Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Will the Senator yield?
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Mr. JOHNSON of Wisconsin. Mr. President, first of all, I appreciate the Senator from Alabama yielding the floor.
I came down first of all to express my gratitude to Senator Grassley for fighting for amendments, and I wish to comment on and really affirm what Senator Vitter was talking about--the Senator from Louisiana--about how these amendments were chosen by the other side.
I have not been an abuser of the amendment process in my time in the Senate. I try to pick the amendments and I try to write the amendments I think really have a positive impact on any piece of legislation.
In this case, on the immigration bill, I want to solve the problem. I was looking for a reason to vote for the bill. What prevents me from voting for this bill is the huge cost we are having to pay for it.
Listen, I don't want to divide families. I don't want to deport children's fathers. I don't want to deport husbands and wives. But I also agree with the American people that we cannot--we are already bankrupt in this country. We cannot provide benefits to those people coming here whom we want to welcome into our country, to contribute to our country, but we can't be paying benefits.
So I offered two amendments--first of all, to not allow the Secretary to extend the registration period another 18 months, so we can get this behind us. My other amendment, which I think is more significant and would help me vote for the bill, would be to prevent immigrants from obtaining the earned-income tax credit. The American people by a 77-percent margin do not believe we should be paying benefits, as we are bankrupting this nation, to people who are not citizens.
The amendment, the one I really asked for, if it was going to be narrowed down from two to one, I asked for a vote on the amendment to prevent the earned-income tax credit--a welfare benefit paid through the Tax Code--from being offered to immigrants. That is the one I wanted, but in this package, negotiated apparently by the majority leader, they were going to offer the other amendment. Why? Because I don't believe they want to expose their Members to that vote, basically providing benefits to non-U.S. citizens that they know full well the American people do not support.
So, once again, I appreciate Senator Grassley's efforts. I also fully support Senator Portman's amendment as well. He is exactly right. The way we stop illegal immigration is by reducing the demand for illegal border crossings. We do that by shutting down the demand for that labor.
Again, we want to welcome legal immigrants through a legal process, but we cannot tolerate this lawlessness and this illegal immigration, and we simply cannot afford to pay noncitizens that benefit level. The cost of the bill is $262 billion, which just makes it very difficult for me to support it.
I yield back.
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