Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act Of 2007

Floor Speech

COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - May 25, 2007)

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we have been on this immigration bill now, by some accounts, for 5 days. I will note that we started with a vote on cloture on the motion to proceed at, I believe, 5:30 Monday afternoon. We had Tuesday on the bill, we had Wednesday on the bill, we had Thursday on the bill; here we are on Friday.

My understanding is that the agreement between the parties is that I will be only allowed to offer one additional amendment, in addition to the one currently pending. I understand that limitation, but I want to make clear that I think it sends a bad signal in terms of where this bill is headed in the long run because, all along, while I applaud the majority leader and the minority leader for their willingness to give us an additional week on this bill after the recess, I am worried that because of the slow progress we are making on these amendments, particularly on getting an opportunity to vote on amendments--for example, the one I laid down early on this week--we are going to find ourselves in for a train wreck the week after the recess, when the amendments that have been filed will need to be considered. I am afraid there will be an effort to try to prevent important amendments from being considered.

Let me give you a little context for my concerns. As we all know, this bill was negotiated largely behind closed doors by a bipartisan group of Senators. I have to say that, in many respects, the product we have before us is better than the bill that passed last year, although I could not support it in the end because I have amendments I think are needed to improve it. To give you some context about the need for a robust debate and the freedom to offer amendments and to consider various points of view other than those reflected behind those closed doors, I went back to look at the Judiciary Committee last year, which considered the original McCain-Kennedy bill. There were 62 amendments filed in the Judiciary Committee. The present occupant of the chair knows, as a member of that Committee, it is a very hard-working Committee that considers a lot of important and contentious issues. That committee was bypassed through the process by which this bill has come to the floor this year.

Just an observation. Last year, there were 62 amendments filed in the Judiciary Committee alone that went through a process that was not observed this year. So far, by my current count, there have been 107 amendments filed to the present bill. We have had seven--count them--rollcall votes on amendments so far this week. I don't see any way, short of an attempt to try to cut off debate and to cut off the offering of amendments the week we return, we are going to be able to get through 107 filed amendments.

I think it is important, for a variety of reasons, that we continue to have a robust debate and the freedom to offer amendments because, for the reasons I mentioned a moment ago, this product was largely negotiated behind closed doors by a bipartisan group of Senators. Most of the Members of the Senate have not had a chance to study this bill in great detail, until the final legislative text was prepared by legislative counsel a couple of days ago.

This is an enormously complex issue. The bill has a lot of different moving parts. We bypassed the committee process. My hope is--and this is my plea to our leadership--that we continue to see the kind of expansive opportunities that have been provided so far, with 2 weeks set aside for the debate and to have an opportunity to offer amendments and to have votes on those amendments.

I will point out that on the last bill, which ended up being the Hagel-Martinez compromise, there were 30 rollcall votes, according to my notes. We have had seven so far on this bill, and here we find ourselves on Friday and we have one more week scheduled by the majority leader. I am very concerned that we will not be able to get due consideration of all of the various points of view, and an opportunity to freely offer amendments and get rollcall votes on those amendments that I believe are very important. It is even more important, if it is possible, in this particular legislation.

As my colleague from Colorado knows, he and I were both present during many of the negotiations that have led up to this bill, even though ultimately he agreed to the product, but I could not. That this is an enormously emotional and contentious issue. I bet Senators have gotten more phone calls, e-mails, and correspondence about this issue than virtually anything else that has come before the Senate. It is extraordinarily important to the democratic process and the legislative process to allow people to present their points of view.

We are here as 100 people representing 300 million people. We need to make sure that not only the opinions and points of view of the elites and people who can hire high-priced lobbyists are considered; we need to make sure the views of the American people are considered, given an opportunity for airing and, ultimately, we all respect the process by which these matters are put to votes, and then we respect the right of the majority to make the decision and we move forward.

Anything that would even hint of cutting off the opportunity for the American people to have a full airing of their views, and limiting it to a handful of amendments that have been advocated by lobbyists and other people representing the elites in Washington, DC, I think would be a terrible mistake.

Mr. President, I want to advise my colleague from Colorado of this. There has been a previous agreement that we would be allowed to offer two amendments, and that other amendments would not be allowed to be pending.

At this time, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and send amendment No. 1238 to the desk, and ask for its immediate consideration.

