the human and moral issues which are at the stake of the immigration reform debate they don't want to take it up in the house of representatives the majority there then the republican majority did not want to take it up in the house of representatives simply because of the fact that they thought it was their trump card to keep the majority in the november elections and so those who parade around this country with the shrill cry of amnesty are doing the american people a great disservice what they're doing is they're playing politics and having politics try and the national interests of america the national interest of america which we are trying to serve in this legislation to me are important fundamental simple but they are interests which we cannot escape as the leaders of this country they're first securing our country and we come here is members the united states senate because we want to protect america we all say we want to protect america well what's more than what more can we do that protect to protect america than to make sure that the borders of our country are in fact being secured and this legislation that we have now now on the body of the in the body united states senate will in fact secure our borders and those of us who come here the united states senate also say we need to do something to enforce our laws you know one of the values that we have is the people of america is that we say we are a nation of laws you know what makes us different today mr president than the circumstance that we see happening in places like iraq in places like lebanon and other places but makes a difference here in the united states of america is that we are a nation of laws we enforce our laws we pass laws here in this senate the house of representatives signed by the president and then we have an executive branch and forces the laws of america well they have been a forced very well in fact i think the last seven years we've seen the lowest number of important actions that have been taken against employers who have not who have who have  hired people who were not authorized to be here in this country so what we have set up in this legislation is a program that will in fact make sure that we are importing the logs of our nation and that that value of being a nation of laws is something that we can celebrate thirdly mr president the legislation before us as well deals with the reality of the twelve million undocumented workers who are here and we deal with the other issues that are part of the economic challenges that we face here in america you know twelve million people who are here working in the undocumented status are providing very valuable services to the american people you know for every american who was watching the debate on immigration they have to ask themselves who is it is cleaning up their yards where the landscapers of america today who is it that's working out in the meat packing plants making sure that you have the meat produce that ends up on your table for your or your for your evening dinner who is it that's working out in places and in resort areas making sure that you're not only are landscaping is being taken care of but that the needs of your household are being taken care of who is working in the er for the homes of america making sure that the children of america are being taken care of by people who are able to take care of the who who is out there in america today making sure that the nurses aides were working in homes of america taking care of our elderly in america that those people are there many of them are the undocumented the undocumented workers of america but mr president most of those people today live very much in the shadows of our society they live in the shadows of our society they often are subject to exploitation often when they come from whatever country they come from they are subject to the kind of exploitation that is very un american and what we're trying to do is to move in changing our immigration system from a system that doesn't work from a system that is a system of lawlessness and broken borders to a system that is a lawful and orderly program for immigration in our country and at the end of the day my hope is that as we debate the issues on amendments through the rest of the week that we in this chamber in the united states senate will move forward and will say that we are going to be full we are going to move with an immigration reform legislation that will address the issues of national security that will address the economic security issues here in our country and they will address the human and moral issues that are very much at stake  me just conclude before i yield to my colleague from arizona by reminding people about the moral issues which are very much at the heart of this debate they were last year when we opened up the debate here on immigration reform in the u s senate senator john mccain who has been an advocate for comprehensive immigration reform talked about the number of people who have died in the desert of his eight he said at the time that they'd been four hundred people who had died in two thousand and four and i believe six hundred people who died in two thousand and six and he said these are not just that this these are people who are found dead in the desert it's if i remember correctly he talked about a young mother who  dying to live and what he meant to say in that title and what he said in his article is that people who were coming here to live the american dream were actually dying in our deserts as they came here to live the american dream  president it seems to me that we can do as a united states senate working with the u s house of representatives and working with the president is to come up with a system of law and order that will give people that are understanding of how our immigration systems work that will make sure that our borders are secure that will make sure that we're importing our lots here in the united states of america and that will make sure that we and the immorality which has been very much a part of our system of lawlessness and chaos that we've had with immigration here in our country so as the days move forward mr president i'm hoping that our democratic and republican colleagues