John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I won't be taking all of that time right now. I will reserve some time and hopefully other colleagues will come down to the floor and engage in a discussion. As you know, the past few days I have been talking about the importance of border security in this immigration bill. To remind anybody who happens to be listening, I come from a State, Texas, that has the longest common border with the country of Mexico, 1,200 miles. While many of our colleagues or some of our colleagues come from States such as California where in San Diego they have the fence there that they view as restricting illegal immigration and entry into the country, Tucson, Arizona, has a little different situation because much of the land is Federal land. In Texas, our 1,200-mile common border with Mexico is largely private property on the Texas side. It also is enormously diverse. You can go out to West Texas near Alpine where Big Bend National Park is where you will see huge cliffs that go some 1,000 feet down to the Rio Grande River. While some have said we need a fence across the entire border, I daresay that putting a fence on a 1,000- foot cliff is not going to enhance border security much. What I have argued for from the beginning is the need for a comprehensive border security plan and for Congress to make a sincere and enforceable commitment to follow through on that plan. I do believe, in the 6 years since the last time we debated immigration reform in 2007, there is an emerging consensus in the country. Many people are mad, and they deserve to be mad, about the Federal Government's failure to live up to its promises when it comes to our broken immigration system. We can go back to 1986 when Ronald Reagan, the father of modern conservatism in the Republican Party, signed an amnesty for 3 million people. His rationale was we are going to enforce our immigration system so this will be the first and last time any President will have to sign an amnesty. We know the enforcement component didn't work, that promise was not kept, causing a lot of deeply seated skepticism in the American people as to whether Congress and Washington can be depended upon to keep their commitments when it comes to enforcing our laws and securing our borders. My amendment that we will be voting on perhaps as early as noon today is designed to turn border security rhetoric into reality. More specifically, what it adds is a trigger. We have been talking about triggers to the Gang of 8 bill, the underlying bill, but it would require the Federal Government to have 100-percent situational awareness of our border, the southwestern border. We can do that from Border Patrol, radar, ground sensors, and using all of the magnificent technology the Defense Department and our military have produced-- amazing American innovators--that our military has used effectively in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't believe there is any doubt, and I know our Gang of 8, the people who wrote the underlying bill, believe that 100-percent situational awareness of our border is possible and attainable if we have the political will to make it happen and if our law enforcement authorities are provided the appropriate resources to do it. And 100- percent situational awareness is one of the requirements. The second is operational control. Right now we don't have control of our southwestern border. The latest Government Accountability Office estimate is only about 45 percent of our southwestern border is under operational control. For example, a few weeks ago I was in South Texas in Brooks County in deep Rio Grande Valley, the Rio Grande Valley sector of the Border Patrol, visiting with them. On 1 day they detained 700 people coming across the southwestern border in the Rio Grande sector and 400 of them came from countries other than Mexico. Some of the rescue beacons they have down there for people who are in distress--immigrants coming from Central America, coming from around the world through our southwestern border into the United States--the rescue beacons they have down there that I saw with my own eyes, where if people get in big trouble and they realize they may lose their life unless they call the Border Patrol in to help them, are in English, Spanish and, get this, Chinese. Chinese. This is in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. I asked the local law enforcement authorities, why Chinese? They said: Well, for a while, we got a whole lot of Chinese immigrants coming across the border, being smuggled across into the United States. I said: What is the going rate you have to pay the coyotes, as they call them, the smugglers? They said: About $30,000. For $30,000 somebody from China can get somebody to smuggle them into the United States, which is the reason why those rescue beacons were in English, Spanish, and Chinese. Indeed, the Border Patrol statistics reveal we have people who have come across the border in the last year from 100 different countries around the world. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, to ask the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency whether this porous border was a national security issue. Both of them said it was, which is pretty obvious. We know if people from 100 different countries can penetrate our southwestern border because of a lack of appropriate security there, if they have the money and they are determined enough, they can come from anywhere in the world, including countries that are state sponsors of terrorism. Operational control of the border is very important. Third, my amendment offers a real trigger that requires a nationwide biometric entry-exit system. That sounds a little obscure. Basically, what happens when you come to the United States from another country is you are required to give fingerprints. That is a biometric identifier because you can't use phony documents or a fuzzy picture to claim to be somebody you are not and get into the country illegally. The importance of the biometric entry-exit system was noted particularly by the 9/11 Commission, because several of the people who were involved in the plot to kill 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, entered the country legally, but they never left. Hence, the importance of a biometric entry-exit system to document not just when people come to America as tourists or students or whatever, but that they actually leave when their visa is expired. Right now, 40 percent of illegal immigration is a product of a failure to have an effective entry-exit system because people come legally and they simply stay and melt into the great American landscape. Unless they come into contact with our law enforcement officials, commit a crime--driving while intoxicated, domestic violence, or the like--they are never going to be caught. Fourth, my amendment requires nationwide E-Verify. E-Verify is the name given to a system with which all Federal offices have to comply. For example, when somebody wants to be hired in my Senate office, either in Texas or up here in DC, we are required by law to run their name through the E-Verify system to verify this person is legally eligible to work in the United States. That is an important part of the provisions in my amendment that provide real triggers. Let me talk a moment about triggers, because you are going to hear a lot of discussion about a trigger. A trigger is more than a promise. We know there is a litany--indeed, there is a trail of broken promises-- when it comes to our immigration system that dates back to at least 1986. What a trigger means is there is an enforceable mechanism that will prevent people from transitioning, in the case of my amendment, from probationary status to legal permanent residency until the objectives set out in the underlying bill, 100 percent of situational awareness and operational control, are met, together with a biometric entry-exit system and nationwide E-Verify. I wish to emphasize that my amendment uses the same standard, metrics, and targets as the underlying bill. The difference between my amendment and their bill is their bill promises the Sun and the Moon when it comes to border security, E-Verify, and entry-exit, but it has no enforceable mechanism. I ask the question, why should the American people trust Congress? Why should the American people trust Washington to enforce this part of the essential bargain, the security part of the bargain, if it has failed to do so in the past? I would suggest to you that given the current trust deficit here in Washington, with scandals everywhere, that we can't reasonably expect the American people to rely on ``trust us.'' We need something enforceable, which is what my amendment provides. The trigger in my amendment is not designed to punish people. It is designed to realign incentives. Everybody from