Thread: Sessions Regarding the Dream Act

Breif from yestreday's Congressinal Record.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is now proceeding under a previous order in a period of morning business, with Senators being recognized for up to 10 minutes.

The Senator from Alabama is recognized.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair.


Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would just say that we have a limited amount of time in this body--and we all know that--before the end of the fiscal year will be coming up on September 30. We have to pass some sort of appropriation to fund our defense and our military by that date. We need to pass the Defense authorization bill, which has been voted out of the Armed Services Committee. Senator Levin, our Democratic chairman, has moved that bill forward, and it had strong bipartisan support. It is on the floor today, and it provides quite a number of valuable and critically important benefits for our defense on which we need to vote. For example, it increases the number of persons in the Army, the end-strength of the Army, by 13,000, and 9,000 for the Marine Corps. We have a lot of people talking about the stress on the military, so we need to authorize the growth of the military. It is something we know we need to do, and I think we have a general agreement on that. It is in this bill. We need to move this bill. It authorizes numerous pay bonuses and benefits for our warfighters and their family members. It allows a reservist to draw retirement before age 60 if they volunteer under certain circumstances for active mobilizations. It directs studies on mental health and well-being for soldiers and marines. It establishes a Family Readiness Council. It authorizes funding for the MRAPs, which are those vehicles which are so much more effective against even the most powerful bombs and IED-type attacks.

So this bill, this authorization bill, is not an unimportant matter. Our soldiers are out there now in harm's way, where we sent them, executing the policies we asked them to execute, and we need to support them by doing our job. We complain that Iraq can't pass this bill or that bill; we need to pass our own bill.

Not only do we need to get this authorization bill passed, but we have to get on next week to the appropriations bill to actually fund the military because if we do not do so, the funding stops. Under American law, if Congress does not appropriate funds, nobody can spend funds. It is just that simple.

[Page: S11646] GPO's PDF We have to do our job, and I hope we will. I am troubled to see a lot of things beginning to occur that indicate there is an agenda afoot here, at least by some, that would make it difficult, if not impossible, for us to get this work done.

For example, the first amendment brought up on the Defense bill--not a part of the committee bill but on the floor here--is to provide to enemy terrorists habeas corpus rights they have never been provided by any nation in history during a time of war and certainly not our own Nation. It is frustrating for me to hear people say we want to restore habeas rights to captive enemy combatants. If we did it, we should at least perhaps give priority to lawful enemy combatants. Most of these are unlawful enemy combatants who have not in any way followed the rules of war and therefore are not provided, in normal circumstances, the full protections of the Geneva Convention. So I am worried about that.

The President has said if that amendment passes, he will veto the bill. So what will we have done then? Are people in here going to have a good feeling about that--they made the President veto the bill--that we provide unprecedented rights to captives who are setting about to attack and kill Americans? We are releasing people from Guantanamo and have released quite a number of them. Quite a number of them have been recaptured on the battlefield trying to kill our sons and our daughters who are out there because this Congress sent them out there. So I think we need to get our heads straight.

Now, in addition to that, we have Senator Durbin offering the DREAM Act amendment, an immigration bill, to this bill.

Senator Kennedy says he intends to offer hate crimes legislation. These are controversial pieces of legislation, unrelated, really, to the Defense Department. They ought not be passed. They have been rejected before. Certainly the DREAM Act was.

Let me talk about this DREAM Act. It is something Senator Durbin points out that I have objected to before. I have objected to it before when it came up in the Judiciary Committee, not in the Armed Services Committee.

The Durbin amendment, as filed as of the end of July, would do a number of things. It will, indeed, provide amnesty, the full panoply of rights we give to any citizen who comes here lawfully. It provides a full citizenship track and full rights for quite a number of illegal aliens, putting them on a direct path to citizenship. A conservative estimate done by the Migration Policy Institute suggests that at least 1.3 million will be eligible for amnesty. It will also allow current illegal aliens, those who would be provided amnesty under this bill, and future illegal aliens who come here after this day, illegally--hopefully, I thought we decided when the comprehensive bill was voted down, the American people were saying let's end illegal immigration--it would provide for them to be eligible for in-State tuition at public universities, even when the university denies in-State tuition to U.S. citizens and legally present aliens.

It would reverse 1996 law that quite rationally said let's not reward people who are here illegally by giving them a discounted rate of tuition. How much more simple is it than that?

It would provide Federal financial aid in the form of student loans and work/study programs, subsidized by Federal money. It is unclear, it appears, whether Pell grants, direct Federal grants, are going to be provided to people in our country illegally, with which to go to college, whereas hard-working Americans, many of them, don't qualify for Pell grants--and we need to expand Pell grants. Why would we then be providing them to persons who would come into our country illegally?

They say they may have come when they were younger. Maybe they did. But if you have a limited number of persons to whom you can provide Pell grants or subsidized loans, I suggest they should be given to those who are lawfully here, not those who are unlawfully here.

There is an old slogan: If you are in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging. I suggest if you have a problem with people coming into the country illegally, the first thing you should do is stop subsidizing that illegal behavior by giving them discounted tuition.

The DREAM Act establishes a seamless process to take illegal aliens directly from illegal status to conditional permanent resident status, then to legal permanent resident status, and then the next step, of course, is citizenship. First, illegal aliens who came here before age 16 and have been here illegally for the past 5 years will be given ``conditional'' permanent residence, or green cards, if they have been admitted to an institution of higher education or have a GED, or have a high school diploma. The ``conditional'' green card, which is good for 6 years, will be converted to a full green card. A green card means you have a legal permanent residence status in America. In this case it would be a direct result of an illegal entry into the United States, or an illegal overstay. It will be converted to a full green card if the alien completes 2 years of a bachelor's degree or serves 2 years in the uniformed services. This is broader than the term ``military service,'' as people have said. ``Uniformed services,'' as defined by title 10, includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps and the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, in addition to the military. Or they would qualify if they can't do those because of hardship.