will help us move forward as we address  jersey wish to speak i'll just take a couple of minutes and then i do want to bake an irate way for this dinner center for thank you very much i'll just take a couple of minutes again to compliment the center from colorado has correctly pointed out that there are moral dimensions humanitarian dimensions justice dimensions fairness dimensions to this debate and the stories of the people dying in the desert of course are well known to arizona is because we're coming on the hot time of the year and that's when it begins to really hit home that there are people who because of desperation on their part seek to cross the desert which is difficult under the best of circumstances they're frequently all prepared t advantage of and they take their money and then send them on their way without adequately preparing them to cross in the stories are our heart breaking and there is a great deal of other crime the assault the sexual assaults and other kinds of crime that's perpetrated on  people has got to stop and the best way to stop it is to try to get the border secure find a legal way for people to come here and to help to realize their dreams the other comment that i just want to make briefly the senator from colorado touched on it and it is important i think for americans who have always been a nation of laws people say we're nation of immigrants we're also a nation of laws one thing that distinguishes us from a lot of other countries is that we have respect for law i always use the example of the intersection on the street when you have a green light and you drive through you don't even think about it you know that because other people respect the law you can drive through the intersection without worrying that someone else is going to run the red light and hit you it's very rare that that happens because we understand and respect law in our society and when we the law that's not inforced we begin to wonder whether or not we are a society of law and some people decide it's ok for them to begin to break the law in little ways and it's corrosive to society when you drive down the street you see people who you presumed to be illegal immigrants congregating around the hardware store looking for work in the morning or you hear the stories about the people who are being picked up and it is it's frankly hard to fool the american people they know that there are millions of illegal immigrants employed in our country today and they don't like it and they don't like the fact that we can't control the border and it is corrosive to respect for the rule of law in our society they say gee it's nice not to be able to pay your taxes maybe i'd like not to pay my taxes too you don't want american citizens beginning to think that the government doesn't care about enforcing the law and that they should begin to disrespect and therefore not abide by the law and yet that's exactly kind of attitude that crops up when the government is not careful about enforcing the law in a fair and just way unfortunately we have a lot of data that is not easy to enforce it requires employers cooperation in ways that make it very very difficult and one of the reasons why we need to work our hardest to pass a new bill is so that we have a law that can be enforced it will be up to us and to the administration whatever is in power to see to it that it isn't forced but at least it has to be something that we can work with and when those who say let's just let the situation attrit by enforcing the laws today and that's the answer to the problem my response is the law today is very very difficult to enforce and as a result we've got to change it and that's one of the reasons for adopting a new law getting back to respect for the rule of law and recognizing the humanitarian and aspects of this or to  this president the senator from new jersey this president i rise to respond to a couple of suggestions that have been proffered before the senate as it relates to those senators that have amendments to offer on the comprehensive immigration reform bill and i feel compelled to do so because i think the catarrh the way there  characterized ultimately to mean what should be a clear process of what is the greatest marketplace of ideas in the united states senate now the first item that i've heard several times here is the suggestion that certain amendments are killer amendments killer amendments that to me when one of our colleagues particularly those who have part of constructing the bargain suggest that a certain amendment is a killer amendment to me a killer amendment is one whose intentions whose purpose whose main goal is to kill the legislation before us because they don't like it and they don't want to see it pass maybe they're part of the universal believes we should just seek to deport everybody in the country twelve million people greatest deportation in the history of mankind maybe it is those who believe that we should spend two hundred fifty billion dollars in order to accomplish that but regardless of it there are a universe of and vigils who clearly don't like this bill or the the idea of comprehensive immigration reform and seek to have amendments that would in essence destroy the very essence of the legislation now i'm chagrined to hear my distinguished colleague from arizona and a listing of amendments suggest that my amendments on family reunification are killer amendments i didn't know that family reunification rose to the level of being a killer amendment because unlike some of our colleagues who last year opposed comprehensive immigration reform i was here advocating for and casting votes for including final passage of a comprehen immigration reform bill and yet some who comes to the floor now and suggest that certain amendments are killer amendments they weren't there last year for comprehensive immigration reform you see i do want to see comprehensive immigration reform i work for it last year and voted for last year's version and i spent countless hours in negotiations sessions this year to try to achieve a bill that i could support and it is still my fervent hope my fervent hope that we will pass a comprehensive bill one that is t but also small one that provides security at