Broader Options for Americans Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, the Senate is probably interested in the status of the debate on immigration. This debate started in September in hallways, committee rooms, and in our offices--opportunities for us to talk about these issues now for months.

Several weeks ago, there was a government shutdown demanding that we actually have a vote on immigration right now or that we don't reopen the government. After 3 days of government shutdown, the government was reopened, demanding that we move the immigration debate earlier to make sure we would get this done earlier. Now it is Wednesday of the week that it was supposed to occur, and the proposals are not out on the table. It has been a frustrating journey.

I can't even begin to count the number of hours I have spent in bipartisan conversations trying to circle around a simple set of issues. How do we resolve a small group of issues related to immigration?

I thought this was resolved in some ways. Back in early January, there was a large bipartisan meeting with the House and Senate to discuss what was widely televised as the scope for immigration and the key issues we were going to address. It came down to four issues, and there was agreement among the leaders, among those in the room, that these are the only four issues we are going to deal with: DACA and those DACA-eligible and how we move them toward citizenship, border security and all the things around border security, diversity visa lottery, and family reunification. All of those have been dealt with in legislation before--in fact, for decades, in one version or another-- except for the issue of DACA. That one is new. That is the only one that hasn't been done with legislation before. The others all have.

The Gang of 8 bill in 2013 had border security and all kinds of different issues related to both construction of walls, technology, and legal loopholes. It had diversity lottery. It had chain migration in it. If you want to go back to an immigration study during the Clinton administration, in 1995, there was a proposal put out by Barbara Jordan, the Democratic House Member from Texas, who led that particular study during the Clinton administration dealing with chain migration, dealing with how we transition to merit-based immigration.

This has been dealt with literally in hearings for decades, but what I have heard for the past several months is that there is no time to do any of those things. The only time that we have is to deal with DACA. We can't even discuss anything else. Meeting after meeting after meeting since early November, I have heard the same thing: There is no time. There is no time. There is no time.

Now we are getting down to the day, and there is still a conversation about how we deal with these four simple issues that we have talked about for months, that the House and Senate have debated for decades, and on which we have had an untold number of hearings for decades to try to actually land them, to get legislation ready, and to get this resolved.

Let me just focus on a few things, because a few of us have put out a proposal that covers those four areas that was a middle-ground proposal. It is certainly not everything that I would like to have in border security, and it is certainly not everything that Democrats would like to have, but it is a middle ground between all of those. It is one the White House has already announced that they will certainly sign. It has 1.8 million people moving into naturalization, or citizenship. These are the individuals whose parents brought them illegally, but they were children at the time. Those individuals came into the country. They have now lived here for years. They know no other country, on the whole. Those individuals are offered an opportunity to become citizens of the United States 10 years from now.

Why 10 years from now? That gives a time period of 10 years, which is commonly agreed that it will take to be able to secure the border. In that 10-year time period, the border security could be put in place to make sure we have a secure border. It is not an unreasonable thing. In that same 10-year time period, about 2 million people are going to move, actually, into citizenship.

How does that affect the rest of our process? Well, let me tell you first how it affects it. Right now we have a 20-year backlog to be able to come into the United States legally--20 years to be able to come through that process. Once we add another 2 million people in that process and all the family that will be connected to them, in all likelihood, that backlog moves from 20 years to 25 years. It is ridiculous at 20 years, and it is even worse at 25.

We all know that this issue of family migration and the broad allowance of people coming in, not based on what skills they have but based on being someone's brother-in-law, is not the best way to do immigration, and we are the only country that does it like this. Seventy percent of the people who come into our country legally come through a family connection--being someone's brother, being someone's sister, being a relative in some way that they are able to come into the country.

Canada, just to our north, is exactly the opposite. Sixty-three percent of the people who come into Canada legally through their immigration system come because they are bringing a work skill. Now, I don't want to oppose anyone coming from anywhere in the world. There is a uniqueness to the United States and how we handle immigration, and we allow people from all over the world, from every country, to come. That should remain the same, but we should have one simple requirement: They come to bring something to the Nation. I don't think that is too hard of a hill to climb.

