This is lengthy, but well worth the read, I think.

Senate Floor Statement of Senator Sessions
IMMIGRATION REFORM


Monday, June 25, 2007



Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank my able colleague from Missouri. He is one of our most valuable and able members in the Senate. I value his thoughts on that and share his thoughts, actually.

I want to move off of that and some of the comments that Senator Dorgan had about working Americans and what they are facing today.

I remember addressing this point last year in the debate on immigration. I think it was at night when not many people were on the floor. Senator Kennedy was here. I raised the question of what was happening to wages of working Americans as a result of large-scale immigration, and quoted professors and experts who had demonstrated that where those areas--where immigration reached its highest levels, wages had gone down for workers; they hadn't gone up.

Now we are told that businesses cannot get workers, and we are told we are at full employment, but apparently something is awry if wages are not going up in many areas.

I want to mention to you what we have with regard to the immigration bill that is coming before us. We will have cloture vote on it in the morning. This is what I want to say to my colleagues. The legislation promises that it will bring legality to the system. They say we have an illegal system and we have got a comprehensive plan to fix it.

What does our own Congressional Budget Office say? They just did an analysis of it. The Congressional Budget Office looked at the legislation that is proposed. They made an opinion about how much it would cost the U.S. Treasury. It was about $30 billion over the next 10 years; not for the cost of enforcement, just the cost of additional social and welfare benefits provided to those who are here illegally, who will be made legal.

They made that analysis, and they also made one more analysis that is so stunning and so remarkable that I remain baffled that my colleagues have not picked up on it. What the Congressional Budget Office, our own budget office--a budget office that answers to the House, answers to the Senate, answers to the majority leader, Harry Reid, answers to the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi--the Congressional Budget Office concluded that net illegal immigration, after the passage of this bill, would only be reduced 13 percent.

Now what kind of reform is that, I ask my colleagues? I submit to you this is not a reform. A fix that is supposed to bring legality to a system that only reduces illegality by 13 percent. Last year we arrested 1 million people entering our country illegally. These are huge numbers. I would have thought we would want to see an 80 or 90 percent reduction of illegality at our border. This is a bill that by our own evaluation does not bode well.

There is another factor that many of my colleagues probably do not know, have never understood. My staff has worked very hard to account for the actual flow of legal immigration into the country. In the next 20 years, this country, if this bill is passed, will see a doubling of the legal permanent residents in America. That is the number of people who are given a green card. That is the next step to citizenship. Anybody with legal permanent residence can move on to citizenship. It will double the number of legal permanent residents, which is what we call green card holders.

So we are not going to have any reduction in illegality, and we are going to have a major increase--a doubling of legal immigration. I am worried about that. We have been talking here about this debate about card check and unions. What it is about is wages and fairness for American workers, is it not?

Mr. Tonelson testified at one of our hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. This was a hearing I requested and asked for. We were able to get him, and he testified about areas in construction, in meat packing, in restaurant work, where there was high level of immigration from 2000 to 2005. Wages went down. You bring into this country more wheat, the price of wheat will go down. You bring into our country more cotton, the price will go down. Bring in more iron ore, the price of iron ore will go down. You bring in more labor, the price of American labor will go down. That is a fact.

I support a legitimate guest worker program. I believe we do have certain needs in certain industries and situations such as Hurricane Katrina where the need was so dramatic on the gulf coast. I know there are needs for some guest workers, temporary workers. I am prepared to help write legislation which would meet that need. I believe in immigration into America in general. I am not asking that we slash the amount of legal immigration into the country. But I doubt most Americans, when they hear about the great group I affectionately call the "masters of the universe'' who met in secret and wrote this bill, had any understanding that their promise of comprehensive reform of the illegal immigration system we have today--and that is a fair way to describe it--they had no idea this bill would only reduce illegal immigration by 13 percent. I don't believe they had any idea it would double the numbers who were coming in legally.