our borders north and south because it's amazing to me i win this and hotter debate we never hear about security at our northern border yet last year approximately fifty thousand bill came across the northern border because we're not worried about those people but we do focus a lot about the southern border we forget that the millennium bomber came through where the northern border must be something about that northern border that's ok southern border a little bit of a problem i don't know what it is but there are different people crossing those different types of borders but they're still crossing in an undocumented fashion so i'm for security at the northern and southern border and i'm also for one that understands in terms of the comprehensive nature of this bill the economic realities of our country that help fuel our economy and drive it forward and also to stop human trafficking human trafficking the use of people in slave for certain purposes and exploitation i want to know who is in america to pursue the american dream versus who is here to destroy that's real security that's real security now in the pursuit i heard a lot about the rule of law i'm for the rule of law but how does the rule of law get promoted when we say to a united states citizen who's applied for their family member waiting abroad waiting their time following rules obeying the rule of law that in fact they have an inferior right to someone who did not follow the rules who did not obey the law and who  receive a benefit superior to that united states citizen who is claiming their family member and waiting under the law and pursuing the law i think it sends the wrong message what the rule of law is all about our management very simply says that a united states that isn't claiming their family member waiting under the legal process waiting abroad that their rights should not be snuffed out like that under this bill on may of two thousand and five when those who have crossed the borders of our country through a process that is unchecked undocumented get a benefit january two thousand and seven break the law you get a benefit january two thousand and seven follow the ball the rule of law obey it your right is snuffed out on may of two thousand and five i think we want to send a message about the rule of law that what we want to do is ensure that we put on an equal footing footing the right of a united states citizen claiming their family member a bangle law to give them the same opportunity as those who have no you know i've heard a lot about family values here and in my fifteen years in the congress interesting to hear the voices of family values don't have the same values when it comes issue and clearly and clearly this vote will be a test of those who say they offer for strengthening families for bringing families together for understanding the very essence of how strong families make for strong communities of how we want to bring families together and family reunification is the call of the amendments that i am offering have offered before the senate and that i believe we will be voting on tomorrow family reunification now i believe it's a false choice false choice to suggest that this legislation cannot move forward and that in fact we will have a killer amendment simply because we want to give a universe of people who have the baby the law follow the rules but sons and daughters mothers and fathers children of united states citizens to have their chance over time to be able to come it seems to me that that's a false choice it's also a of false choice it seems to me under the new point system that is being devised for a future immigration that this new points system in which there's a hundred points maximum score well yes we need new workers who will be highly skilled i believe we can reconcile that need i'm hoping that we'll actually do a much better job of educating americans who will be able to be the engineers the scientists the research and developers the vote in the new technologies that will fuel america's prosperity but while we move towards making that a reality sure i'm for saying that ok we're going to subscribe a series of points for those people who have the skills but must it be largely at the exclusion of family reunification is there no significant value to the idea that when you have someone com that their family members are ultimately a significant part of the strength and vitality of our country of the success of those individuals on behalf of the country you know service members were not united states citizens or were not united states citizens different branches of the armed forces of the united states worthy of wearing the uniform of the united states worthy of fighting for the united states worthy of being injured and shedding blood on behalf of the united states not worthy not worthy of being able to claim their family members sponsored with her to have permanent residents be able to claim us permanent residence to claim their family members were easy to find were they to claim your family member seems to me isn't family worth ten or fifteen points on the hundred points system and not with a barrier that says well you get some points only if you reach a certain numerical number then the families work something no families we're something it seems me from the very beginning the very get go hundred points system ten to fifteen points that were ford's family i think it is worthy of serving state under this system that we are debating in the senate his parents would not have made it to america and he would not have served the country as well as he did we're talking about the future colin powells as we debate this legislation today general david petraeus right now leading our efforts in iraq difficult challenge under this legislation his parents would unlikely have made to this country and his service would not have been realized we're talking about the future of future gen under this bill a person who discovered the polio vaccine jonas salk and eradicated polio is parents would have made it to this country and we would not have been the beneficiaries of his genius wouldn't qualify without a high tech percentage and certainly we've gotten very little for family re and if you happen to be