After 5 years of ``conditional,'' or full green card permanent status, the aliens amnestied under the DREAM Act will be eligible for citizenship.

We are also expanding, through this amendment, if it is to be adopted, immigration into the country based on an illegal action in a number of ways. There is nothing in the DREAM Act that limits the ability of the illegal aliens who are being provided permanent status and citizenship here to bring in their family members. Once an illegal alien becomes a legal resident under the act, they can immigrate their spouses and their children. As soon as the illegal alien becomes a citizen, he or she will be able to bring in, to immigrate their parents to the country as a matter of right. So there is no numerical limit to the number of parents a citizen can immigrate into the United States. I think that is one of the flaws in our current law.

The reason that is important is because we are generous in immigration. We allow a million or more a year to come legally into our country. We do provide quite a number of generous provisions that allow people to come. But if you are allowing those limited number of slots--in effect, we have only so many that the country does allow and would desire to allow to come--we are providing parents of those who have been illegal to be able to come as a guaranteed right, whereas another who may have a master's degree, may have a high skill, may have learned English in Honduras and is valedictorian of their school or college--they can't get in. But they have an automatic right for a parent, who may have done far less in the scheme of things to justify taking one of those limited slots the country has to offer. That is why I am concerned about that.

We don't think about it in correct terms. We have to understand we cannot accept everybody in the world. We should create a generous system of immigration that allows people to come to America, but we ought to set up a legal system that we are proud of and that sets good standards, that allows a person to have the greatest opportunity to be successful here, to have more precedence in entry--which is exactly what Canada does, and Canada is quite proud of it.

In 1996, Congress passed this law:


Not withstanding any other provision of law, an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State ..... for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration and scope) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.


The DREAM Act eliminates this provision that has been offered on the Defense bill. It would reverse this current Federal law. The result is that States will be able to offer in-State tuition to illegal aliens.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair advises the Senator from Alabama he has consumed his 10 minutes.

[Page: S11647] GPO's PDF Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair and ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will conclude by saying there are a host of reasons why we need not, ought not pass the DREAM Act itself. But that is a matter of debate that we have had several different times now. What we need to be doing now is providing support for the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and guardsmen we sent in harm's way by passing the Defense authorization bill and the Defense appropriations bill. We don't need to be talking about the DREAM Act. We don't need to be talking about hate crimes. We don't need to be offering the first amendment out of the chute, an amendment that provides habeas benefits to unlawful combatants, legal rights that have never been given by the United States in the history of the Republic, nor any other nation in the history of the world.

We need to get serious and get some work done here that is important and not be distracted with amendments that are going to be politically controversial and can only make it more difficult for us to do our duty as a Congress.

I yield the floor.

It would reverse 1996 law that quite rationally said let's not reward people who are here illegally by giving them a discounted rate of tuition. How much more simple is it than that?

You gotta love Senator Sessions. He strips away the Dem fancy-boy bleeding heart emotional baggage and pares it down to simplicity.

God love this man. Everytime I read or hear his comments, he renews my commitment.

Mr. President, I will conclude by saying there are a host of reasons why we need not, ought not pass the DREAM Act itself. But that is a matter of debate that we have had several different times now. What we need to be doing now is providing support for the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and guardsmen we sent in harm's way by passing the Defense authorization bill and the Defense appropriations bill. We don't need to be talking about the DREAM Act. We don't need to be talking about hate crimes. We don't need to be offering the first amendment out of the chute, an amendment that provides habeas benefits to unlawful combatants, legal rights that have never been given by the United States in the history of the Republic, nor any other nation in the history of the world.

We need to get serious and get some work done here that is important and not be distracted with amendments that are going to be politically controversial and can only make it more difficult for us to do our duty as a Congress.

I yield the floor.

Beautifully said. He just told Durbin and Kennedy (and the bleeding heart lib-idiots in the Senate) to shut up and butt out with their non-relevant amnesty and hate crimes legislative crap. Get down to business and support and fund the troops!

These illegals are currently getting out of state tuitiion in many colleges when by law they should be international students which would make them temporarily legal. Out of state tuition is less, does not require proof of ability to pay both school and living expenses while getting a degree and not require health insurance. An inernational student needs to be accepted by a college here, leave the country and get a student visa to return and that requires proof of ability to pay and mandatory health insurance. Immigration rules must be followed as the school is required to report any students who quit or disappear. The international student laws are aggressively enforced by the colleges and universities as they would loose the ability to have international students.

It's a sad day in America when this government fights like hell to represent citizens of foreign nations at the risk of denying our soldiers what they need at a time of war.

I agree with tinybobidaho there is no reason in H E double tooth picks that funding for our troops should have any amendment in it, attached to it, or brought up with it in the first place...
I don’t know when they started the other proposes stuff but its bull, they need to pass the funding and leave the other crap out..

I wish Sessions was running for the Presidency. We need to clone him and distribute him throughout the entire government.

Sessions is a really good politician, and that is hard to say!!! How many of us have ben able to say that about any politicians lately?

I hope and pray that this will be taken out, I cannot see how they even allowed it to be put into this bill in the first place, it has nothing to do with military funding.

If our troops only knew what these rotten traitor senators were doing here at home! These senators are just plain evil!