It is not a matter of who you are related to. You certainly should be able to bring in your spouse and your children, but brothers and sisters and other adults and such that would be in your family, maybe, should come based on their own merit, as well, for them to be able to come and be a part of our great culture, as well, or they are able to come visit and come stay long periods of time but not necessarily come for citizenship, unless you are coming to bring them. Again, that doesn't seem too difficult.

The diversity lottery hasn't been the challenging issue. Quite frankly, that has been an issue that was in the 2013 Gang of 8 bill, saying: Why do we have 50,000 visas for individuals from anywhere, from around the world, who can come who don't necessarily bring a skill at all? Why don't we just add a skill requirement or an educational requirement? We could say that you are welcome to come from anywhere, but at least we should know that those who are coming from anywhere and everywhere bring something to the American economy. Again, that hasn't been controversial nor partisan in the past, and now, suddenly, it has become that.

The border security part of it has been the most confusing part of the debate for me on this thing. Months ago, some of my Democratic colleagues over and over said: The wall will do nothing. There is no benefit in the wall. If you put up a 20-foot wall, there will be a 21- foot ladder. It will do absolutely nothing.

Now, the conversation is this: Well, we will give citizenship to DACA, and we will give you some money to build a wall, and we will call it even. That has never been the request, and everyone knows it.

The request has been border security, not just a wall. I am very aware that the President has talked about a big beautiful wall a lot. I get that. But it has always been about border security, not just about putting up a wall in certain places. There has never been an emphasis to build 2,000 miles of wall. There isn't a need for a wall in certain urban areas, but what is really needed is border security and everyone knows it. I don't understand why border security has suddenly become a controversial issue.

What we have asked for and what we have laid out in a proposal seems to be a very middle-ground proposal. It doesn't do interior enforcement. Quite frankly, our Democratic colleagues have said: Absolutely no additional interior enforcement--we are open to border security, but nothing that secures the interior of the country.

So we have said: OK, that will be a future bill dealing with interior enforcement, but we do feel like border security is very important.

So they have said: OK, we will give you some money to build a wall in sections.

Can I say what they are trying to exclude? Border security, when you lay it out, is also the legal loopholes. So here are just a few of the things that we have laid out, which I don't think should be that controversial, that we have included in our language and said: If we are going to do border security, let's be serious about it. For instance, we have asked for additional penalties for people who do human smuggling. Right now, it is a slap on the wrist if you do human smuggling into the country. So coyotes and others are able to do human smuggling into the country in transit.

There are also people who are individuals in our country watching out for Border Patrol agents, radioing other people saying: Hey, Border Patrol is here. Go a different direction. They are actually helping to divert people away. We think we should increase the penalties. Our Democratic colleagues have pushed back and said no on that. It doesn't seem unreasonable to increase the penalties for human smuggling and the same for drug smuggling. To increase the penalties for those who are spying out and redirecting people who are doing drug smuggling doesn't seem too hard to be able to accomplish.

We would like to allow an individual State and their National Guard to be able to participate with Border Patrol. Now the National Guard is not law enforcement. What does the National Guard bring, though? They bring helicopters that have infrared technology. They are able to fly over sections of the border to be able to see the area below and to help direct Border Patrol to it. To participate with the National Guard and allow them to bring some of those resources those States already have shouldn't be that difficult. That is just a part of border security, but our Democratic colleagues are pushing back on that.

We would like to do an initiative to be able to work with Mexico and provide Mexico some additional funding and support and consultation on their border between Guatemala and Mexico, the southern border of Mexico--what is literally kind of our first border. It is their southern border. We have been pushed back, though, to say that is not border security. It is slowing down people illegally trafficking through Central America into Mexico. We think that is part of it.

How about this one? All along the Rio Grande in Texas, there is Carrizo cane that are there--this large cane that grows in the river in that area. In that area, you are able to hide people, drugs--whatever it may be--in this tall cane because you just disappear in it. It is on both sides of the border. We think we should do an eradication of that cane so that you can actually see through it. It hasn't been controversial in the past, but suddenly it is controversial: No, we don't want to eradicate the cane.

That cane is only there because it is hiding people and contraband. We think we should be able to do that.

