Immigration

Floor Speech

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, last week the media reported that 17 Afghan military trainees had gone AWOL--absent without leave--from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio, TX. The shocking thing about this is not that 17 Afghan trainees left the military base without leave, but that we hadn't heard anything about it. Even though these officers went missing over a period of 2 years, neither the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Air Force, nor the Department of Defense notified me. No one advised the Congress or the American people, to my knowledge, that this had happened. Obviously, it created a lot of consternation and concern.

The fact is, this is just one example--really the tip of the iceberg--of some of the problems with our broken immigration system--our inability to track individuals who come into the United States with visas, whether it is a tourist visa, a student visa, or a visa like those issued to the Afghan military officers. We have virtually no ability to track individuals who overstay their visa and then simply choose to melt into the great American landscape.

This is true in spite of the fact that in 2007, Congress passed on a recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, which highlighted visa overstays as a potential national security threat to our country. All we have to do is recall people like Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, an example of people who came into the country and overstayed their visa. The recent attempt of a would-be terrorist to bomb a skyscraper in Dallas, TX, is another example of people who enter the country legally and do so with the clear intent to overstay their visa and do us harm.

Congress passed a law in 2007 that required the Department of Homeland Security to come up with a plan by June 2009 to track every entry into the country pursuant to a visa and biometrically track those individuals who overstay their visas. Obviously, that has not happened yet or else the Department of Homeland Security would have been able to track the 17 Afghan military officers. As far as we have been informed, we don't have clear information as to exactly where all of these individuals are.

We have talked a lot about border security, and appropriately so, particularly in light of the exploding violence in Mexico and the cartel drug wars that have killed 23,000 people since 2006. Many have expressed concerns that our borders, which are still too porous, will allow people to come across but not just people who want to work. Our porous borders will allow people to enter who want to smuggle drugs, smuggle weapons, and who potentially want to do us harm. Last year alone, about 50,000--or closer to 45,000 individuals from countries other than Mexico--so-called OTMs--have been detained coming across our southern border. These OTMs have come from countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iran, China--you name it. The southern border is being used as a means to enter our country without detection and in violation of our laws.

The problem I wish to highlight today is that apparently the Administration is just now waking up to this danger along our border. I say that because only in the last couple of days, the President has requested an emergency supplemental appropriation of $600 million for southern border enforcement. Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that it is a large sum of money, it simply does not go far enough.

Recently, I introduced a border security amendment that was defeated--even though it got a majority vote, but didn't get the 60 votes it needed to pass. It was on the Defense supplemental appropriations bill. It would have been paid for; it was not deficit spending. It would have provided an additional $2 billion to make up for shortfalls in funding to Federal, State, and local agencies that are on the front line and need that funding to get the job done.

Some critics have said that Members of Congress have focused too much on border security and that the real solution is to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill. I disagree. Until we have credible border security and a credible system of tracking visa overstays, the American people are simply not going to believe we have either the credibility or the competence to enforce whatever law we pass. All you have to do is to look at where we find ourselves now. You also need to look back to 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty for 3 million people. He did so premised on the belief that we were actually going to pass an immigration law that could be and would be enforced. We know, from our sad experience, that even though an amnesty was adopted, enforcement did not follow. That is why I say the American people simply don't believe we have the credibility or even the competence, as demonstrated so far, to get the job done.

I don't think the American people believe we have done a good job of controlling illegal immigration, let alone national and domestic security. If Washington was doing its job, we would not see States such as Arizona and Nebraska passing laws trying to deal with immigration at the State and local level. If Washington was doing its job, we would not continue to hear about the many illegal immigrants who have committed heinous crimes in the United States and who have been deported multiple times, only to reenter the United States and commit further crimes. If Washington had been doing its job, we would not continue to hear about terrorists exploiting our lax immigration enforcement--terrorists who are in this country right now trying to do us harm, such as the Christmas Day bomber, who had a valid visa--amazing as it sounds--and the foreign national who overstayed his visa who I mentioned a moment ago, who tried to blow up a Dallas skyscraper recently--a plot foiled by the FBI.

I believe we need credible immigration reform, but first we need to demonstrate to the American people that we are serious about border security by making sure the resources--both the boots on the ground and the technology--are in place to help, as a force multiplier, provide the kind of border security that will allow us to know with a much greater certainty who is coming into the country and why they are here.

The other component of our nation's security has to do with the visa overstay issue, which is a huge part of the problem. Put another way, even if we were able to secure the border today and know with certainty who was coming across our southern or northern border and what their purpose was for entering, we would still have a huge, gaping hole in our immigration enforcement system because of the problem of visa overstays.

Most Americans probably don't realize that between 40 and 50 percent of the people who have come into the country and who are here without a valid visa--an estimated 4.5 to 6 million people--are visa overstays. In other words, they came in legally but simply ran out the clock and overstay their visa, and now they have attempted to just melt into the American landscape.

Unfortunately, notwithstanding the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and Congress's mandate to the Department of Homeland Security to come up with a way to biometrically track visa overstays coming in through our airports--the Department of Homeland Security still has yet to come up with a credible and workable solution to deal with this very real problem. We know the visa overstays come from countries all around the world, not just Mexico or countries to our south. These overstays come from places such as Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, and Sudan.

It seems just as plain as the nose on my face to say that America's security depends on our tracking not just people who illegally come over the border, but also those who come in legally and then illegally overstay their visas. Our failure to track visa overstays and enforce our immigration laws has already put our country in jeopardy.

I mentioned some of the examples a moment ago. The World Trade Center mastermind was a visa overstay. The 9/11 hijackers, lest we forget, were visa overstays, people who came in under false pretenses as students, only to try to do our Nation harm and then killing thousands of people in the process. I mentioned the Dallas office tower attempted bomber, who was a visa overstay. Most recently, the 17 Afghan pilots in training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX, my hometown. These were visa overstays. Yet when you ask the Air Force, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security where they are now and what they are doing, we have yet to get a comprehensive and complete report. Why? Because the U.S. Government simply doesn't have a workable and effective and efficient means of tracking people who come into the country legally on a temporary visa but then choose to overstay.

Foreign nationals overstaying their visas is not a new issue, but, as we have seen, it can be a national security issue. Even the Department of Homeland Security, the Government Accountability Office, the Pew Hispanic
Center have highlighted the number of overstays in the United States.

Like its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Department of Homeland Security has a real inability to track down and remove aliens who overstay their visas. Each year, approximately 300,000 foreign nationals who come to the United States legally, overstay their visa. That is 300,000 a year.

My amendment, which was defeated last month by a narrow vote, would have given the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement the personnel and money needed for additional investigators, detention officers, and detention space.

We need a plan, our government needs a plan from the administration to enforce our immigration laws regarding visa overstays or the American people will continue to see threats to our national security materialize before their very eyes.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record my letter to Secretary Napolitano at the conclusion of my remarks.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(See exhibit 1.)

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, there are a number of think tanks--and I will allude to just one--that have come up with a strategy to do what needs to be done to deal with visa overstays. I refer to a Backgrounder, published by the Heritage Foundation, dated January 25, 2010, entitled ``Biometric Exit Program Shows Need for New Strategy to Reduce Visa Overstays.''

I think we need to put our best minds together and devote our efforts to dealing with this problem. Just like our broken border, unless Congress and the Administration come up with a credible plan to deal with this problem of visa overstays, I don't think the American people will have the confidence they demand and are entitled to when it comes to enacting a credible immigration enforcement program.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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