among those family members out being claimed by u s citizens before after i should say may first of two thousand and five he'd be out of luck his right to be here would have been gone and we would have lost one of the great bob hope he went across the globe making sure that our servicemen and women giving of their all for entertaining brought laughter to us but laughter to them in some of the most difficult theaters in the world under this bill likely we would have had bob hope as a national tr so it seems to me that when i listen to the suggestion that amendments on family reunification particularly upholding the right of the united states citizen to day who has filed for his family member has that right snuffed out out and yes someone who crossed the border and didn't wait their turn follow the rules of bega law has a better position that's not about rule of law not about rule of law the second set of propositions i want to talk about is the suggestion and i spent a lot of time with these senators and i appreciate enormously work that they did i really do i think there are many aspects of this bill that are very good certainly the security aspect is you know out there big time a lot of elements of the is certainly not something for nothing as a matter of fact under this bill if you happen to have a family of four in an undocumented status what time the process is finished cause you nearly twenty nine thirty thousand dollars you know you can commit i was looking at the federal criminal code you can commit crimes are not katic straffing you can commit crimes some possession of weapons you can commit a series of crimes that has as a maximum fine five thousand dollars this is a civil penalty and yet we're going to have people doing some of the hardest job in america their family for paying about twenty nine thousand dollars that's not an issue that's not but even though i respect the incredible work of those twelve senators who finally agreed to move forward with the bill that we are debating today is not one hundred not even a majority now no one has a monopoly on how to best provide for comprehensive immigration form proponents say this now that family reunification amendments are killer amendments or that any a set of amendments may be a killer memo but the end of the day when it doesn't go to the heart of security doesn't go to the heart of employment verification doesn't go to the heart of border patrol doesn't go to the heart of employment verification doesn't go to the heart of even a new system for the terminator who comes into the country under a new points system doesn't go to the heart of violating the rule of law but in my mind promotes the rule of law i find it difficult that anyone can say that those are killer memes and that they ma suggest it now in this context but i'm sure they'll be a future piece of legislation which they'll be arguing on the other side saying is that as well intentioned as twelve senators may be it is not in fact not even a majority of the s certainly isn't one hundred this is the united states senate it represents collectively three hundred million americans collectively that means that all of us come together on behalf of the nation's collective will and its collective purpose and it's polack collective common good now in that respect the bottom line is when you have don't go to the heart of security employment verification border patrol don't go to the heart of the ability to follow the rule of law but don't go to the heart of the very essence of  worker protections that don't go to the heart of employment verification that don't go to the heart of the undoing of balance in the earned legalization system my god we're talking about people  under the law waiting under the law to come to the country in a legal process so i have to take strong on bridge to the suggestion that there is somehow a monopoly on how to provide for comprehensive immigration reform and particularly when amendments that are being offered by some of us on family reunification would suggest are suggested to be killer amendments i want to see comprehensive immigration reform pass killer amendments offered by someone who wants to see it not pass and dedicate all this time and effort to trying to change one of the nation critical challenges in a way that can be tough can be strong can be smart can provide for our security can fuel our economy and at the same time and human trafficking exploitation and bring people out of the shadows into the light so we know who is here to pursue the american dream versus who is here to destroy and how he spent all that time trying to kill legislation i'm seeking to improve and i'm sticking to improvement and i hope our colleagues who travel across the country and talk about family values are going to join us tomorrow that amendment this institution is the greatest marketplace of ideas that's what the united states senate is about and it is in the clash of ideas that we hopefully come together and provide some of the best possible solutions to some of our greatest challenges i hope that the amendments that we are offering in that respect are not categorized as killer amendments but they are categorized as ideas within this marketplace to improve this legislation in a way that we can all be proud of mr president the senator from colorado mr president i want to commend my good friend and senator from new jersey bob menendez since he's been here in the united states senate he's brought a brings our own personal history and our own personal perspectives and to this debate on immigration the senator from new jersey brings a tremendous sense of practical experience and personal knowledge and a sense of how immigration has affected his family and his parents and his community in a way perhaps that is very very unique in this chamber and his contributions to the whole debate on immigration reform not only here in the u s senate this year but throughout his entire history in public service is something that we all very very much appreciate and we hope to be able to work with him as we move forward and try to get to go to a final  mr president center from colorado i ask that the quorum call be dispensed with without objection mr president we continue to