conservatives to liberals to people in the middle of the road--Republicans, Democrats, you name it--everybody is incentivized to hit the standard set out in the underlying bill, 100-percent situational awareness and operational control. Over the past few days I have cited a number of experts. We in the Senate have a lot of experts. We have people from different States, some of whom, to be honest, know more about the subject than others. I have cited a couple of experts, including the former head of Customs and Border Protection and the former Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security at the Department of Homeland Security, all of whom believe the border security requirements in my amendment--and again I stress in the underlying bill--are reasonable and realistic. No fewer than three members of the Gang of 8--Senator Bennet of Colorado, a Democrat; Senator Flake of Arizona, a Republican; and Senator McCain, a Republican from Arizona--have said the 90-percent apprehension rate for illegal border crossers is a perfectly attainable goal. Senator McCain 2 days ago said he had talked to the head of the Border Patrol who said this is a perfectly realistic goal, 100-percent situational awareness and operational control. I agree with that. If the goal is attainable, why not make it mandatory? Why not make it go beyond the usual promises and platitudes and demand actual results? That is what my amendment does. It demands results, and it creates a mechanism that ensures those results will be delivered. Again, this is designed to realign all of the incentives so all of us are absolutely focused like a laser in ensuring that the executive branch and the bureaucracy will do what the bill promises will be done. If we are able to accomplish that--I believe the American people are a compassionate people and understand we have a very difficult hand to play here because we haven't enforced our immigration laws for many years now. If they believe sincerely this will end the illegality in our broken immigration system, if this will return law and order to our broken immigration system, I believe they will accept dealing with the 11 million people here in a humane and compassionate way. If you think our immigration system is broken, as I do, and if you think the status quo is unacceptable, that doing nothing is not the answer, then I strongly urge my colleagues to support this amendment. It is the only way, I believe, to get truly bipartisan and, even more important than that, truly effective immigration reform. Mr. President, may I ask the Chair how much time I have remaining.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair. As I mentioned a few moments ago, I wish to spend a few additional minutes talking about a portion of my amendment that hasn't received much attention because we have been focused so much on the border security component. Indeed, I think most Americans would be shocked to learn the underlying bill--the Gang of 8 bill--would allow eligibility for immediate legalization of people with multiple drunk driving convictions. Indeed, the bill even legalizes drunk drivers who have already been deported, amazingly enough. Just for perspective, in the year 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported nearly 36,000 people with DUI--driving under the influence--convictions. The problem is especially bad in Houston, TX, where I was born. Just last month, a Harris County Sheriff's Office sergeant named Dwayne Polk was killed by an illegal immigrant drunk driver who had previously been arrested for driving under the influence and illegally carrying a weapon. After his earlier arrest he was deported, but he eventually came back to Houston and once again drove while intoxicated, with the tragic results of SGT Dwayne Polk losing his life. In May of 2011, Houston police officer Kevin Will was killed by an illegal immigrant drunk driver who had been deported to Mexico on several occasions. In August 2007, an illegal immigrant drunk driver, with a blood alcohol level three times above the legal limit, killed three people on a Houston area freeway, including a husband, a wife, and their 2-year-old son. The driver who killed them was out on bail at the time of the accident after having been arrested for domestic violence. For that matter, not only does the underlying bill legalize immigrants with multiple drunk driving convictions, it also legalizes people with multiple domestic violence convictions--domestic violence convictions. That is mind-boggling. I realize some people, when they hear the word ``misdemeanor,'' think we are talking about jaywalking or a speeding ticket or something similar to that or driving a car without a functioning taillight, but the truth is--and the former prosecutors in this Chamber know--the technical difference between a misdemeanor and a felony can be as little as 1 day additional time in prison. Typically, a misdemeanor is punished, potentially, with up to 1 year in jail. Anything over that is traditionally called a felony. More clearly, felonious conduct is often pleaded down to a misdemeanor, particularly in instances such as domestic violence, where the victim is either married to or lives with the assailant and there is difficulty getting cooperation. Sometimes the only thing the prosecutor can do, even in a case of a very serious physical or other assault, is to get a misdemeanor conviction, even though the underlying circumstances are very serious indeed. There are numerous States that classify certain domestic violence crimes as misdemeanors, and there is a lot of variety in this, but that doesn't mean the conduct at issue is any less of a domestic violence offense. By my count, 23 States have specific misdemeanor domestic violence offenses. These include California, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and South Carolina. Minnesota, for example, defines misdemeanor domestic assault this way: Whoever . . . against a family or household member: (1) commits an act with intent to cause fear and another of immediate bodily harm or death; or (2) intentionally inflict or attempts to inflict bodily harm upon another. As I am sure my colleagues from Minnesota know, crimes that qualify as misdemeanor domestic violence under Minnesota law include domestic abuse with a deadly weapon--even domestic abuse with a gun. While it is called a misdemeanor in the statute books, it is obviously a very serious underlying offense. I would love it if some Member of this Chamber would explain why conduct such as this should not be a bar to the generous opportunity afforded in the bill to obtain probationary status and eventually earn a pathway to citizenship. Why should we include people such as this, who have shown so much contempt for our laws? We are not just talking about people who have come here to work in violation of our immigration laws, we are talking about people who have come in violation of our immigration laws and who have also committed serious offenses. We should have zero tolerance for anyone who enters our country and commits such a heinous act. America has always been a deeply compassionate and understanding society, and nothing has changed, but when it comes to granting legal status to people who have violated our immigration laws, our criteria should be very clear: no drunk drivers and no violent criminals, period. My amendment guarantees that, which is just one more reason why this Chamber should embrace it. For now, I wish to conclude by saying I read in the press, including the New York Times, a story by Ashley Parker, dated June 19, 2013, that says, ``Two GOP Senators are close to a deal on border security.'' It cites the efforts of my colleagues Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota, who have been working behind the scenes to try to improve the border security component of the underlying bill. I applaud them for their efforts, and I applaud them for moving the underlying bill in a more positive direction when it comes to border security. I am going to wait to pass final judgment until I actually see language because the devil is so often in the details on things such as this. But I would point out that just before their efforts, which now reportedly would include an additional 20,000 Border Patrol agents, the underlying bill had zero additional Border Patrol agents-- zero additional boots on the ground. My amendment adds 5,000 Border Patrol agents. Reportedly--and, again, we need to see the details of the proposal--Senators Corker and Hoeven would add 20,000 additional Border Patrol agents. To show what a dramatic change that has been, Senator Schumer, one of the chief architects of the underlying bill, in a speech on June 12, said: Whatever CBO--the Congressional Budget Office--says, 6,500 border agents is a multibillion-dollar proposition, unpaid for, which is why I know my colleagues