Employee Free Choice Act Of 2007--Motion To Proceed

Floor Speech

EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT OF 2007--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued -- (Senate - June 25, 2007)

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as we continue to debate proposed solutions to our Nation's immigration crisis, we have heard a lot of strong language about how important it is that we find a solution. I couldn't agree more. At the same time we have been treated to some incredible claims, if not downright myths. That is not to say this bill is all bad, because it isn't. But neither is it true that it is all good and can't be improved by a little time to offer amendments and debate them. Instead of a reasonable approach, however, we have been told, for example, that this bill is better than the status quo which some have defined as de facto amnesty. I disagree. What we have now is lawlessness and disorder, not a de facto amnesty.

It has been suggested this bill is better than rounding up 12 million undocumented immigrants, so the only option is to confer upon them the greatest gift America can give a human being, which is American citizenship. The American people can see through that argument in a heartbeat. There are plainly other options available, somewhere in the middle between those two extremes.

Then we have been told unless we agree to what some have rightly identified as indistinguishable from the 1986 amnesty, we can't get border security or a secure means of identifying legal workers on the job. I ask: Why should security be made a hostage to those demands? Employers have been told the only way they can get legal workers to fill in labor shortages is the present bill. That clearly is not the case.

I believe we can do better than this bill. I sincerely want to fix this problem in all of its manifestations. What I do not want to be a party to is trying to fool the American people. I value the trust my constituents have placed in me too highly to overpromise, which this bill does, when the American people have good cause and good reason to know we cannot deliver as advertised.

The fallacious arguments I have referred to and the process by which this bill has been produced, which further inflame the skepticism of the American people, seem only to confirm for many Americans that the Senate is not serious about fixing our broken immigration system. If we are going to insult the intelligence of the American people with such specious justifications for this bill, how can they trust us? Moreover, how can they have any confidence that the various assurances on border security, worksite enforcement, security checks, and implementation of the provisions of this bill will actually work as advertised?

We all know our broken immigration system is a serious threat to national security. Border security, after all, is about national security. So the question we have to ask ourselves is: Does this bill make us safer? The more we have debated the bill, the more I have become convinced this legislation is not only dysfunctional, but unless corrected, some provisions of this bill present an actual danger to our Nation. This bill puts such onerous burdens on our law enforcement officials and ties the Government's hands in so much redtape that it will make us less, not more, safe. Some of the individuals involved in the recently foiled terrorist plots at JFK Airport and Fort Dix were in our country illegally. Some of those involved had even been granted citizenship by our current flawed immigration system. Thankfully, these plots were uncovered before they could be carried out. But knowing that there are likely terrorist cells already present in the United States, how can we in good conscience grant same-day legal status to more than 12 million foreign nationals?

Naturally, this bill does purport to require a background check. But instead of providing a reasonable timeframe for these reviews, an impossible burden is placed on our already overworked citizenship and immigration services to provide these checks in 24 hours. It simply cannot be done. Under our current immigration system, this office already does more of these screenings than it can handle. The Government Accountability Office reported last year this agency was stretched to the breaking point already. This has resulted in an unofficial 6-minute rule, the most amount of time that can be spent adjudicating any one application. Adding an average of 48,000 applications a day more will further backlog an already overtaxed system, meaning less in-depth reviews and more haphazardly granted visas. Again, more cases and less time for review of these applications can do nothing but increase the likelihood of mistakes.

An article in the June 17 edition of the Washington Post explained that a large part of the backlog involved in our current system was due to FBI name checks. Delays in FBI name checks already force long waiting times for citizenship applications. The Post reports that of about 329,000 cases pending as of May, 64 percent were stalled for more than 90 days, 32 percent for more than 1 year, and 17 percent for more than 2 years. They added that the backlog appears to get worse because of a fee increase slated to take place in July which has prompted a 50-percent rise in new naturalization applications so far this year. If a new immigration bill is enacted, millions of foreign nationals would also apply for legalization.

This problem is even more apparent considering the difficulties the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have had this summer in implementing the new western hemisphere travel initiative. Of course, this legislation requires American citizens to have a passport for travel to Canada or Mexico, where that requirement did not exist before. Although the Federal Government had 3 years to get ready for this new stricter visa requirement and passport requirement, the Federal Government failed to adequately prepare, causing disruptions in the lives of tens of thousands of American citizens. If the Federal Government can't get it right with 3 years' notice to process passport applications for American citizens, how will it deal with the increased complexities and burden of processing up to 12 million foreign nationals? I wonder what the Government's response will be to the even larger backlog this bill will create? Will we simply give up on background checks altogether, when the citizenship and immigration service realizes what an impossible burden has been placed upon it?

As we overload our already fragile system and background checks are either too cursory to be safe or too delayed to meet unrealistic deadlines, we will be undoubtedly granting legal status to some individuals who should not
get it. The potential danger is actually worse than it might appear at first blush. Not only do we need to be concerned about terrorist cells and other criminals in our country, we should also be concerned about the privileges these individuals will receive with same-day legal status.