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Mr. CORNYN. Reclaiming my right to the floor, that is my understanding. I wish to make clear that he has objected, and I wish to make clear that I was not a party to any agreement that would limit us to the number of amendments we would offer today, but I respect that. I offer the amendment to make this point: There are at least 107 amendments that remain to be brought forward and considered. Here we are on Friday completing the first
week of what has been set aside as 2 weeks for the consideration of perhaps the most important domestic issue confronting our country today. There will be no votes today. Colleagues are returning either home or off on various travels around the world, and we are here with the most important domestic issue confronting our country today and really not proceeding at a pace that would give us any realistic expectation of getting this matter completed in the way I think this matter needs to be treated.

I understand and I respect the Senator from Colorado making an objection to my offering further amendments, but we all can see what is going on here, and I think it portends some very disconcerting things when we are not proceeding at a pace we need to in order to actually get the business of the American people taken care of on this important issue.

I expect if I offer other amendments that there likewise will be an objection, so I will not at this time make further offerings of amendments, but I do have in my hand further amendments--amendment No. 1208, which is an amendment I would offer if possible. I also have another amendment, amendment No. 1247, which deals with State impact assistance fees.

One of the reasons people are so upset about the Federal Government's complete failure to deal with border security and enforce our immigration laws is that most of the consequences fall on local taxpayers. In my State of Texas, the Federal Government has issued a mandate that says no matter who shows up in your schools, your communities, or in your hospitals, you have to treat them, you have to provide services to them, but the Federal Government doesn't pay for it. The Federal Government needs to pay for these unfunded mandates, and this State impact assistance fee amendment will provide that kind of relief to local taxpayers.

I understand where we are, and I respect there has been this agreement between the leaders, and I understand the Senator needs to object, but I reiterate, we need to get moving. We need to have more amendments offered. We need to have more votes and less time off without votes, as we are obviously having today.

I will now return to the amendment that I offered this morning and that was allowed. Let me return now to my amendment No. 1250 and explain what this amendment does provide. My hope is that we can, when we return on Monday--actually, I guess it will be Tuesday, June 5--that we will have an opportunity for an early vote on this amendment as well as the pending amendment I have that will prevent rewarding those who have abused our laws and who have really thumbed their nose at our legal system, who have been ordered deported and who have simply gone on the lam, melted into the American landscape and defied the lawful orders of our courts. These are people who have been ordered deported, have actually been deported, but then they returned to the United States in violation of our immigration laws, both of which constitute felonies. It is my hope that I can get a vote on that amendment, which has been pending now for several days, soon after we return.

It is my understanding our colleagues are working on some side-by-side agreement to provide some cover for those who don't vote for my amendment, but I think we will have to evaluate that when we see it. I regret the fact that we have not been able to get votes on our amendments because of objections primarily on the other side.

There is a major flaw in this legislation, and that flaw is that it will, unless corrected, repeat a fundamental mistake that was made by Congress when Congress last passed massive legalization of undocumented immigrants in 1986. The American people do not expect too much of us, but they do expect that we will not repeat past mistakes.

I remember the definition of ``insanity'' once offered was that you do the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. That is the definition of ``insanity.'' This would be a terrible mistake if we pass this legislation without correcting a major flaw in the 1986 amnesty bill that was passed by Congress, after having learned from experience what the consequences of that flaw are.

Under this bill, anyone in the United States in violation of our immigration laws can come forward and apply for legal status with impunity. Quite simply, the Department of Homeland Security is prohibited from using internally all of the information from the Z applications as well as sharing information with relevant law enforcement authorities. For example, if an applicant comes forward and is denied legalization because of some disqualifying feature, this legislation, as currently written without my amendment, will prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the immigration enforcement authorities, from using the information from that application to apprehend that person.

What we learned from the 1986 amnesty was what the New York Times said--that it created the largest immigration fraud in the history of the United States. That is the mistake my amendment will attempt to correct. As we know

from the general counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under President Clinton, the statutory restrictions on sharing information and providing confidentiality of the applications of those who apply for amnesty contributed enormously to that fraud.

The population that will benefit from this legislation should be treated with no more confidentiality than any other classes of immigrants. We don't afford this robust confidentiality protection to other immigrant classes, such as asylees or battered women or those applying for temporary protected status, so I ask: Why the double standard?

When an asylum seeker applies for legal status, that asylum seeker must submit an application and return at a later date for a decision. If that asylum seeker is denied, he or she is taken into custody or provided a notice to appear on the spot based on the information provided by the applicant.

The proponents of this legislation will tell us that without these guarantees of confidentiality, those who are already in the United States in violation of our immigration laws will not come forward and seek legal status. But I must ask: Are we not granting the biggest benefit that can ever be conferred to an immigrant population; that is, legal status after they have violated our immigration laws? And to be clear, we are talking about those who cannot even establish that they meet the minimum requirements to get this valuable benefit and, even worse, have flouted our immigration and criminal laws. Why should we treat individuals who are denied a Z visa with broad privacy protections by the mere filing of an application for that status? Why should they be treated differently from everybody else?