on the other side rue the day when we vote for unpaid obligations. Again, he said--and this is on June 12--how can you manufacture 3,500 new personnel and say it doesn't add to the cost and will be reallocated? I want to know where it is going to be reallocated from. Similarly, my colleague Senator McCain said: But those who think we need more people, we do need more people to facilitate movement across ports of entry, but we have 21,000 Border Patrol agents. Today there are, at the Mexico-Arizona border, people sitting in vehicles in 120- degree heat. He said, in a speech on June 18: What we need is not more people. He went on to say: But the fact is, we can get this border secured, and the answer, my friend, is as is proposed in the Cornyn amendment; that we hire 10,000 more Border Patrol agents. He said: That is not a recognition of what we need. Finally, he said: No expert I have talked to, to say the best way to control people from crossing the border illegally, which I desperately want to do, works better with a huge amount of personnel. So I point out those comments by Senator Schumer and Senator McCain, two of the leading members of the Gang of 8--their comments on June 12. So if it is true, as reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, that Senator Corker and Senator Hoeven have moved them off the zero additional Border Patrol agents to doubling the size of the Border Patrol agents, that is a substantial movement in terms of boots on the ground. I will conclude, for now, by saying this: I am looking forward to seeing the language that is being proposed, the alternative language. But for now, I believe my amendment deserves the support of the Members of this Chamber because I believe it is the only way we have available to us to ensure our constituents, to look them in the face and say: We know we have broken promises in the past when it comes to border security. We know we promised 17 years ago there would be a biometric entry-exit system, when President Clinton signed that into law. But you know what, we didn't do it. But we are serious about doing the enforcement and security measures now and, in fact, we have put a provision in the bill which will guarantee it. That is what my amendment will do. I reserve the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 45 minutes between now and the time our vote is scheduled this morning on my amendment.

Mr. CORNYN. I yield to the Senator.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would say to the Senator from Alabama that he reads it the same way I read it. You can't do both. You can't raise the money to pay for the bill and say you don't have to pay Social Security benefits. These very same people are going to expect some day that they will get those benefits. What happens, as I understand it--and the distinguished ranking member of the Budget Committee can correct me if I am wrong--when we borrow money, in essence, from the Social Security trust fund, there is an IOU there that is going to have to be paid back. It does appear to me there is double counting here. I would say the $14.2 billion on-budget deficit, that is before you add in the $30 billion of additional cost for 20,000 Border Patrol agents. As I read page 48 of the CBO, they estimate that implementing the underlying bill would result in net discretionary costs of about $22 billion over the 2014-to-2023 period. It sounds to me as if the costs keep mounting and there is double counting going on. I think we have to get to the bottom of it. Given our rush, we need to slow down, understand the numbers, and understand the financial impact, because that is not going to go away if we get it wrong.

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair. I wish to get a 2-minute notice, please.

Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch) and the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we obviously are talking about immigration this week and last week and next week. I am one of those who, after many years working on this subject, hopes we are successful in passing what I believe is good, credible immigration reform. I have come to the conclusion, like many Americans, that the status quo is simply unacceptable. I have talked a little bit about some of the bodies in unmarked graves that I witnessed myself in Brooks County, TX, where under the current broken system people come across the border from faraway lands only to die trying to get into this country and are buried in unmarked graves in places like Brooks County. I met with a young woman who was prostituted after having been brought into the United States from Central America, and she worked in a Houston nightclub, where she was basically held as an indentured servant or slave because she knew she was vulnerable to deportation. So the person who brought here there and put her in that situation knew they had the power to keep her quiet and not disclose what was happening, while she was living a horrific existence. Those are just a couple of examples why I believe our system is broken and neither serves our economic interests nor represents our American values. So I want a good solution. But it is not just what happens here in the Senate. That is not the end game. The end game is what happens when this bill goes to the House and once the House and the Senate get together in a conference committee and reconcile the differences between those two bills to see if we can actually get a bill which reflects our values and which represents our economic interests, things such as recruiting the best and the brightest minds from around the world to stay here in America and to create jobs here. Those are some of the positives in the underlying bill that we need to preserve, but there are other issues we need to fix. That is what I want to talk about right now. Last night the Congressional Budget Office released its long-awaited report on the underlying bill, the so-called Gang of 8 immigration bill people have heard so much about. The report, as usual, is a blizzard of numbers and estimates and projections, but here are two I want to talk about in particular, which you see reflected on this chart. I think this is going to be a shocking revelation to most people who thought this bill would actually fix our broken immigration system. If you will look behind me, it says: The number of new unauthorized immigrations in the United States by 2033 with the passage of the underlying bill, 7.5 million; without it, 10 million. So what we see reflected in the Congressional Budget Office, which is the ``coin of the realm,'' the ``gold standard''--whatever you want to call it--around here, love it or hate it, and we all find ourselves on different sides depending on the issue, but the gold standard, the Congressional Budget Office, says this bill will not fix the underlying problem. In other words, despite all of the promises and perhaps I might say the hopes and the dreams and the good intentions of the authors of this underlying bill, this bill will have only a minimal impact on illegal immigration. Does that sound like the kind of solution we owe to the American people to solve this broken system? Does that sound like a solution to solve our long-term problem in this area? I want to take a moment to discuss another portion of the bill that has gone largely unnoticed by most of the country, but first let me respond to some remarks made by my friend from Arizona Senator McCain yesterday. I am going to agree, not disagree, with Senator McCain. Standing right here on the Senate floor, as he so often does, Senator McCain said he was absolutely confident--absolutely confident--that U.S. authorities can obtain 100 percent situational awareness and full operational control of the southern border. He cited the head of the Border Patrol as his authority. I was glad to hear him say that because I agree with him exactly. He is exactly right. But I was a little confused at the same time. He repeated a comment that the majority leader had made about my amendment, which will be pending soon before the Senate and which we will vote on later today or tomorrow. He called my amendment a poison pill, suggesting that it would somehow kill the underlying bill. Well, if the standards in my amendment are exactly the same as those in the underlying bill of 100 percent situational awareness and 90 percent operational control, defined as 90 percent capture of people crossing the border illegally--Senator McCain thinks it is attainable, the Border Patrol Chief thinks it is attainable, and I think it is attainable. So how could that possibly be a poison pill? I do not understand it. As I have said numerous times over the last week, my amendment uses the same standards and many of the same metrics as the Gang of 8 bill. Here is the difference: My amendment establishes a real border security trigger before immigrants