Emergency Border Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2010
Floor Speech
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I am going to ask unanimous consent for a proposal on the border. First, I will speak for a minute and then ask consent. I know my colleague from Arizona will then speak and offer some amendments to it.
Today, I join my cosponsors--Senators REID, INOUYE, MURRAY, FEINSTEIN, BINGAMAN, MCCASKILL, CASEY, UDALL of Colorado, BEGICH, and BURRIS--to try to make our borders as secure as possible. We are asking unanimous consent to pass a smart and tough $600 million emergency border security appropriations package that will provide immediate relief to the border.
Here is what our border security package will do: It will provide over $250 million to hire 1,500 new agents to permanently patrol our southern border and ports of entry.
It will also create a strike force that will be deployed in different areas of the southwest border, depending on where the need is greatest at any particular moment.
It will provide funds to deploy unmanned drones to fly along our southern border and provide our patrol officers on the ground with real time information on unlawful border crossings. I believe there are seven working now. They have been very successful, and they should be expanded quickly and immediately.
It will provide funds to improve communications capabilities between Federal border enforcement and State and local officers along the border.
It will provide funds to construct forward operating bases for the Border Patrol to use that are actually located on the border instead of being hundreds of miles away.
It will provide funds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to conduct investigations of drug runners, money launderers, and human traffickers along our border.
It will provide over $200 million to increase the number of ATF, DEA, and FBI agents on our border because the focus on drug dealing and crime on our border is very important and has to be coordinated with immigration enforcement and bolster the number of prosecutors and court resources along our border so wrongdoers can be immediately brought to justice.
The best part of this border package is it is fully paid for and will not increase the deficit by a single penny. The emergency border funds will be paid for by assessing fees on foreign companies known as chop shops that outsource good, high-paying American technology jobs to lower wage, temporary immigrant workers from other countries. These are companies such as Infosys. But it will not affect the high-tech companies such as Intel or Microsoft that play by the rules and recruit workers in America.
This border package will, therefore, accomplish two important goals. It will make our border far more secure extremely quickly, and it will level the playing field for American companies and American workers to compete against these foreign companies known in the industry as using ``outsourcing visas.''
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 5875, which is at the desk; that the Schumer substitute amendment, which is the text of S. 3721, a bill making emergency supplemental appropriations for border security for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, first, I appreciate the spirit in which the Senator from Arizona has talked about the proposal. Let me try to be in the same spirit. I always said I believe in comprehensive immigration reform. I know my colleague from Arizona has focused on this issue for at least as long as I have. I was involved in the original legislation back in the late eighties with a great deal of care, a great deal of concern, and a great deal of focus.
I hope, even though I cannot accept these amendments, that maybe we could come together on something that we could bring back in September because I do believe we have to secure the border. Even in the comprehensive proposal that we made, we said we have to secure the border and do other things as well. It is my belief that securing the border alone will not solve our immigration problems; that until we have comprehensive reform, particularly in making sure employers do not hire illegal immigrants--which they now do, even though they do not know they are illegal immigrants because documents are so easily forged, that we have to do comprehensive. But we should do the border. To say we have to do comprehensive does not gainsay that we have to work on the border and work on it quickly and soon.
My problems with the amendments are as follows: First and foremost, taking funds from the stimulus is something I could not support. The reason is very simple. In my view--and it may be different than my colleague's--the stimulus creates jobs. I do not want to tell my constituents in Buffalo that they may be laid off or not have the opportunity for a job to work on a road, to be employed as a sheriff or firefighter or teacher because there are less stimulus dollars. I do not believe in robbing Peter to pay Paul.
I prefer our source, which is from these companies which are not, as I say--they are companies whose whole purpose is to bring people in on H-1B and the vast majority of them from other countries who go back to the other countries. That is a better funding source.
On the third amendment, I do believe we have that one, the $21 million for the center. I believe that is in our bill, the Law Enforcement Support Center. I believe that is in our proposal.
As for the second amendment, which is probably the one where we have a substantive disagreement, Operation Streamline is, first, expensive. If you are going to immediately incarcerate everyone who is apprehended at the border, you pay for their medicine, you pay for their health care, you pay for their food. It is over $100 a day. DHS has been using a different program. When they find someone crossing the border illegally, they bring them to the Mexican interior. Secretary Napolitano has shown some good documentation that works, and it is a lot cheaper.
Until proven otherwise, I think we ought to continue that program and maybe expand that program based on the agreement we have that there should be more people on the border so there are more apprehensions.
What we learned in a different area--asylum--is that building detention centers for all those who are caught creates problems.
In New York, we have a large number of asylees--and I support asylum in many justified cases--and it has proven to be very expensive. It has proven to be cumbersome, and oftentimes you don't have the supply of space to keep up with the demand.
So I would respectfully oppose the three amendments and urge that the original proposal be supported.
I yield to my colleague.
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