The proponents will say they do exempt from confidentiality those individuals who commit fraud or who are part of some other scheme in connection with their application. Of course, this is the very least we should be doing. But this bill does not go nearly far enough to effectively enforce our immigration laws and protect the American people from criminals and others who might do us harm. For example, at page 311 of this bill, in section 604(b) labeled ``Exceptions to Confidentiality,'' the drafters of the compromise have chosen to protect aliens who are criminal absconders who have not been removed from the United States. You may be asking: What is an absconder? Quite simply, an absconder is someone who has ignored a final court-ordered deportation and can be prosecuted for a separate felony offense which is punishable by up to 4 years in prison. So the drafters of this underlying bill have chosen to protect that class of people who have not been removed from the United States.

We all know that hundreds of thousands of immigrants come across our borders each year, many legally, a lot more illegally. But what most Americans would be shocked to hear is that according to recent estimates, almost 700,000 of those who have been ordered deported have simply failed to comply with that court order. How many Americans think it is OK to ignore the lawful order of one of our courts? How many Americans, after receiving a subpoena from a court, ignore it and simply skip the court date?

As my colleagues know, I have offered a separate amendment that would
categorically bar fugitive aliens from receiving amnesty. I believe this is an issue of fundamental fairness and the integrity of the rule of law.

In exchange for the largest legalization program in our Nation's history, we should be able to say without any doubt that for any person who applies for and is denied a Z visa on any grounds, we will authorize Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take that application, arrest that individual, and to deport them as not qualifying under the laws of the land. But the bill the Senate is considering would turn a blind eye to those who would apply for this amnesty and are denied. This bill would allow them to slide back into the shadows--the very problem we are trying to solve by this bill.

Ask a random citizen on the street today to answer this simple question: Someone who has violated our immigration laws comes forward to apply for legal status under this bill. Because the applicant does not satisfy one of the criteria for being awarded legal status, the applicant is denied a Z visa. What happens to that individual under the present bill if my amendment is not adopted? I don't think we could find 1 out of 100 who would say something other than: Well, they should go home. And I suspect the majority would say they should be arrested on the spot and be deported. Yet the so-called confidentiality provisions in this bill will prevent law enforcement officials from using information on the application to locate and remove a significant population of those who cannot qualify for a Z visa because they are simply disqualified by law.

This is, in essence, providing an opportunity to significant categories of individuals whose applications are considered and rejected to slide back into the shadows and to defy our laws. This is the very problem we have been told this legislation was designed to fix. Yet it is designed in reality for failure unless this amendment is accepted.

The whole point of this exercise, we continue to be told, is to enhance U.S. security by bringing people out of the shadows and into the open, to allow people who want to cooperate with the law to do so, while allowing our law enforcement officials to focus their efforts on drug traffickers, on criminals, and others who may come here to do us harm. But this bill would draw those who have entered our country in violation of our immigration laws or who have overstayed in violation of those laws to do so and to slide back into the shadows without allowing the law to be enforced.

I would like to remind my colleagues of our Nation's recent history with a massive legalization program and the consequences of prohibitions of Federal agencies on information sharing. As I have stated, reasonable observers have concluded that the 1986 amnesty was rife with fraud. There was an article written in the New York Times, I believe it was 1989, and it called this one of the most massive frauds in American history.

We know, for example, from the 9/11 Commission staff statements that Mohammed and Abouhalima, conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, were granted green cards, or legal permanent resident status, under the special agricultural worker program, which was an amnesty program created by the 1986 bill. Under this special agricultural worker program, a key component of that 1986 amnesty bill, applicants had to provide evidence that they had worked on perishable crops for at least 90 days between May 1, 1985, and May 1, 1986. Their residence did not have to be continuous or unlawful. Nearly 1 million of these individuals who applied received legal permanent resident status under this amnesty, twice the number of foreigners normally employed in agriculture at that time according to the 9/11 Commission and staff.

I would like to make one last significant point about the ill-conceived confidentiality protections contained in this compromise bill. Under this bill we are considering, Congress would even prohibit the use of information from the sworn third-party affidavits that are one of the documents that can prove eligibility. Let me say that again. Under this bill, you can get some third party--there is no requirement of who they might be: a friend, a family member, anybody--to sign an affidavit attesting that you were lawfully present--or that you were present, not lawfully but you were present--in the United States as of a certain date in order to qualify for benefits under this bill.