make significant progress as we move forward to  amendments throughout the entire debate on the compress of immigration reform so last week we accomplished disposing of the thirteen significant amendments to the immigration reform legislation before us and the unanimous consent request that i will propound in just a second mr president will add an additional four amendments to this legislation so with that mr president i would ask unanimous consent that it be in order to consider in block the following amendments that they be considered and agreed to them block and that the motions to reconsider be the table and block cantwell amendment number eleven sixty seven alexander amendment number eleven sixty three cornyn amendment number twelve thirty eight and gra amendment number eleven sixty six as modified with the changes at the desk is there objection without objection mr president i would note that with the adoption of those four amendments when you add them with the thirteen amendments that were added to this legislation last year that we have now acted on seventeen amendments that have been proposed to the senate we have a number of other amendments that are pending and we encourage our colleagues to come forward with the other amendments that they may also have and mr president we are also ready to move forward and to schedule votes on additional amendments beginning tomorrow morning mr president i ask unanimous consent that on tuesday june fifth when the senate resumes consideration s thirteen forty eight the immigration legislation that the time until eleven fifty a m before debate with respect to the allard amendment number eleven eighty nine and the durban amendment number twelve thirty one with a time to run concurrently on both amendments and divided as follows ten minutes each the majority and republican managers or their designees and senators allard and durbin the no amendments  be an order to either amendment prior to the vote that the amendments be voted in the order listed here and that upon disposition of the durbin amendment the senate stand in recess until two fifteen p m in order to accommodate the rest respective party conference work periods that there be two minutes of debate equally divided prior to the second vote and the second vote to be ten minutes in duration with no further intervening action or debate if there objection without objection it will be so mr president  after the work period for memorial day a lot of work ahead of us in in this week ahead it is my hope that we'll be able to work together to get to a position where we will have a final vote here in the senate  country from different places you'll hear the stories which often tell us the richness of immigration which has made a made us a rich country we will sure i am i am sure we will hear the story of senator  and his parents and how his parents and his grandparents came to this country and as immigrants illegally at one point and became part of the american dream you'll hear lots of those dreams the be told here as we deal with the issue of immigration reform so for me the issue of immigration is an important one for a lot of different reasons today it is a very important issue for us because of the national security issue which is at stake a less we are able to fix our broken borders mr president i don't think that any of us can say that we are truly advancing the ball of nationals purity for our country and the presiding officer knows well as attorney general you and the members of the law enforcement community hold ourselves with pride to say that we are different than other countries around the world because we honor the fact that we are a nation of laws and we uphold the laws here in our country that's  integral to making us the great democracy that we have here in our country and so it is very important for us to move forward because we need to uphold those values that are so fundamental to our country the value of national security the value of  holding the nation of a nation that is a nation of law and those are fundamental values that we must that we must uphold for me mr president the issue of immigration reform also has some history in my own family of the southwest which is now northern mexico and southern colorado was either under the hands of the sovereignty of the spanish government through eight hundred twenty one and under the sovereignty of mexico from eight hundred twenty one until eight hundred forty eight so for two hundred  fifty years my family who farmed in radstowe on the banks of the rio grande river in northern new mexico and then ultimately in the southern part of colorado were very much a fabric of that landscape of the southwest very much a fabric of those first non native american settlers who came in and who found the great american dream to dream here in the united states in later years and eight hundred forty eight the treaty between the united states  mexico was signed in which mexico ceded the northern part of its territory to the united states of america and at that time those generation of the came before me and my family were given a choice a choice to become american citizens under article ten of the treaty one of the battle or in the alternative they could move several hundred miles to the south to what had been a new border that had been created now several hundred miles along the rio grande river about four hundred generation the well made the decision that they would stay that they would stay because they knew that that land was their land that those communities where their communities that the landscapes were their landscapes and that they would make it their home and so for the generations in southern colorado and northern new mexico since eight hundred forty eight until today they've continued to contribute greatly to the american dream in many many different ways in my own case many members of my family who served in the united states military and contributed greatly to to the american dream my own mother and father came here to washington in the early years of world war two my mother worked in the war department at the age of nineteen coming from a village in northern new mexico and spending five years working in the war department as part