can transition from probationary status-- something called registered provisional immigrant status--before they can transition from that probationary status to legalization. Under the Gang of 8 bill, that would occur after 10 years of probationary status. But the problem is, contrary to initial advertisements back in January where Senator Durbin, among others--the distinguished majority whip-- said back in January that the pathway to citizenship is contingent upon border security, only to say just a few days ago, quoted in the National Journal--he said: Now we have delinked the pathway to citizenship from border security. Indeed, they have in the underlying bill, and that is what my amendment is designed to fix. Here is the real tragedy. In 1986 Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty for 3 million people. That is not the tragedy. The tragedy is, in return the American people said we are going to fix our broken immigration system. We are going to enforce the law. Well, we all know what happened. The amnesty was granted and the enforcement never came. Here is the tragedy. The underlying bill, without an amendment such as mine that provides a real border security trigger that realigns the incentives for the right, the left, Republicans, Independents, Democrats, everybody to be focused like a laser on how do we actually implement that operational control of the border--which Senator McCain believes is attainable, I believe is attainable, the Border Patrol Chief believes is attainable--without realigning everybody's incentives to focus like a laser on obtaining that objective, this is like 1986 all over again. All we have to do is look at the polling to tell us--and I don't think we even need any polls to tell us--that there is enormous skepticism across the country about Washington. This bill says: Trust us. Trust us. There is a trust deficit in Washington, DC, and on immigration. When so many promises have been made in the past that have not been kept, I think it is unreasonable to ask the American people to just trust us. We need an enforcement mechanism such as my amendment, which will guarantee that everybody is aligned and it is highly incentived to make sure that those Border Patrol measures are upheld. Then we will not have what is reflected on the chart behind me, as reported by the Congressional Budget Office yesterday. The year 1986 was when Congress passed amnesty for illegal immigrants without guaranteeing results on border security. Ever since then Members of this Chamber have said we will never make that mistake again. Yet the underlying bill would effectively be 1986 on steroids and the CBO report confirms it. That is why those of us who actually would like to see a good, credible immigration bill pass--not only in the Senate but also in the House--believe, as I do, that this legislation is dead on arrival in the House of Representatives without a real border security trigger. It is going to be a challenge even if we put that in, but we have a much better chance of success if we deal with the problem that the Congressional Budget Office has identified, and if we deal with the experience we have had from 1986 and other times when we made extravagant promises to the American people how we are going to fix the system, only to find that those promises have not been kept. That will be the real poison pill to this bill, and it will also be an unnecessary and lamentable tragedy if somehow we can't, working together, find a solution to our broken immigration system. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendments, and to call up my amendment No. 1251.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

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.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch) and the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch) and the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch) and the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Chiesa) and the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I know the parties are working on a unanimous consent agreement for the next tranche of amendments to come forward. I expect and hope mine will be one of them, but it is not quite completed yet. So rather than ask for unanimous consent to call up my amendment now, what I would like to do is just talk about it a little bit and explain to my colleagues what is in it. We call my amendment the RESULTS amendment because it is necessary, because in the current form of the so-called Gang of 8 bill, it does not include any genuine guarantee of border security. My colleagues don't have to take my word for it. All they have to do is take a look at the chart behind me. Senator Durbin, one of the four Democrats and four Republicans who were responsible for coming up with the so-called Gang of 8 bill, said in January that in that bill, a pathway to citizenship ``would be contingent upon securing the border.'' He said that in January. I think a lot of people took him and others at their word, only to find out otherwise in June, 6 months later--June 2013-- when he was quoted as saying that the gang has ``delinked the pathway to citizenship and border enforcement.'' What that means is the underlying bill gives a promise--another hollow, unenforceable promise--and, based upon our experience, I think the American people would be justified in saying they are asking us to trust them at a time when there is a genuine trust deficit with regard to the Federal Government. We have heard too many promises. We want guarantees that these promises will be delivered on, and that is what my amendment is all about. In the underlying bill, all we have is--first of all, we have a 100- percent situational awareness requirement and a 90-percent apprehension requirement of people who are crossing the border illegally. But all that is required in the underlying bill is the submission of a plan and substantial completion of that plan for which nobody has seen the contents. That is 10 years from now. I don't think anyone would be out of bounds in saying there may be good intentions--people may actually believe what they say, but how can we possibly know that some unwritten plan that is going to be in place 10 years from now will actually be successful in accomplishing the very goals that were set out in the bill? My amendment is slightly different because it embraces those same standards, including 100 percent situational awareness and 90 percent cross-border apprehensions, and it says a person can't transition from probationary status to legal permanent residency until it is certified that they have accomplished those goals. What that does, simply stated, is--it doesn't punish anything, but it lines up all of the incentives for those of us who want to secure the border and have a border immigration system that actually works and incentives for those for whom a pathway to citizenship is the holy grail; that is what they want more than anything else. So it realigns incentives on the right and the left and gets us in a position where we can actually look the American people in the face and say we have as close as humanly possible a guarantee that these promises will ultimately be kept. My amendment requires the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, in consultation with the Government Accountability Office and the Comptroller General, to jointly certify that the following triggers are met before registered provisional immigrants can adjust to lawful permanent residency or green card status. First, as I said, the Department of Homeland Security has to have achieved and maintained full situational awareness of the entire southern border for not less than 1 year. That means the Department of Homeland Security has the capability to conduct continuous and integrated monitoring, sensing or surveillance of each and every 1-mile segment of the southern border or its immediate vicinity. Some may say: Full border situational awareness? How are we going to do that? Are we going to link Border Patrol agents arm to arm across a 2,000-mile border? Are we going to just build a fence, as some have advocated, along the 2,000-mile border? The fact is we are going to use the best technology and the best strategy to make sure the resources our U.S. military has deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq and which have been tested along the southern border are available for border control, so that by virtue of radar, eyes in the sky, dirigibles, and unmanned aerial vehicles, a combination of these connected to the sensors on the ground will make sure the Border Patrol knows what is happening along the border when people try to cross and enter illegally. Then it is up to them to hit the 90-percent operational control requirement in both the underlying bill and in my amendment. The Department of Homeland Security