That brings me to my point. The longer this legislation has been out for review, the less the public has liked it. I can see why. If you remember, Senator Reid first called the bill up. He actually called up the old bill that the House wouldn't even look at last year. He let it sit for about a week and then plopped down, on a Tuesday, an entirely new bill, over 700 legislative pages, and wanted us to vote on it by Friday of that week. Why? That is what they attempted to do. We pushed back and said: No, this is a big issue;

[Page: S8338] GPO's PDF
we can't vote on Friday; we are not going to vote this week. We fought that, and they backed off. We had a week's break and came back. We got back on the bill and proceeded with it and had some amendment votes and were moving along, and then Senator Reid pulled the bill off the floor on a Thursday night. So we thought maybe that was the end of it.

But after working on it, they decided to bring it back up. It is going to be brought back tomorrow. The bill is filed. Cloture was filed. We now find ourselves prepared to vote tomorrow on whether to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed, go to this bill, and actually discuss it on the floor. We know there are probably 51 Senators who have committed to vote for final passage of the bill. I think they have made a mistake. Some probably didn't understand it fully. I am sure some are uneasy about that commitment. But more than 50, I am confident, are committed to voting for the legislation. Some really think anything is better than the current system. Maybe this is better, they say. They are prepared to vote for it. So by going to the bill, we are setting ourselves on a pathway that leads to final passage of legislation I believe is not worthy of the U.S. Senate.

More than that, I urge my colleagues to think about this. We have been told--and if I am mistaken, I ask the majority leader to tell me I am wrong--that an unprecedented procedure will be utilized to eliminate as much time of debate as possible and to completely control the amendment process to this legislation in a way that has never been done before in the history of the Senate. It has never been done this way. The majority leader is going to fill the tree. He is going to file a second-degree amendment. That amendment will be divisible into a number of different amendments so he can say which amendments will be voted on and which will not, and other amendments will not be allowed to be voted on. It is complete control of the process. They will say: We adopted some of your amendments, you complainers. We have some of your amendments in that group.

This process has been prepared with the care and precision of the Normandy invasion. This has been prepared meticulously for weeks, how they are going to move this bill through and how they are going to control the amendments. The amendments that will be allowed, I am confident, will be amendments they are confident they have the votes to defeat or amendments they don't care if passed. But they will not allow amendments to go to the core of this agreement by those masters of the universe who put it together, anything that would actually threaten this legislation's agreement they put together.

Some have been told: Don't worry, Senator, vote for cloture tomorrow, and we will let your amendment be voted on. If your amendment is selected, it is likely that they have the votes to vote it down or the crowd that put this bill together doesn't object if it passes. But anything that really goes at this mechanism, this special agreement they have put together in secret without committee hearings of any kind, will not be allowed to be voted on. That is a big mistake.

I say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I have been in the Senate 10 years, most of which Republicans had the majority. This procedure was never used against the Democrats when Republicans were in the majority. This is the first time it has been used in the Senate. What if it is used against Senators in the future on both sides of the aisle? The great free debate this Senate is so proud of would be eroded.

So for two reasons I urge my colleagues tomorrow to vote against cloture. First, we need to have this bill pulled down. We need to go back and review what it is that has caused the American people to reject it so overwhelmingly. We need to find out why the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that it will reduce illegal immigration by only 13 percent. My goodness. We need to ask ourselves, do we really want to double on top of that the legal immigration into America?

What are we afraid of? Why is there this obsession to move this flawed piece of legislation through, utilizing the unprecedented procedural gambit to do so? I ask why?

Three weeks before we had the final vote and Senator Reid pulled it down, after the debate continued a couple of weeks ago, a Rasmussen poll showed support for the bill in the high 20s. Then fell to 23 percent, and the last poll showed only 20 percent of Americans supported this bill. Only 20 percent of the American people said we should pass this bill. A decent respect for the opinions of the people who elect us, I suggest--if nothing else, maybe for our own self-interest--would call on us to say: What is it that people are worried about? Why don't we pull this bill and see if we can't make a decent piece of legislation that we could be proud of and move it forward? What possible reason is there to be obsessed with just ramming it through this Senate? I am amazed. It takes my breath away. There is every kind of reason to suggest that we should pull the bill down and work on it.

