Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I have been working on immigration policy for all the time I have been in the Senate, about 10 years now. So I have some familiarity with the issues and the arguments that have been made. It is always amazing to hear a lot of the same arguments being repeated now that we have heard before in 2007 and before. But one of the differences is we have 43 new Senators who weren't here in 2007, the last time we had a major debate on immigration reform. So I think the discussions have been useful and, hopefully, they will be productive.

There is one obstacle, in my view, to immigration reform which is something I would like to see: When it comes to securing our borders and making sure that the flow of illegal immigration across our borders stops or gets as close as we can to zero, the Federal Government has zero credibility. The reason is simple. We have been making promises since 1986 about border security enforcement.

Remember, 1986 was the year that Ronald Reagan--a model to Republicans and conservatives--signed an amnesty for 3 million people, premised on the representation and the expectation that enforcement would ensue and the problem would be solved. In other words, he and the American people said: We will have a compassionate resolution of the condition of the 3 million people who are here, but we want to make sure that the rule of law is restored and that we will not have to do this again.

When the Gang of 8--the four Republicans and four Democrats who authored the underlying bill--announced their product, I was hopeful they would produce a bill with solid mechanisms for gaining secure borders. Unfortunately, the bill contains no guarantees or results, no real trigger, only more promises reminiscent of 1986 and many years subsequent.

In 1996, Bill Clinton signed a law saying we were going to implement a biometric entry-exit system. When that didn't happen, after 2011 the 9/11 Commission said one of the things we needed and was revealed as a vulnerability for national security was the absence of a biometric entry-exit system.

Despite the passage of all those years and the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, we still have not implemented a biometric entry-exit system. An entry system, yes, but exit, no. And 40 percent of illegal immigration occurs as a result of the fact that people enter the country legally and don't leave when their visa expires.

So, unfortunately, this bill contains more hollow promises and no real trigger. By that I mean a conditioning on the transfer to either probationary status or to legal permanent residency based on hitting the standards that are met in the underlying bill--100 percent situational awareness, 90 percent apprehensions, which is defined in the bill as operational control of the border.

The message is, again, we don't have any enforcement mechanism here. We are going to put a lot of money and a lot of resources into this but we cannot control what future administrations do. We know no current Congress can bind future Congresses. So these promises once again--I am very concerned and I think the American people should be concerned--are promises only and not delivering the results that I think they insist upon before they will accept a resolution of the 11 million people in compassionate terms.

But I do not think promises alone are good enough. You should not take my word for it. You want to see, for example, what the Congressional Budget Office came out with yesterday. I think people would be serious about serious solutions to illegal immigration, but the Congressional Budget Office which--love them or hate them, agree or disagree--is the gold standard that Congress is bound by when evaluating legislation. What they said is the number of new unauthorized immigrants in the United States by the year 2033 will go up. It will be 7.5 million people. If we did not pass any bill at all, it will be 10 million. That is what the Congressional Budget Office said. Those are not my figures, those are their figures. I think it is incumbent upon anybody who disagrees to challenge these figures, and so far we have heard no challenge forthcoming.

Make no mistake, border security is not an alternative to immigration reform, it is a necessary complement to the sensible reforms that I think a large majority of this Chamber could agree on, such as allowing the United States to retain more highly skilled immigrants who get Ph.D's and master's degrees at our colleges and universities in STEM fields--science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and the like.

I know there has been a fair amount of disinformation circulated about the proposals in my RESULTS amendment, so let me explain what it actually does once more. My amendment requires the Federal Government to have 100-percent situational awareness on the border. With technology the American taxpayer has already paid for and which has been deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq and is owned by the Department of Defense, I am absolutely convinced we can get 100-percent situational awareness on the border. Senator McCain yesterday said he agreed with that. He cited a letter, which I am sure we will see forthwith, by the head of the Border Patrol who said that is attainable.

Senator Bennet of Colorado and Senator Flake of Arizona, two members of the Gang of 8, said they agree it is attainable. I think it is attainable. That is one requirement.

Second, my amendment requires full operational control of the border. That does not mean 100-percent detention of people coming across. It means we have a deterrent effect by at least 90 percent of people coming across being detained.

I have been in and around law enforcement most of my adult life. It is not just how many people we detain, it is the deterrent value of the knowledge of people who violate our laws that if they do so they will be apprehended and they will receive the appropriate punishment. So the deterrence factor is very important here. It is not just how many people you catch but there has to be some metric that can be objectively measured.

Next--and I alluded to this a moment ago--there has to be a nationwide biometric entry-exit system. As I said, this has been the law since 1996 when Bill Clinton signed it into law. Yet it has never been implemented. What has been implemented is that when foreign nationals visit the United States they do have to give a set of fingerprints, but there is no complementary exit system to make sure those same people leave the country when their visa expires--whether they are a student or a tourist or a guest worker or something of the like. Forty percent of our illegal immigration is people who enter legally and simply do not leave when their visa expires. This biometric entry-exit system would allow us to identify them and then to allow the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to do their job.

