Border Security

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, first, I thank Senator Cornyn for his remarks, particularly the points he made about the ruling of the Parliamentarian. I come to the floor to address the same issue.

We received last night guidance from the Senate Parliamentarians regarding the unprecedented attempt to include wide-ranging immigration provisions in the upcoming reconciliation bill.

Now, for the public at large, when they hear the word ``reconciliation,'' it is a process by which you don't have to have 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to get to finality on a bill. But reconciliation is something that has been used only twice, I believe, in the last 5 years. So it is not something that you just willy-nilly go to to get a lot of things done that you couldn't otherwise get done. But this looks like what the Democrat majority is trying to do in the reconciliation bill with the issue of immigration, and so I am thankful for the decision made by the Parliamentarian.

That guidance by the Parliamentarian indicated that a proposal to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants is not appropriate for inclusion in a budget reconciliation bill.

As ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, my office was deeply involved in the bipartisan discussions that took place with the Parliamentarian on this issue. I will say that I agree with the Parliamentarian's guidance. I think it reflects an obvious truth-- changing the law to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants is a major policy change with significant impact that reaches far beyond the Federal budget and not appropriate for reconciliation.

More broadly, reform of our immigration laws is an important public policy issue. It is a topic that many Americans and many Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle care deeply about. It is an issue that inspires fierce debate, sharp disagreements, and great passion in people on both sides of the argument. It does so because, at its core, the issue of immigration is about the policies that we put in place to give people from all around the world one of the most meaningful and precious gifts that we can give--the right to legally establish your life here and, in many cases, pursue American citizenship. And whether you pursue citizenship or not, you have the right to the American dream.

And you can see how important that coming to the United States is by just the hundreds of thousands of people so far this year breaking our laws to come into this country. It shows you how exceptional our great America is and the economic and the political and the social system we have that is so endeared to people all over the world that they want to come here, even breaking our laws to get here.

And, of course, whether it is citizenship or the American dream, that is not something that can be boiled down to a Congressional Budget Office score. It is not something that can be reduced to a line item in the Federal budget. I think everyone here in Congress and Americans around the country already knew that.

That is what made this most recent attempt to abuse the reconciliation process by the Democratic leadership even more obvious.

As ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I look forward to continue working with my colleagues on measures to secure the border and improve our immigration system, but those measures need to be pursued in a way that complies with the rules of the Senate, not the subterfuge of what we call reconciliation.

The recent proposal put forward by Democrats in the Senate clearly was not, and I hope we can engage in a more productive legislative process moving forward on the subject of immigration.

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