I will conclude with these thoughts. Let's don't go forward tomorrow. Let Members of the Senate say to those who are promoting the legislation--one former law officer called them mandarins; I jokingly called them the masters of the universe--this legislation will not work. They are good people. They think they were doing good. But the product they produced won't work, and the American people don't like it. I say vote against cloture tomorrow because a vote for cloture is a vote ultimately to move this bill passage.

No. 2, I say vote against cloture tomorrow because unless the majority leader declares otherwise, we will have to assume that what we have been hearing is correct, and he will use an unprecedented procedure--a procedure dubbed "the clay pigeon''--to completely control the amendment process and to bring this bill up for final vote with amendments only he has approved in a minimal amount of time that can be expended on such legislation. Any legislation this big deserves time. Any legislation this big or with this many flaws deserves a lot of work.

I urge my colleagues, in light of these factors and others they may personally care about--and there are many more problems--to reject cloture tomorrow. It would be a clear message to the leadership that is trying to move this legislation that we are not going to have it. We want better legislation, if you want us to pass it.

I yield the floor.




______________________________________________




Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

IMMIGRATION

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I want to share some thoughts about immigration and the situation in which we currently find ourselves and offer a bit perspective, I think fairly, on where we are.

We are the world's most free nation and are having one of the strongest periods of economic growth--maybe our strongest ever. Billions of people all over the world, however, are in poverty and live in countries that are corrupt and backward. One expert has said that all would live a better life if they came to the United States. I think that is a true fact.

We are indeed a nation of immigrants, and that heritage has caused us to continue one of the most generous legal immigration systems of any nation in the world. I submit, however, that immigration policy is an issue of national sovereignty, as Canada, Mexico, Spain, Japan, England--all nations understand and respect. This is an acknowledged fact. I chaired the Mexican-American Senate Interparliamentary Group for 2 years. We talked about those things. Everybody understands setting immigration policy is your nation's prerogative.

It is amazing to me that our majority leader--in this case, our Democratic leader--will use the power of first recognition to call up an immigration bill again, just two weeks after the American people have basically rejected it. In fact, the polling numbers show that support for the Senate bill is dropping further and further. He then will use, I understand, an unprecedented, never-before-used procedure that would block amendments. This is the so-called clay pigeon procedure others have described. He will file a first degree amendment, and then file a second degree to it to fill the tree, so no other second-degree or unapproved amendments will be allowed votes. He will divide his own second degree into 20 or so amendments and then work every procedural trick in the book to ensure that the underlying bill and its 20 hand picked amendments move the legislation through this Senate as fast as possible. The mandarins who are managing this piece of legislation want it out of here. They don't want any more calls from their constituents. They don't want any more talk show people explaining some of the things that are in it. They want it off their plate. Good policy? Well, they say, that is for another day. We just want the bill out of here.

Well, the opposition to this bill is gaining momentum. Thoughtful Senators who wanted to vote for something are analyzing the fine print of the bill and realizing that the "vision'' bill supporters describe is not supported by the text. Senators are announcing that they will be voting no. Senators who participated in the debates and wanted to vote for something and hoped to be able to vote for this bill after examining it in more detail are indicating that they are going to vote against it.

It is quite clear that the same special interest forces who produced the 1986 bill are the ones who worked behind the scenes to produce this one. It was produced in secret meetings of politicians without any public hearings. It did not go through a single committee markup. But you can be sure the activist open border immigration forces, and the business interests, were having their voices heard in these meetings. Does anybody doubt that? What about the American public? Were they in the room? Were their opinions sought after? What about experts in law enforcement, were their opinions sought after? I suggest not.

The mandarins, in their faux wisdom, treated this as a political problem that could be solved by compromise. We have to pass something, they said. That was the mantra. So in the end it seems that passing something means passing anything, regardless of whether, in the end, it will work to end illegality or establish good policies that will serve our long-term national interest.

