Salazar blames defeat on 'poison,' Allard calls bill amnesty
By Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News
June 28, 2007

U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar expressed disappointment this morning at the demise of the immigration reform bill, blaming "poison stemming from some members of the Senate" and predicting continuing crisis for the country's "broken" immigration system.

"I think we can expect chaos, confusion, porous borders, victimization and tremendous economic insecurity among farmers and ranchers and others who want us to fix the system," said Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, during a telephone news conference after the vote.

Colorado's other U.S. senator, Republican Wayne Allard, issued a statement calling the bill as proposed "amnesty in its simplest form," and said the American people "demand and deserve better."

Allard voted with the majority against a motion in the Senate that would have ended debate and cleared the way for final passage of the bill, helping shelve the bill indefinitely.

With the bill's collapse, Allard called for a greater focus on border security.

"Porous borders and lax enforcement present major security risks to our country," Allard said. "Instead of enacting so-called 'comprehensive immigration reform,' we need to find common sense solutions to the labor concerns we face in the agriculture industry and start doing what we all know needs to be done: secure the border and enforce our existing laws."

But Salazar argued that scrapping the President Bush-backed immigration bill was a blow to the country's security.

"Today we have a system of chaos and disorder, and those that killed the legislation, for whatever motivation they had, I think have compromised the national security of the United States," he said.


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