We already know from well-documented prosecutions of document vendors and other legalization cases that the type of documents submitted, especially these kinds of sworn affidavits, without limitation, were used to further fraud. At the very least, we should not repeat the mistakes of 1986 by allowing the continued use of sworn affidavits by those who have already shown their willingness to violate our laws in order to gain the benefits under this bill.

My amendment takes care of that concern because it will allow those sort of false documents to be investigated and, where necessary, prosecuted. Those who engage in cottage industries of massive fraud on a huge scale can be investigated by our authorities and prosecuted where warranted. My amendment takes care of that concern.

We know one thing, criminals and terrorists have abused and will continue to seek ways to abuse our immigration system in order to enter and remain in our country. I regret to say that the bill we are debating today fails to give law enforcement the commonsense tools that would prevent terrorists and others who seek to do us harm from exploiting the vulnerabilities inherent in any massive legalization program. My colleagues may say there is a confidentiality exception for national security and for fraud, but to rely solely on these narrow exceptions is to engage in wishful thinking and, as far as I am concerned, ignores history and hard experience and the terrorist and criminal threats that we face.

Why would we leave any of this to chance? Why would we turn a blind eye to the type of abuses that we have seen happen in the past and risk it happening again in this bill? I submit that any rejected application not only will provide valuable information to assist in deporting a person that is not entitled under our own laws to the benefits under this bill but may provide law enforcement with a valuable lead that they were previously unaware of, a lead that could--and this is not too much of a stretch--potentially save lives and, at the very least, improve public safety.

Failure to allow law enforcement to connect the dots is a deadly mistake. I have heard many of my colleagues promise never would that happen again. So I urge those who are truly serious about their commitment to make sure the mistakes of the past don't occur again, and that we don't expose the American people to an unnecessary risk and ultimately lose their confidence by enacting a law that cannot be enforced. If we do that, I think we will not have done our job. So I urge all of us who are serious about this commitment to support my amendment to make this crucial improvement to this legislation.

Mr. President, I have to make one correction. Apparently, affidavits are not allowed from relatives but are from nonrelatives. So you can't get your brother-in-law, I guess, to sign an affidavit saying when you were in the United States, but you can get a stranger on the street or someone else to sign an affidavit saying, yes, JOHN CORNYN was present in the United States as of this date. What we want to do is bring a little sunshine to this process to allow our law enforcement officials to do what they have sworn to do, and which they do so nobly and so valiantly day in and day out, and that is investigate crime, bring those who break our laws to justice, to root out fraud, and to make sure our laws do work.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. CORNYN. I will be glad to yield.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Cornyn for his tireless effort and his great knowledge of the complexities of the issues involved in any comprehensive immigration reform. I know he has worked hard to try to craft a comprehensive bill but one that will actually work. That is the question.

I know the Senator has developed great concerns about that and has offered a number of amendments, some excellent law enforcement amendments, drawn, I know, from his experience as a former attorney general in Texas and a member of the supreme court in Texas. I believe, as a former Federal prosecutor, those amendments are essential to having a successful immigration program.

I would like to hear why it is that now 3 days into this bill he has not been able to get a vote on those amendments and about other amendments that he has offered this morning, whether he has been successful in even calling them up for consideration.

Mr. CORNYN. Well, Mr. President, I appreciate the question from the distinguished Senator from Alabama, who was a former U.S. attorney, former attorney general of his State, as the occupant of the chair was of his State, as was, as a matter of fact, Senator Salazar. It seems as if we have a former attorneys general convention right here on the floor of the Senate, all of us engaged in law enforcement actions most of our professional lives.

To answer the Senator's question, I am simply at a loss to understand why, on the single most important domestic issue facing our country today--our broken borders and our immigration system. This is designed to fail because of these barriers of information sharing that have been erected and because of the confidentiality provisions that have been slapped on affidavits and other evidence of fraud that might help us root out and investigate wrongdoers and bring them to justice. I think this is the main reason people are so profoundly skeptical of what we are doing today.

I don't think any of us should be under any illusion that if we erect this nice, pretty superstructure that we talk about, that the elements of the bill that are meritorious--things such as triggers, things such as enhanced border security, effective worksite verification--if we undermine it, if we simply cut the legs out from under the ability of law enforcement officials to enforce this law in a way that will see it collapse again, like the 1986 amnesty bill did, and we don't learn from that hard experience and improve this bill and eliminate those errors and those flaws, I think we will have failed the essential purpose for which we were sent here--to represent the American people, to see that the laws are respected, to see that law and order are reestablished.