This Senator will never support a bill that will fail as spectacularly as the 1986 legislation failed. I have to tell my colleagues, my best judgment, and we looked at this hard, is that this one will fail. Even the Congressional Budget Office, our investigative analysis arm, in its June 4--just a few weeks ago--cost estimate, says that illegality after the passage of this bill would be reduced a mere 13 percent. Mr. President, 8.7 million illegal aliens would be expected over the 20-year period instead of 10 million under current law. That is what their estimate is.

So our masters--and I say that affectionately; I call them masters of the universe. These are good friends and good Senators. They have tried to do something. They got it in their head that if they just all met and they just put out the realpolitik and they worked out the political deals and split the babies and all this, they could do a bill that served America's interests. I watched with interest. I thought some of the things they said they wanted to accomplish were good improvements over last year's bill. But I have to tell you, I don't believe it worked. I don't believe they got there.

They don't want to pay attention to those of us who question what they have done, you see. They believe they are wonderful and bright and thoughtful and love America and are compassionate. The rest of us, they say you see, we are nativists. They say we just oppose immigration--despite the fact that we don't oppose immigration. They say we don't like immigrants. They say we don't have courage. How many times have I heard that? You have to have courage to vote for this turkey, I guess. That is supposed to be something that would be good. But sometimes I think hanging in here and opposing the machinery of this process takes a little gumption on the part of those of us who oppose it.

They say we do not believe in immigration or we lack compassion. I want to reject those charges flatout. They are false. I believe in immigration. I believe in a guest worker program. But I want a guest worker program that will work, will not be an avenue of expanded illegality, as the CBO said this one will.

In fact, because of the guest worker program, the Congressional Budget Office has said visa overstays, those people who come in legally but do not go home when they are supposed to, will increase under this bill, not decrease.

I thought we were supposed to be fixing illegality not enhancing illegality. So I wish to say to my colleagues, first, it is indisputable that the passage of this bill will not create a lawful system of immigration. This bill does not live up to their promises. Our good friends the masters came out of their secret meeting, and they announced they had fixed immigration; they announced that they had a comprehensive plan that is going to fix immigration, and that we are finally going to end this illegality.

But their own Congressional Budget Office that responds to them, that responds to the Democratic leaders, Senator Reid or Speaker Pelosi, it is pretty much a nonpartisan group, but they are under the control of the Congress. This group under the control of the Congress says it will not work, says visa overstays will increase and the net impact on illegal immigration only be to reduce illegal immigration by 13 percent.

Now, I consider that one event so significant, so earth shaking, that I cannot see how the Majority Leader could still take up this legislation and jam it down the throat of this Senate through an unprecedented procedure to pass it, especially when the American people do not like it either.

So it will not create a lawful system. We can be sure of that. We felt that when we analyzed it. My chief counsel, Cindy Hayden, and others looked at it, we found loophole after loophole. I made a speech of about 20 loopholes that were in the legislation. There were many more than the specific 20 I talked about. But we knew it was not going to be an effective law enforcement bill. It was not going to secure the border. So what does the CBO say? They agreed with our analysis.

Secondly, what else is fundamentally in here? The legislation fails to move to a merit-based system and, in fact, triples low-skilled and chain migration over the next 8 years. The promise was made that the bill would move us to a system more like Canada has, which makes so much sense; a system that Canada is very proud of. They believe it serves the Canadian interest.

They still have the same number of refugees and humanitarian immigrants that they always did, but they have--with regard to the rest of their immigration policy--reached a point where 60 percent of the people who enter into Canada have to come through a point system. If you are admitted and come in, you can bring your wife and children, but to do that, you basically have to first demonstrate that you can contribute to Canada.

One of the things they gave you points for, in an objective evaluation, is education. We know that if an immigrant has had any college courses, they do much better economically. They ask if you speak English or French. You get extra points if you do that.

You even get extra points if you are younger. You get extra points if you have skills Canada needs. They even give you points if you move to areas of Canada that are underpopulated and have a particular job shortage.

That is the way the deal works. They promised we would have that in this legislation. That was part of the announcement. But when you read the fine print, you see that was eroded away in the political compromise. The bill's merit based system will not have any substantial effect until 8 years after this date. So I don't know what will happen in 8 years. You never know. But we would like to see this kind of thing in the bill.