We think we should be able to add an electromagnetic spectrum at our border ports of entry so you can look through a vehicle, looking for chemical parts of the spectrum and to be able to see if we can eradicate drugs that are being trafficked into our country. I don't think that should be that controversial.

There is getting secure communications so that our individuals and the Border Patrol can talk to each other and can interact with other law enforcement to make sure no one from a transnational criminal organization is listening in.

We should have license plate readers at the port of entry to be able to help track that and speed it up.

Doing biometrics at the entry and exit is something that has been required since the 9/11 Commission. So we can accelerate that process that as people come in and out of our country we know when they come in legally, but we also know when they depart legally.

There is dealing with what is sometimes called catch and release. Individuals who come into the country and cross illegally into the country are held in detention for a short period of time until they get due process, and every individual gets due process. This is not trying to remove due process from anyone. But as they cross into the country illegally, we are able to pick them up, detain them, and make sure they have due process. Some of them make claims for asylum or make claims of credible fear or other things. Instead of doing a hearing on that, we actually give them a piece of paper that is called a notice to appear and release them into the country and say: We will see you in about 2 years for your hearing date--instead of actually doing the hearing right then. Nothing has changed. No facts have changed. No information has changed. Nothing has changed during that time of delay. We just release them because we don't have enough judges or enough courts or enough attorneys or enough advocates to be able to accomplish that. So they are released for years in the country. You may be surprised to know that most of the individuals never show up for that hearing. They are just released into the country.

There is also a statement saying: Well, what about unaccompanied minors? Again, you might be interested to know that three-fourths of the unaccompanied minors who cross into the country are actually 14 years old or up. These are not 6-year-olds who are crossing in and 5- year-olds who are crossing in. Most of them are older teenagers. Two- thirds of the people who are coming in as unaccompanied minors are actually teenage boys, and most of them come in to be able to work. So the question is this: How do we handle that?

I think we do fair detention. I think we go through the due process and make a decision right then. Again, you will be interested to know that for individuals who actually do show up for their court hearing, which is a small group, about 30 percent of those who go to the court hearing do get asylum once they finally get to the court hearing. But we are not getting to the court hearing for most of those individuals. That shouldn't be that controversial. We should be able to handle how we go through that process in an equitable and fair way.

I would like us to be able to deal with the cost, quite frankly, of detention. We have asked for a simple part of this process on border security, to honor the taxpayer, to say that we will not spend more than $500 a night on housing individuals whom we have in detention. Now, I think most Americans--certainly most Oklahomans--would like to stay in a hotel that costs $500 a night. Putting a cap on how much we spend on that per person per night, I think, is a reasonable thing to be able to put into it, but we have had pushback.

We have asked for emergency immigration judges. Right now there are almost 700,000 people in a backlog in our immigration courts--almost 700,000. We don't think it is unreasonable to ask for emergency judges to come in to help us with the backlog. We are not talking about untrained judges. We are talking about judges who are in the Federal system who are knowledgeable of these issues and to do a surge of judges to help us get caught up.

We should be able to do all of these things. None of these issues should be controversial. This is what it means when you start talking about real border security, not just adding a wall in some places, not just adding a couple of additional agents but actually putting the things around them that they need to actually be able to enforce the law.

I think people lose track of the fact that ICE folks and Customs and Border Patrol are not enemies of our State. They are American law enforcement. They work for our country to keep us safe and to enforce the laws of our Nation. I am appalled at the way they are spoken of on this floor and treated in conversations. They are American law enforcement enforcing American laws. If there is a problem with what they are enforcing, this body should vote on it and fix the law, not beat up on the people who are enforcing the law and doing what we have asked them to do as a Congress.

I hope in the days ahead we can actually get this passed. I hope we can actually move toward citizenship for 1.8 million people, which the President has asked for, and I think it is a reasonable thing to be able to do for those individuals who came into our country as children. But I also hope that this time we don't say that we are going to do citizenship and not do border security. I hope we don't just throw some money and pretend we are doing it. I hope we, as a body, can have a serious conversation and say: Let's actually do border security and help us as a nation to establish a secure border. I hope we actually deal with some of the biggest issues on immigration and can walk through this debate in a reasonable way without the emotion and heat, but thinking this through because this affects the future of our country for a very long time.

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