is required to achieve that operational control for not less than 1 year, meaning it has an effectiveness apprehension rate of not less than 90 percent in each and every sector of the southern border. I saw this morning that Senator McCain said he expects to have a letter from the head of the Border Patrol which states that standard is imminently doable, given the proper resources. So if it is imminently doable, then I would like to suggest, contrary to what the majority leader said a few days ago, that this amendment is not a poison pill. This amendment would give the American people the confidence that we are actually going to do what is technologically feasible and which I believe they have a right to expect if we are going to be generous in the way we treat the 11 million people who are here and provide them not only an opportunity to apply for probation and to work, if they qualify and if they maintain the terms of that probation, but if they are successful, to ultimately apply 10 years hence for legal permanent residency for those who want that and who have played by the rules. The third trigger in my amendment is one that maintains the underlying provision requiring the Department of Homeland Security to implement an E-Verify system nationwide. The current situation is such that individuals who want to work may have fake documents claiming to be somebody they are not--maybe it is somebody else's Social Security number--in order to get hired. But the employer is not expected to be the police; they are not expected to be able to look behind these documents. We know that massive identity theft and document fraud occur in such a way as to circumvent the efforts to enforce our system and to restore legality into the system when it comes to people who come to this country and want to work here. So that is the third one. The fourth one, in order to fill a gaping hole in the bill with respect to interior enforcement, the RESULTS amendment requires the Department of Homeland Security to initiate removal proceedings for at least 90 percent of visa overstays who collectively currently account for 40 percent of illegal immigration. I think it surprises a lot of people to learn it is not just our porous borders, it is people who enter the country legally who simply overstay their visa and melt into the great American landscape, unless they happen to get caught for committing a crime of some kind, and they typically are not identified or detained. This is simply unacceptable, and my amendment is designed to guarantee that the Department of Homeland Security will implement a procedure which has been required for 17 years now. President Clinton signed a provision into law requiring a biometric entry and exit system. When a person enters the country on a foreign visa, they are required to give fingerprints--that is their biometric identifier--but there is no way and no means by which to check whether a person has left the country when their visa has expired. This is designed to deal with that 40-percent source of illegal immigration. My amendment authorizes the creation of a southern border security commission similar to the one in the underlying bill, but does so in a way that respects the Constitution and federalism. My amendment removes Washington, DC, appointees from the commission and allows State Governors to immediately begin advising the Department on gaining operational control of the southern border. I think this is very important because while I have heard colleagues here in the Senate who have good intentions--but I think sometimes their only consciousness of what the border may look like is derived from movies they have seen or novels they have read--this requires consultation with the people who know the border communities best, and that is the people who live there and the State Governors who govern States on our U.S.-Mexico border. My amendment also requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to issue a comprehensive southern border security strategy within 120 days of enactment. People who are listening may say: I thought the Department of Homeland Security already had a southern border security strategy. And if it does not, why in the heck not? Well, this would compel the Secretary--who, amazingly to most people in my State, when she declared the border is secure, nearly provoked laughter, as much as anything else, because it is patently and demonstrably not true--but this amendment would require such a strategy within 120 days of enactment of the bill and chart a course for achieving and maintaining full situational awareness and operational control of the southern border. The Secretary would also be required to submit semiannual reports on implementation. This amendment would also streamline and improve the strategy required under the underlying bill. For example, it combines the southern border security strategy and the southern border fencing strategy for administrative clarity and economies of scale. It also addresses an oversight in the underlying bill by requiring the Department of Homeland Security to develop a strategy to reduce land port of entry wait times by 50 percent in order to facilitate legitimate commerce and encourage lawful cross-border trade. This is something that is not sufficiently appreciated. Mexico is our third largest trading partner. Six million jobs in America depend on cross-border trade with Mexico. Why in the world would we want to do anything that would make cross-border lawful trade worse? Right now, by failing to update our infrastructure at the ports of entry--and to make sure we have adequate staffing here--there are huge wait lines which prove very useful to the people who want to smuggle drugs and people across the border. So this would have a way of separating the legitimate trade and traffic from the people who are up to no good: the drug dealers, the human traffickers, and the like. There is a question that has arisen, as you might expect, about how we are going to pay for all this. That is a good question, and it is an important question. My amendment creates a comprehensive immigration reform trust fund similar to that in the underlying bill. Ultimately, the goal is for fees and fines to fund this entire piece of legislation. But my amendment combines all border security funding streams and makes $6.5 billion of these funds available immediately for implementing the southern border security strategy. The RESULTS amendment increases the number of Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers by 5,000 each. Some people have mistakenly said I want to add 10,000 Border Patrol agents to the border on top of the 20,000 who are already there. Well, that is not entirely accurate. We want 5,000 more because if you have this great technology--which is going to give you eyes in the sky; 100-percent situational awareness--when this technology identifies people trying to cross the border, you have to have somebody to go get them and to detain them. That is why Border Patrol agents are important. In some parts of our 1,200-mile border in Texas alone, there are huge stretches of land that are vulnerable to cross-border traffic. That is why the Rio Grande sector in South Texas is now the single most crossed sector. The other day, when I was in Brooks County--Falfurrias, TX--the head of the Border Patrol sector in that area told me that in 1 day they had 700 people coming across the border whom they detained. We do not know how many got away, but they did detain 700 people. Madam President, 400 of them came from countries other than Mexico. In other words, Mexico's economy is doing much better, and it is less and less incentive for people to cross into the United States to work if they have a job where they live. But in Central America things are pretty bad right now. So 400 out of the 700 in 1 day came from Central America. Literally people could come from anywhere around the world if they have the money and the determination to penetrate our southern border. So it is important we have increased numbers of Border Patrol agents as well as Customs and Border Protection officers to help facilitate legitimate commerce and to detain people trying to cross illegally. By the way, the underlying bill already has a provision for additional CBP officers--Customs and Border Protection officers--and my amendment would increase that number by 3,500, and add 5,000 Border Patrol agents to it. The RESULTS amendment also improves emergency border security resource appropriations by ensuring that deployment decisions are consistent with the comprehensive strategy and not done in a piecemeal, disconnected sort of way. It is important that we have a combination of not only boots on the ground, infrastructure, but also that technology I think we would all agree upon, much of which the American taxpayer has already paid for because it