I congratulate the people who produced it, that they began to discuss it because last year it was not even discussed. I talked about it on the floor repeatedly. I asked how we could debate comprehensive immigration reform and nobody even ask what they are doing in Canada. So they put the Canadian system in here. But it is so weak that it is a great disappointment.

Well, I indicated that illegal immigration would only drop 13 percent. What about the proposal for legal immigration on the legislation? Well, it is going to go up 100 percent. Legal immigration will double in the next 20 years.

Now we have looked at the numbers. I think this is indisputable. We will have twice as many people getting legal permanent residence over the next 20 years as we would under current law. I am not sure when the average citizen listened to our colleagues and they announced on that big day, the grand bargain, that we were talking about a proposal that would hardly limit legal immigration at all and would double legal immigration, I don't think that is what they had in mind when comprehensive reform was discussed.

What about cost? The Congressional Budget Office dealt with that issue. They have to score legislation. Well, what does the cost factor say? Under the CBO analysis, the cost to the taxpayers of the United States--now I wanted to make this clear, this is not for border enforcement, Border Patrol acts, barriers or anything such as that--this is costs that will be incurred by the recipients of amnesty, who will be given amnesty under this bill, because all of a sudden they will be entitled to welfare, Medicare, and other types of tax credits and other types of benefits.

They concluded this legislation will add to the taxpayers of America an additional $25 billion in cost over the next 10 years. They have admitted, without any hesitation, those costs will greatly increase in the outyears, because the way this thing is staggered, people's benefits do not come immediately. But as the years go by, they are entitled to more welfare and social benefits.

So they have admitted we are going to have an increase significantly in the future because, in fact, the persons who are here illegally, for the most part, have little education. Approximately half, maybe even more, do not have a high school diploma at all, and their skill levels are low.

We have statics and scientific data on that. I am not disparaging anyone. I respect anyone who works hard and wants to come to America and work hard. I respect that. But I can say with certainty these are basically low-wage workers that are going to be legalized.

My fifth point is, that the way the bill is written, it will reduce the wages of working Americans. We bring in more cotton in this country, the price of cotton goes down. You bring in more iron ore, the price of iron ore goes down. If you reduce the amount of oil coming into the country, the price of oil goes up. You bring in more laborers, the price of labor goes down.

I would submit that if one of the charges I have made out of these five is true, this legislation should be pulled from the floor; it should not become law. But I am going to take a few moments now to demonstrate, I believe with hard evidence, all of these charges are true. The legislation, in effect, will not end the unlawfulness of our current system and will shift the balance against American workers and create another amnesty that will encourage even more illegals in the future.

The effect will be to continue the erosion of confidence by the American people in Congress, and in the Government overall, which is at an all time low, virtually. I am not sure since I have been in the Senate, we have such a large number of people who believe this country is on the wrong track.

I have to believe, and experts have told me, that their distrust and dissatisfaction over immigration

is a big part of the way, the cause of this cynicism. Let me take some points here, one by one.

Will this grand bargain we are presented with create an honest, legal, fair system for the future? The answer is no. That was our conclusion after we studied the bill. But let's look at what others might say. I mentioned the CBO study. They said specifically that the bill would limit the amount of illegal flow across our border by 25 percent but would increase illegal visa overstays significantly.

The net result was only a 13-percent reduction in illegals, from 10 million illegals projected to come into our country under current law over the next 10 years, to 8.7 illegals coming in over the next 10 years. That is a 13-percent reduction only. That is not good enough. We should be at the 80, 90 percent of increased lawfulness. Aren't we trying to create a system of law?

I was a Federal prosecutor for 15 years, 12 years as U.S. attorney. This is not acceptable. People come to America because they believe we are a Nation of laws; their rights will be protected. I happened to be at a birthday party reception for a friend of mine. A lady from England there came up to me and she said: I hope you stand up for this. She had a distinct British accent. She said: I thought you ought to play right by the law and people shouldn't come in illegally. I tried to do the right thing.