Fourth, my amendment requires nationwide E-Verify; in other words, a means not to make the employers the police to sort of sift through documents to try to figure out from your utility bill whether you actually are a legal resident of the United States and can qualify to work, but actually an electronic system. All employees of the Federal Government, all of our employees in our Senate offices have to go through that anyway to make sure this is uniformly observed, so that the economic magnet that attracts so much illegal immigration is removed and only people who can legally work in the country are allowed to do so.

My amendment could have taken a much tougher position and said this trigger must be met before people can progress or sign up for probationary status. I voted for such an amendment, but knowing that amendment would not pass the Senate I said the trigger ought to be between the probationary status and the time when people transition from probationary status to legal permanent residency. The whole rationale is not to be punitive, not to create an obstacle that cannot be met, but to realign the incentives for the executive branch, the bureaucracy, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, conservatives, liberals to come together and say we are going to make sure this target is hit: 100-percent surveillance; 90-percent apprehensions or full operational control of the border; an E-Verify system; and a biometric entry-exit system.

Is it realistic to believe these goals can be met in the next decade? Many experts, including members of the Gang of 8, which I mentioned a moment ago, believe it is. Some of those experts include people such as Robert Bonner, the former head of Customs and Border Protection; Asa Hutchison, the former Under Secretary for Border & Transportation Security at the Department of Homeland Security, and as I mentioned, several of the Gang of 8--Senator Bennet of Colorado, Senator Flake of Arizona, Senator McCain of Arizona--have all said they believe this requirement of 100-percent situational awareness and operational control of our southern border is feasible and can be accomplished and that it is a reasonable, attainable goal.

My question for them and for others is, if they believe it is feasible and if they believe we are suffering from a trust deficit as a result of the American people being asked to trust us and that trust being exploited and violated so many times in the past with promises that are not kept, why not agree to a reasonable condition after probationary status, before people transfer to legal permanent residency where we know the forces will be aligned in order to make sure that is met. Then we can regain the American people's confidence and see we restored law and order and legality out of a current lawless and chaotic system which exploits and preys on many innocent people who die, who are subjected to human slavery as a result of trafficking, and you name it.

There is a crisis of confidence in Washington these days and the only way I think we are going to regain that confidence and demonstrate to the American people we are serious about making this happen is a trigger and a conditioning of that transition from RPI status to LPR status contained in my amendment.

If it is attainable and if it is something that is important in terms of regaining the public's confidence instead of just saying ``trust us,'' why not support the amendment? Why not demand real results on border security, rather than repetitive promises that have not been kept in the past and which the American public is in deep doubt will be kept in the future? Without a genuine border security trigger, this bill, I would daresay, has zero chance of passing the House of Representatives. For those of us who wish to see an improvement in the status quo because we believe the status quos is simply unacceptable, for those of us who wish to see a good immigration reform bill pass, why not pass this bill with my amendment? Why not give this bill some momentum as it goes over to the House of Representatives and as we come together as a Senate and a House to reconcile those differences in the bill and send over a good bill, an enforceable bill--not just full of hollow promises but one which will actually gain results when it comes to security.

Everybody in this Chamber knows the Senate bill is dead on arrival in the House. They have their own ideas. They are going to take up immigration reform on a piecemeal basis, but ultimately my hope is they will cobble together one or more smaller bills and then we will be able to get to a conference with the House to work out the differences. But this is the kind of sleight of hand which I think undermines our credibility and increases the skepticism of the American people that we are actually going to deliver as represented when it comes to immigration reform.

You have seen this before. Senator Durbin, the distinguished majority whip, said in January 2013: A pathway to citizenship needs to be ``contingent upon securing the border.'' I agree with Senator Durbin. I agree that is the essential bargain the American people are willing to accept. There was a CNN poll yesterday that said 6 out of 10 of the American people would accept a pathway to citizenship, perhaps grudgingly, if they actually felt as though the results they demand be provided on border security and enforcement are contained in this bill.

That is why I believe it was so important for Senator Durbin to say, as part of their announcement of the goals of the Gang of 8, that a pathway to citizenship would be ``contingent upon securing the border.''

Here is the disconnect. Unfortunately, 6 months later, June 11, 2013, Senator Durbin was quoted in the National Journal that the gang has now decided that ``the pathway to citizenship'' and border enforcement can be delinked. In other words, the way to citizenship is guaranteed and good luck on the border security and the enforcement. Good luck, present Congress, trying to enforce your will, present and hence, on a future Congress; good luck, President Obama, trying to dictate exactly what a future President, 10 years from now, will do.

The only way I believe we can credibly go back and defend our position for immigration reform before our constituents, certainly my constituents, is to look them in the eyes and say we have fixed the problem. We have done everything humanly possible to make sure all the incentives are aligned so that border security, interior enforcement, and E-Verify are actually in place before people transition to legal permanent residency.

We have now had three decades to fix our broken promises on border security and now is the time to demand real results and to create a mechanism for achieving them. It is time to make good on our promises to the American people by securing America's borders.

I yield the floor.

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