Most notably, the ability to travel in and out of the United States presents a great threat to us and to others. Those already in our country with the knowledge and ability to train others could travel to foreign nations, teaching terrorist cells everything from combat tactics to explosives construction. At the same time, terrorists in our Nation who do not possess the knowledge and training to participate in such attacks could use their new travel visas to visit training sites in other countries, bringing their newfound knowledge back home to America.

For example, a May 28 article from the New York Times describes the problems created by free travel in and out of nations surrounding Iraq. That article says:

The Iraq war, which for years has drawn militants from around the world, is beginning to export fighters and tactics they have honed in the insurgency to neighboring countries and beyond.

The Times has reported:

Some of the fighters appear to be leaving as part of the waves of Iraqi refugees crossing borders. ..... But others are dispatched from Iraq for specific missions.

Granting same-day legal status and the privileges that accompany it to poorly screened foreign nationals has the risk of making us less safe and, indeed, potentially helping spread this threat not just to America but to other places around the world.

The impossible goals of this bill do not stop there. The bill calls for the Department of Homeland Security to define, procure, develop, and implement a worker verification system to check 200 million Americans in less than 2 years. How can the American people have any faith in the enforcement provisions of this bill when these provisions include unattainable goals and untenable standards?

For this reason, it is important we not pass any immigration legislation that makes these mistakes and repeats so many from the 1986 predecessor. I continue to hope we can pass meaningful, safe immigration reform. Everyone knows our current immigration system is broken, and I wish to see it fixed. But this bill will not do it.

Finally, one of the biggest problems we have had with this legislation centers around the way it came to the floor of the Senate. Written behind closed doors, this bill did not even see the light of a committee room. Instead, it promptly proceeded to the floor of the Senate. The short-term result was predictable. Senators wanted to offer amendments, many of them including important improvements which might have been appropriately dealt with in the committee process.

The majority leader's frustration with the number of amendments being offered led to that bill being pulled after almost 2 weeks on the Senate floor. Now a new bill is back. Instead of learning from our mistakes, the bill has once again been secretly negotiated, and will once again forgo the committee process.

What is worse, we have been told it will be presented to us with bipartisan amendments already chosen by a select few Senators, unrepresentative of the wide variety of strongly held views in the Senate.

There is a list of amendments which I believe ought to be included in this bill, amendments that I think might find support among my colleagues if given an opportunity to offer them--provisions such as one that would prevent criminal aliens from delaying and even avoiding their deportation by filing frivolous applications for a Z visa, and then appealing against those denied applications.

Another amendment I would offer, if given an opportunity, would prohibit criminal aliens, including gang members and absconders, from tying up our courts with frivolous appeals from the denial of a request for a waiver of grounds for removal. The bottleneck sure to ensue without these two provisions will cause extensive delays that will only increase the costs involved with this bill and allow abuse of the system.

A third amendment I would offer, if given an opportunity, would require judges to consider national security implications before issuing nationwide injunctions against immigration enforcement, an essential provision to protecting our border, something this bill claims to do.

I wish to add an amendment preventing those who have committed terrorist acts or aided terrorists from asserting they are meeting the ``good moral character'' requirement--something that seems so inherently obvious that I am shocked this bill, as currently written, would allow it.

Last year, Mohammed El Shorbagi pleaded guilty to providing material support to the terrorist organization known as Hamas. His conviction, however, did not specifically bar him from seeking American citizenship because under the law aiding an organization that routinely fires rockets on innocent civilians, families, and neighborhoods, abducts and kidnaps individuals, and has most recently staged a violent coup of an established unity government does not in any way affect your ``good moral character,'' as currently written. It is a dangerous shortcoming of our laws which will not be addressed because of the closed and secretive manner in which this bill is being considered.

I wish also to limit the timeframe for an appeal to 2 years so that court proceedings do not drag on endlessly, wasting tax dollars, and allowing those who are not entitled to the benefits of our immigration system to remain here indefinitely under the cover of an appeal.

These are only five of the amendments which I wish to offer which I think would make this bill better, if I had a chance to offer them and if Senators had a chance to vote on them. Others would make it harder for gang members to qualify, force immigrants to file a change of address notification with the Department of Homeland Security when they move, and authorize the detention of dangerous aliens during their deportation trial.

Unfortunately, under the process the majority leader will provide us, no opportunity for these measures to be considered will be allowed and, thus, they will not be in the final bill.

Rather, the world's greatest deliberative body will be presented with a bill that has not been fully considered, will not be fully debated, and where there will not be an adequate opportunity to offer and vote on amendments. Since when did the Senate have so little to say when shaping legislation which we will vote on? Since when did the majority leader get the power to force legislation on the rest of the Senate?

I cannot support this flawed bill or this broken secret process that has produced it. I hope my colleagues will join me in insisting upon free and open debates, which are the hallmark of the Senate, and which are the only possible path forward to providing a rational, commonsense answer to the challenge of immigration reform.

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