Well, what about others? What do they say? What experts are out there who know something about immigration? What do they think of this bill? What about Border Patrol officers, people who carry out their daily responsibilities to enforce the border, who have lived with this illegality for so long? They are real experts. I assure you they were not in the meeting with the masters of the universe when they crafted this legislation.

They know what is happening. A group of them, a prominent group of retired Border Patrol officers held a press conference at the National Press Club on June 4. Their purpose was to express their opinion about the legislation. I have to tell you, their opinions are not a pretty sight. I am going to quote from them and show you what they said; not what this Senator said but what they said.

Hugh Brien, the former Chief of the Border Patrol from 1986 to 1989, after the 1986 failed bill became law--He was appointed by former President George H.W. Bush. He is himself an immigrant to America. He came here as a young man. This is what he had to say about the bill. It is, he said:

A complete betrayal of the Nation.

Is that harsh? It was his job. That is what he said about it. He went on to say:

It is a slap in the face.

To the millions who came here legally, such as the lady I met today, such as a lady from India who was written up in the Montgomery Advertiser, I believe, yesterday, who talked about having to hire a lawyer and filing all of the paperwork and taking several years, but she was proud to be here legally, and she did not appreciate people coming illegally, or such as the lady I met at a funeral not long ago who had come into this country after a number of years who said: I hope you make the law enforced for everybody equally; I did it right.

Now don't tell me that when you ignore law there are no consequences. In a real sense, as my experience as a prosecutor says, when you don't enforce the law, you make chumps of the guys who do it right, and when you provide benefits to those who cheat, it is not a good thing for a Nation who respects its legal system.

What else did Mr. Hugh Brien, former head of the Border Patrol say? He said:

It is a sell-out.

He went on to note that in 1986, when this same debate was occurring and he was about to take office as the head of the immigration system, and these are the words he used--it is not funny, he said: Our masters, our mandarins, promised us their bill would work.

These are tough words, but these are people who are entitled to express them. They are not my words.

Powerful politicians who are unaware of the reality of what it takes to actually create a legal enforcement system without experience in these matters have arrogantly cut a political deal and they have cut one, unfortunately, that doesn't work. I guess that is not too far from the definition of a mandarin.

Mr. Hugh Brien added these final important words:

Based on my experience, it's a disaster.

He has the experience to say so. He was charged with enforcing the 1986 immigration law which proved to be a disaster and he did, as chief of the Border Patrol from 1986 to 1989.

What about the national chairman of the Association of Former Border Patrol Agents, Kent Lundgren. This is what he had to say. He had some harsh words, too. With regard to the promise that the system will do 24-hour background checks, he said, after studying the bill, there are "no meaningful criminal or terrorist checks'' in the bill. That is a bad thing. We have been told this bill will make us safer. He says there are no meaningful criminal or terrorist checks in the bill. He knows how the system works and how this 24-hour check will occur. He is scoring the screening procedure set forth in the bill saying "the screening will not happen, period.'' He added:

"There's no way records can be done in 24 hours.''

As to the promise that this bill will work, he concluded--these are not my words; he is presently the associational head of the former Border Patrol Officers, the national president: "Congress is lying about it.''

On a separate issue, the provision that allows gang members, even members of the very violent international MS-13 gang, to become lawful permanent residents if they check a box to renounce their gang membership, he said, "What planet are they from,'' talking about us. Why would our colleagues write a bill that allowed for this?

These are real views, harsh views of a man who led the border patrol association and had a press conference a few weeks ago to express deep concern.

Another one at the press conference was Jim Dorsey, a former Border Patrol agent, who served 30 years. He served as inspector general with the Department of Justice. He was promoted up from the Border Patrol, which is a part of the Department of Justice, to the Department of Justice, and was given responsibility to investigate serious allegations of corruption. That is quite a responsible position to be chosen for that as investigator. He had these things to say: "The 24-hour check is a recipe for disaster.''

As to the overall legislation, Mr. Dorsey said at the National Press Club: "I call it the al-Qaida dream bill.''