of that greatest generation that gave back so much to america to give us the kind of greatness that we have had for the last sixty plus years here in the united states with my mother's brother two years older than my mother gave his life in the soils of europe defending this country's efforts in world war two as the united states of america saved this world from the hands of the nazis and the hands of the fascists that would have turned civilization back to a place that none of us would ever want it to go back and so today is we  stand here on the floor of the u s senate debating what we should do with the immigration laws of this country it's important to remember that this country has indeed come a long way that we are in fact in american progress that the american progress that we have seen for the centuries and for the generations is one that we must build upon and for us here in the united states senate to simply accept what some would suggest and that is that we do nothing with this issue of immigration is in my view a dishonor to our country and to the responsibilities that we have it's an abdication of duty for those of us who have taken the oath of office to uphold the laws  of the united states in the time constitution of our country to make this country greater than it is today for us to simply say that this issue of immigration is too tough for us to deal with that all we have to do is somehow ignore it there are figure out ways of sidestepping it and go out and working with other issues i so much admire senator harry reid because he has said to the nation that he would hold the feet of the of the united states senate to the fire  as we would deal with the issue of immigration may not be a comfortable issue for most people to deal with it's a contentious issue the phones and e mails i'm sure every that is state senator both democrat and republican have been ringing outlook for the last this as we've dealt with this issue but the courage of senator reid has said we will move forward with this issue and we are dealing with the issue with the courage of other senators senators both democrats and republicans we've said th progress as i said now i think there are twenty one amendments that have been made to the legislation there will be others that we'll make as the week goes on but at the end of the day in my view mr president america's greatness really depends upon chambers like this chamber here that holds that case the the democracy of our country i think on those issues which are difficult and getting us to a point of conclusion to deal  with these issues that are so fundamental to the twenty first century of america and when we deal with this issue what we will have done is we had we hope we will have found solutions to the issue of a broken border that has been broken for a very long time and we have fact that we deal with this issue we will deal with the reality of the economic demands of the united states of america and how we treat people with the kind of humanity and morality that we would expect about theirs it is true that when one looks back at the immigration history of this country but there have been chapters of that immigration history which have been very difficult and very painful for those involved for one thing forty two until the one nine hundred sixty four there was a chapter in our immigration law called the  national mexican immigration program more or less at a program in which people were brought in to this country because there was a need for labor here in the ited states of america and we had many of our men and women in uniform serving in faraway place of those the lives of my family were serving in that particular time but because that was a need for labor in our factories and then our farms people were brought here into this country under a program but it was a program that did not have work protection and the consequence of that program in those days of immigration in our country is that there were many many people who suffered and who lived in a tremendous amount of pain because they did not have the protection of the laws of the united states of america today and the legislation that we have brought forward we have included the worker protections a look sure the these people are protected at the same time the legislation that we brought forward recognizes the importance of the american worker because even under the temporary guest worker program which is a controversial issue being debated here on this floor but we have said in that legislation in that part of the legislation is that a job has to be advertise first to the american worker that if an american anywhere is willing and ready to take that job it will not be available to somebody who would come in under the temporary guest worker program so the economic issues the national security issues the human and moral issues which are at stake at this debate mr president are some of the most important issues that we face here in america and i'm thankful that the colleagues working together here in the united states senate  of this week will be able to come to a successful conclusion with respect to immigration reform legislation mr president at this point i would ask unanimous consent that there now be a period of morning objection mr president i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today its standard journey until ten a m tuesday june fifth that on tuesday following the prayer and pledge the journal of proceedings  approved to date the morning hour be deemed expired and the time for the two leaders reserved for their use later in the day that there then be a period of morning business for sixty minutes with senators permitted to speak there and for up to ten minutes each with the first half controlled by the republicans and the remaining half under the control of the majority that at the close of morning business the senate resumed consideration of s thirteen forty eight immigration legislation as provided under a previous order without objection mr president if there is no further business to day i now ask that the senate stand to gerard under the and that government for the first day back from the memorial day recess lawmakers went back to work on immigration legislation