is being deployed by the U.S. military in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq. What we need to do is transfer some of that to the Homeland Security Department--another part of the Federal Government--and to implement it to help provide that situational awareness and enforcement. My amendment also authorizes $1 billion a year for 6 years--it does not appropriate it; it authorizes it--in emergency port of entry personnel and infrastructure improvements. I already touched on that a moment ago. But the whole idea of the underlying bill is to provide a guest worker program, a legal means to come and work in the United States. The idea is that will allow law enforcement to focus on the bad actors. This has the similar rationale. The RESULTS amendment further improves the land ports of entry by allowing the General Services Administration to enter into public- private partnerships to improve infrastructure and operations. This amendment also repurposes the Tucson sector earmark in the underlying bill to the full southern border to help ensure that effective border security prosecutions are increased in every sector, not just in one, in Tucson. By making improvements to the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program--the so-called SCAAP bill--my amendment would help ensure that State and local governments are swiftly and fully compensated for their assistance in detaining criminal aliens who have been convicted of offenses and who are awaiting trial. One of the great frustrations in my State--given our common border with Mexico and the failure of the Federal Government to live up to its responsibilities when it comes to border security--is that much of the cost of that is borne by local governments and local taxpayers in counties along the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly when it comes to education, health care, and law enforcement. This SCAAP provision in my amendment would help make sure that in the law enforcement area State and local law enforcement officials are indemnified and, indeed, encouraged to help cooperate in detaining criminal aliens who have been convicted of offenses and are awaiting trial. My amendment would also create the southern border security assistance grant program to help border law enforcement officials target drug traffickers, human traffickers, human smugglers, and violent crime. Again, the Federal law enforcement agencies cannot do it by themselves, and local and State law enforcement in Texas do not expect them to, but they do expect a little bit of help, financial help, particularly, when it comes to overtime, when it comes to equipment that is necessary to supplement the Federal effort or to fill the gap when the Federal Government leaves a gap in law enforcement efforts. My amendment would also remove a controversial provision in the underlying bill that would prevent the emergency deportation of serious criminals. My amendment would remove a controversial disclosure bar that would prevent law enforcement and national security officials from obtaining critical information contained in legalization applications filed under this bill. My amendment would allow these officials to request and obtain information in connection with an independent criminal, national security, or civil investigation. This is directed at one of the biggest problems in the 1986 amnesty Ronald Reagan signed, because he signed an amnesty for 3 million people premised on the idea that we were actually going to enforce the law and we would never need to do that again. But so much of that amnesty was riddled with fraud and criminal activity because of the confidentiality provisions which prohibited law enforcement from investigating and detecting fraud and criminality. If we want to maintain the integrity of the provisions of this bill, we need to make sure our law enforcement officials are not blinded, but that they actually have the ability to investigate these matters for a criminal, national security, or civil investigation. My amendment would allow Citizenship and Immigration Services to turn over evidence of criminal activity or terrorism contained in legalization applications filed under the bill to other law enforcement agencies after the application has been denied and all administrative appeals have been exhausted. This would greatly work to reduce the potential for mass fraud that occurred in the 1986 amnesty bill, and it would allow the application process to maintain its basic integrity and ensure that national security is protected. My amendment would also give American diplomatic officials more flexibility to share foreigners' visa records with our allies by clarifying that the State Department may share visa records with a foreign government on a case-by-case basis for the purpose of determining removability or eligibility for a visa, admission, or other immigration benefits--not just for crime prevention, investigation, and punishment--or when the sharing is in the national interest of the United States. My amendment would further improve the public safety by denying probationary status--something called RPI, or registered provisional immigrant status--to any person who has been convicted of a crime involving domestic violence, child abuse, assault with bodily injury, violation of a protective order under the Violence Against Women Act, or drunk driving. These are serious offenses, and the consequences are often tragic. The underlying bill would allow the vast majority of illegal immigrants who have committed these crimes to automatically become registered provisional immigrants and, ultimately, hold open to them the possibility they could become American citizens. I think we need to draw a very bright line between those whose only offense is to try to come here for a better life and those who have shown such contempt for our laws and American law and order that they commit crimes. We should not reward them with a registered provisional immigrant or probationary status. My amendment also removes an unjustified provision in the underlying bill that would allow repeat criminals with multiple convictions to automatically obtain legal status, so long as they were convicted of the multiple offenses on the same day. I know that sounds very strange, but in the underlying bill, if you commit multiple offenses on one day, they do not count as separate offenses for purposes of the bar--if you commit three misdemeanors or a felony. So my amendment would fix that. My amendment would also remove a dangerous provision in the underlying bill that would allow the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security unfettered discretion to waive this criminal activity prohibition and to allow people to gain legal status, even if they are repeat criminals who have been convicted of three or more offenses. My amendment would strike a controversial provision allowing deportees and persons currently located outside the United States to qualify for probationary status. I do not know how many people have actually focused on this provision. I think most people thought this was for people who were in the shadows in the United States whose only offense was simply a violation of our immigration laws to come here and work. But this underlying bill would allow people who have already been deported and who have committed crimes already to reenter the country and to qualify for probationary status. My amendment would change that and fix that. My amendment would require the Secretary of Homeland Security, through her designees, to conduct interviews of applicants for RPI status who have been convicted of a criminal offense in order to determine whether the applicant is a danger to the public safety. Now, I can imagine that somebody might have committed some misdemeanor offense, but upon further inquiry and examination they may not be deemed a threat to the public safety. That is what the purpose of that interview requirement would be. We also close a judicial review loophole that would allow dangerous individuals to remain in the United States after their RPI application has been denied by the Department of Homeland Security. Finally, my amendment would take a hard line against human smuggling and the transnational criminal organizations that are the primary movers of people and drugs across the southern borders. I do not know how many of our colleagues really understand this now, but this is a major business that is primarily occupied by organized crime. It is the drug cartels. It is what we sometimes call transnational criminal organizations and the people who work for them. They are the primary agency moving people, drugs, and contraband across the border. That is what my amendment is designed to attack-- increased penalties for human smuggling and the transnational criminal organizations that facilitate them. My amendment adds