Roger Brandemuehl, chief of the Border Patrol from 1980 to 1986 under President Reagan--this is another chief of the Border Patrol for 6 years under President Reagan--he said: "We have fallen into a quagmire.'' He added: "The so-called comprehensive reform is neither comprehensive nor reform. It's flawed.''

What about the current Border Patrol Association, the Border Patrol union? It is not just the retired patrol officers who oppose the bill; the current ones do as well. In May, the National Border Patrol Council, affiliated with the AFL-CIO, sent out a press release titled "Senate Immigration Reform Compromise is a Raw Deal for America.'' These are the people who are out doing it every day. The press release stated:

Every person who has ever risked their life securing our boarders is extremely disheartened to see some of our elected representatives once again waving the white flag on issues of illegal immigration and border security. Rewarding criminal behavior has never induced anyone to abide by the law, and there's no reason to believe that the outcome will be any different in this case.

I spent the better part of my professional career as a prosecutor. If you make it clear that you are not going to enforce laws, people assume the laws won't be enforced. In fact, when law enforcement officers don't enforce the law, they de facto wipe out legislative actions and eviscerate policy. You have to enforce the laws.

He goes on to say:

Passage of time has proven the 1986 amnesty to be a mistake of colossal proportions. Instead of wiping the slate clean, it spurred a dramatic increase in illegal immigration.

He goes on:

Rather than the meaningless triggers of the additional personnel and barriers outlined in the compromise, Americans must insist that border security be measured in absolute terms.

That is a strong, crystal-clear condemnation of this act by the officers whose lives are on the line this very moment on our border trying to enforce our laws. Are we going to listen to them? Or are we going to listen to our mandarins, our masters meeting in secret, who plopped a bill down here, 700 pages long, that they say will make the system work? I wish it would. I even had hopes this spring, and I said so publicly. I was hoping they might make real progress. But I am afraid we haven't. Talk to the experts. Talk to CBO.

This is a another very significant, but discrete issue that I believe we should think about, and it is a weakness I had not fully comprehended until I read a piece in the Washington Times by Michael Cutler on June 21. He also participated in a press conference, a different one than the Border Patrol one, at the National Press Club on June 19. The event focused on the grave threat to national security the immigration bill represents. Mr. Cutler authored an op-ed in the

Washington Times last Friday entitled "Immigration Bill Is a No Go'' that focused on security issues raised by the bill. People are going to be invited to come in who are here illegally, give their name and so forth, and within 24 hours they will be receiving a legal status in the country, a probationary visa. It will soon be converted into this Z visa that people will have, but immediately within 24 hours, they will be provided that, unless something shows up of a serious nature in their background. But as these experts have told us, it is not possible to do a very effective check in 24 hours, as you can imagine. Even though you can do a computer run, it still has great weaknesses in it. So he focuses on this whole issue and says this:

If a person lies about his or her identity and has never been fingerprinted anywhere in our country, what will enable the bureaucrats at the USCIS--that is the agency that will be handing out the immigration benefits--to know the person's true identity? If the adjudicators simply run a fictitious identity through a computerized database, they will simply find the name has no connection to any criminal or terrorist watch lists.

I am quoting him now.

What is the true value? Remember, we are talking about a false name.

Let me continue quoting:

There is absolutely no way this program would have even a shred of integrity and the identity documents that would be given these millions of illegal aliens would enable every one of them to receive a driver's license, Social Security card, and other such official identity documents in a false name.

Undoubtedly, terrorists would be among those applying to participate in this ill-conceived program. They would then be able to open bank accounts and obtain credit cards in that same false name. Finally, these cards would enable these aliens to board airliners and trains even if their true names appear on all of the various terrorist watch lists and "no fly'' lists. That is why I have come to refer to this legislation as the "Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act of 2007.''

There has been a lot of talk in this Senate about Mexico's consulates throughout the United States issuing matricula cards and that these matricula cards are given based on documents that nobody knows for sure how good they are. Therefore, the cards they have are not really guaranteed to be a valid identity, but they are being utilized around the country as legitimate identification. What Mr. Cutler says is the identification documents we will be giving out under this bill will not be any better than matricula card.