I really do believe the reason people are so upset about this issue is because they see rampant lawlessness and disregard for the law in our immigration system. They recognize that in a post-9/11 world that our broken borders can allow economic migrants to come across.

We all understand why people want to come to America. It is the same reason they always have: they want a better life. We understand that. But we have to know who is coming into our country and the reasons they come here. We have offered generous temporary worker programs under this bill so they could come legally, so they could be screened, so law enforcement could focus on the criminals, potential terrorists, and others who want to do us harm. But why in the world, I would ask my colleagues, would we want to leave these flaws in the bill which prohibit our law enforcement officials from doing their job, from investigating and rooting out fraud and criminality and bringing wrongdoers to justice?

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for another question?

Mr. CORNYN. I will.

Mr. SESSIONS. I would just ask this question, through the Chair. Is it similar to the bill last year? Did they not improve the language that basically said if you file a false document for a benefit under this bill, that is really not subject to being examined and investigated and prosecuted?

If an American filed a false claim for hurricane relief or any government benefit, that is a violation of title XVIII, section 1001. I have prosecuted it many times. But persons who are here illegally, noncitizens, can file false statements and then there is a mechanism that blocks that from being actually investigated and perhaps prosecuted?

Mr. CORNYN. I would answer the distinguished Senator by saying there have been some modest steps in improving the flaws in last year's bill. As we have discussed privately and on the Senate floor, I think we ought to give some credit where credit is due to see this bill strengthened over the flawed bill that passed the Senate last year.

But to answer his question, there are still confidentiality provisions in this bill which would allow fraud to go undetected, uninvestigated, and not prosecuted. I don't know why in the world we would possibly stand silently and allow that to happen. I am not going to, and that is the reason I have offered this amendment.

I see on the Senate floor the other distinguished Senator from Colorado, my friend Mr. Allard, who has also offered other important legislation to allow information sharing between law enforcement personnel. It was as a result of the Swift meatpacking plant raids that Senator Allard held meetings on, which I attended, that we learned the very tool that our Federal Government has given employers to confirm eligibility to work is flawed, and Social Security information cannot be shared with the Department of Homeland Security.

So we find people, such as the Swift meatpacking plant operators, using the Basic Pilot to check whether a person shows up and says: My name is JOHN CORNYN, and here is JOHN CORNYN's Social Security number. They run it through Basic Pilot. It says, yes, that is JOHN CORNYN's Social Security number, but the fact is, it is KEN SALAZAR using JOHN CORNYN's Social Security number, or somebody else, and it doesn't root out that kind of fraud.

What we need to do is make sure all manner of fraud and illegality are capable of being fully investigated, fully prosecuted, where warranted, and that our laws are enforced. That is the flaw that my amendment seeks to correct. And I continue to believe other amendments that have so far not been allowed to be called up, some 107 that have been filed, when we actually had votes on 30 amendments in last year's bill, and we have only had 7 so far, that we are really not going at the kind of pace at which I would hope we would proceed to be able to amend and improve this bill in a way that we could be proud of and that we would know would actually work.

That, to me, is one of the key pillars upon which this legislation ought to be built: Will it work? Can it be enforced? If it can't, we will have failed.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I am certainly going to yield to Senator Allard, if I may make a brief--about 1-minute--response to my friend, Senator Salazar.

I have in my hand the bill that was actually laid down by the majority leader and others. It is 789 pages. This is not actually the bill we are on. As you know, and as my colleagues know, there has been a substitute bill that was not put in final legislative language until Tuesday. Those who did not participate in the closed-door meetings that produced what has been sometimes called the ``grand bargain''--while I have been clear to give them credit where credit is due--I think they would appreciate the fact that not everybody has had access to the same information. Certainly not all Members of the Senate and our staffs have had access to the legislative text we are actually voting on and to which we are actually offering amendments.

As the Senator from Colorado acknowledged, we all know how complicated this subject is. It is enormously detailed. We are doing our best to try to keep up. My hope is we can continue to work together to try to work our way through this. I think that is the spirit in which we are all trying to work.

Nobody wants to blow this up. We all want to find a solution. We have some differences on what those solutions might be, but this is where those differences are debated, where the process allows amendments, suggested changes and improvements to be offered, and then in the end we will vote. But I wished to express my concerns that we be given the opportunity to do a good, conscientious job on behalf of our constituents, on behalf of the American people, in what I believe is the single most important domestic issue confronting our country today. That is the sum and substance of my part.

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