aggravated penalties for human smuggling that is committed by repeat offenders which result in death, result in human trafficking, or include involuntary sexual conduct. I had the humbling experience the other day when I was in south Texas in meeting a young lady who is from Central America. Her parents paid $6,000 for her to be smuggled into the United States and to be reunited with relatives in New Jersey, only to find out that did not work out too well, and she had to rejoin the person who brought her across the border, the human smuggler, who promptly prostituted her and put her into involuntary servitude where she was afraid to escape lest she be deported and have to leave the country. There are innumerable human tragedies which occur day in and day out under the status quo, which is one reason why I believe we need to fix our broken immigration system, and particularly our porous border, that allows these predators to prey on innocent young women like this young woman I met from Guatemala, and to basically commit them to human slavery in the United States in places like Houston, where she worked in a bar and was prostituted out numerous times a day. Because she felt so vulnerable, she believed the only way she could actually stay here was to submit to the demands of this sexual predator. My amendment respects the victims of abuse of human smuggling by requiring the Department of Justice to ensure that information about missing and unidentified migrant remains found on lands near the southern border is uploaded into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. We provide state and local officials with resources to identify the victims. This is another experience I had when I was in Brooks County recently in south Texas, where just last year alone they found 129 dead bodies-- human remains--that they were unable to identify because these were people simply left behind by the human smugglers who basically did not care anything about them--only for the money they would provide, which once provided, they could care less about whether these people actually made their way into the United States, particularly if they were slowing down the rest of the group. My RESULTS amendment disqualifies persons who have used a commercial motor vehicle to commit a human smuggling offense from operating a commercial vehicle for a year. We ban repeat human smugglers from operating commercial motor vehicles for life. This is a penalty that will have teeth in it and deter this heinous crime. My amendment creates special penalties for illegal immigrants convicted of drug trafficking or crimes of violence. Now, we understand that, again, some people have come across our borders without observing our immigration laws who want nothing but a chance to work. But if people have come across the border and engaged in drug trafficking or criminal violence, they deserve the special penalties provided for in my amendment. My amendment would create a new crime for illegal border crossing with the intent to aid, abet, or engage in a crime of terrorism. Again, this is something I wonder whether my colleagues really understand because they do not live along the southwestern border. We have had people from 100 different countries, including countries of special interest as state sponsors of terrorism, come across our southwestern border. When I was in Falfurrias the other day, the Border Patrol showed me rescue beacons which, if you get sick enough and dehydrated enough and exposed enough to the elements and just want to give up, you can hit the beacon and the Border Patrol will come and rescue you. They are listed in three languages: English, Spanish, and Chinese. I asked the Border Patrol: Well, Chinese, that seems a little bit out of place in south Texas. They said: Well, for $30,000, if you are from China, you can hire someone to smuggle you into the United States. So, as we have heard from both the Director of National Intelligence and the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, this vulnerability along our southwestern border is literally a national security vulnerability, and one reason we need to adopt my amendment. My amendment closes loopholes in current laws that allow drug cartel mules to transport bulk cash and launder money with near impunity. So what happens is, the drugs come from the south of the border to the north of the border. Then the transaction is made by somebody buying those drugs. The cash has to make its way back. We have developed pretty sophisticated means through a wire transfer process to identify when large amounts of cash are transferred by wire. But there is also a huge trade in bulk cash, where literally cash is transferred in bulk across the border south in order to launder it with near impunity. My amendment would address that problem. My amendment targets money-laundering efforts through stored value cards and blank checks. So why do it on the wire? Why do it in bulk cash if you can just do it through a gift card you can buy at a local grocery store or blank checks? These are tactics that are frequently used by cartels to transport criminal proceeds across the southern border and launder money. In sum, my amendment goes beyond promises and platitudes. It demands results. Again, it realigns the incentives for everybody to make sure the Department of Homeland Security hits the standards in this bill of 100 percent situational awareness, 90 percent operational control. These are not my standards alone. These were standards that the Gang of 8 wrote initially into their bill. Their bill offers promises but no real enforcement means to make sure it actually happens. Under my amendment, people who applied for registered provisional status are not eligible for legal permanent residency until the American people have the assurances that the border security measures, the E-Verify provision, the biometric entry-exit system, all those things have been done. That seems like a small price to pay with a generous gift that the American people are being asked to confer upon people who have entered the country illegally or who came in legally and overstayed their visa in violation of our laws. Now, this is what a real border security trigger looks like. Unfortunately, some of our colleagues do not want a trigger at all. Above all, they want a pathway to citizenship regardless of whether we have secured our borders. We have tried that before--in 1986. We have also promised people since 1996 that we would implement a biometric entry-exit system and have never delivered that. The 9/11 Commission identified the need for a biometric entry-exit system as a national security imperative in the 9/11 Commission report. We still have not done it. So why in the world would the American people, at a time when their trust in the Federal Government is at an all-time low, why in the world would we simply say trust us once more. We are going to promise you the Sun and the Moon and the aurora borealis, but we are not going to have any means necessary in the bill to actually require the implementation of those promises. By the time the empty promises are realized, we know there will be 11 million people on registered provisional immigrant status and potentially on the way to legal permanent residency and citizenship. CNN reported a poll today that said 6 out of 10 Americans in their poll were OK with providing people humane and compassionate treatment, including an opportunity to earn legal status in this country if they could just be assured that the borders would be secured and our laws would be enforced. My amendment accomplishes exactly that. As I have repeatedly emphasized, my amendment uses the same border security standards as the Gang of 8 bill. Again, the difference is that in my amendment it has a real trigger that is based on demonstrable results, while their so-called trigger can be activated whether or not our borders are ever secured. To put it another way, their trigger demands border security inputs. My trigger demands border security results or outputs. We have now had 27 years of inputs since the 1986 amnesty, and we still do not have secure borders. It is long past time to demand results, or outputs, and not just more hollow promises. One final point about immigration reform. Whatever legislation we pass in this Chamber will head over to the House of Representatives. If we want the Senate bill to have any chance to become law, then we have to include real border security provisions and a real border security trigger. Our House colleagues have made that abundantly clear. In other words, my amendment is not a poison pill. It is an antidote because it is the only way we are ever going to truly get bipartisan immigration reform, something which I hope and pray we will because the status quo is simply unacceptable. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).

Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Cochran), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Shelby), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. The latest data shows that U.S. authorities apprehended about 90,000 people along the United States-Mexico border between October of last year and March of this year. Given that we apprehend fewer than half of illegal border crossers, this means we still have hundreds of thousands of people coming into the country across our southern border every year. The problem, it will not surprise the Presiding Officer, is particularly serious in my State because we have the largest common border with Mexico, 1,200 miles. As the New York Times reported this last weekend: ``The front line of the battle against illegal crossings has shifted for the first time in over a decade away from Arizona to the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.'' Indeed, on one day in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, the Border Patrol detained 700 people coming across the border; 400 of them were from countries other than Mexico--400 of them. During the fiscal year which began last October, the number of apprehensions in South Texas has increased by 55 percent, with more than 94,000 apprehensions just in the Rio Grande Valley. I was in South Texas a few weeks ago meeting with property owners, ranchers, law enforcement officials, and others deeply concerned about the rising tide of illegal immigration. But not only is this a national security issue because people are coming from countries other than Mexico, including countries that are of special concern because they are state sponsors of terrorism, this is also a major humanitarian issue. In Brooks County last year, 129 bodies were found, people coming across ranchland after suffering from exposure because they have come from Central America, they have come from China, and they have come from the Middle East. They have come from all over the world, and we have seen a sharp increase in the number of people die because they are trying to navigate our broken immigration system. One final point about immigration reform. Whatever legislation we pass in this Chamber will necessarily have to go to the House of Representatives. If we want the Senate bill to have any chance of passing in the House and becoming law, we need to include real border security measures and a real border security trigger. Our House colleagues have made that abundantly clear. In other words, my amendment is not a poison pill, it is the antidote because it is the only way we are ever going to truly have bipartisan immigration reform. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, last week I previewed an amendment I will be offering, hopefully, as early as this afternoon, on the underlying immigration bill. This is an amendment which the Democratic majority leader and at least one or two other Members of the Senate have called a poison pill. I find that somewhat bizarre, especially in light of what others have said about this amendment, which I will talk about briefly. It strikes me as unusual that anytime anyone offers a different idea by way of an amendment that people do not like they call it a poison pill, as if that was the only option. You either take it without the amendment or you accept the amendment and it kills the legislation. We know the truth is far different. In fact, several members of the so-called Gang of 8 who have been very much involved in negotiating the underlying bill have different opinions, which actually I find somewhat refreshing but not all that surprising. Senator Flake, for example, from Arizona, said, ``I don't think it is a poison pill,'' on June 12. Senator Rubio said of my results amendment, ``It's an excellent place to start.'' I am grateful for their comments. Senator Bennet, a Senator from Colorado, on the other side of the aisle and Senator Flake argued that ``they are not afraid of adding a requirement to nab 90 percent of would-be border crossers.'' That was at the Christian Science Monitor breakfast on June 12. Senator Bennet went on to say, ``I have every confidence that we are going to meet the mark well before the 10 years.'' He said that on June 12 as well. The interesting point about this discussion is the very same measurement or standard that is in my amendment actually comes from the bill that was introduced by the Gang of 8: 100 percent situational awareness of the border and a 90-percent apprehension rate. All my amendment did is to say: OK, you set the standard, but we are going to make sure the Federal Government actually keeps its promises because, unfortunately, the history is littered--recent history, in particular-- with broken promises by the Federal Government, particularly when it comes to immigration. My amendment is necessary. My results amendment, which I will describe further, is necessary because in its current form, the underlying bill does not include a genuine border security trigger. You do not have to take my word for it. Last week, the assistant Democratic leader, Senator Durbin of Illinois, himself said quite explicitly that while the original proposal--as he described it in January 2013, he said: ``A pathway to citizenship needs to be contingent upon securing the border.'' He said that in the context of the bipartisan framework for comprehensive immigration reform. But later on he was quoted in the National Journal, on June 11, saying, ``The Gang of 8 bill has delinked the pathway to citizenship and border enforcement.'' The bill that is being sold today delinks the pathway to citizenship and border enforcement. My amendment would reestablish the very same linkage the gang themselves trumpeted in January 2013. I think this is a remarkable admission, that the current bill delinks the pathway to citizenship and border security. I think most Members of the Senate believe that whatever we do in terms of the status of people who are currently here in undocumented status, that one thing we have to do is to make sure we do not ever deal with this issue again by failing to deal sensibly and responsibly with border security and enforcement. Basically, the approach of the proponents of the underlying bill, as currently written, before my amendment, is: Trust us. Trust us. I have to say that you do not have to be a pollster to know there is not an awful lot of trust toward Washington and the Congress and the Federal Government. It is easy to understand why with all of the various scandals or things that have been represented one way that turn out to be another way. There is a trust deficit in Washington, DC. For those of us who believe that doing nothing on immigration reform is not an option, what I would like to do is to do something to make things better. But in order to get there, we are going to have to guarantee that border security and the interior enforcement provisions and the reestablishment of basic order to our broken immigration system is accomplished in this bill; otherwise, it is not going to happen. In the words of Ronald Reagan, I think we should ask people to trust, but we should also verify that trust is justified. I am not sure some of my colleagues appreciate how essential border security is to immigration reform. For the past three decades, the American people have been given one hollow promise after another about the Federal Government's commitment to secure our borders. The rhetoric from Washington has been impressive, but the results have been pathetic. The reality on the ground in Texas and in other border States has been quite different. Let me put it this way. A decade after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 Americans in New York, the Department of Homeland Security has gained operational control of less than 45 percent of our southern border--45 percent. The Secretary of Homeland Security said: ``The border is secure.'' The President said: ``It is more secure than it has ever been''--45 percent secure. For that matter, it has been more than a decade since the 9/11 Commission recommended another important requirement that is contained in my amendment, which is a nationwide biometric entry-exit system. It has been 17 years since President Clinton signed legislation mandating such a system. So we wonder why there has been such a lack of confidence and a trust deficit between the American people and Washington when it comes to immigration reform and fixing our broken immigration system. It is because they have been sold one hollow promise after another. We still do not have a biometric entry-exit system that President Clinton signed into law 17 years ago, even though about half of illegal immigration occurs when people come into the country legally and overstay their visa and simply melt into the great American landscape. That is where 40 percent of our illegal immigration comes from. We are asking the American people to trust us again? Until Congress acknowledges our credibility problem when it comes to enforcing our immigration laws, including border security, and until such time as we take serious action to fix it, we are never going to get true immigration reform, and we will never be able to pat ourselves on the back and say: You know what. This is not going to happen again. My amendment goes beyond mere promises and platitudes. It demands results. It creates a mechanism for ensuring them. Under my amendment, probationary immigrants are not eligible for legalization until after the United States-Mexico border has been secured and until after we have a nationwide biometric entry-exit system at all airports and seaports and after we have a nationwide E-Verify system, which allows employers to verify the eligibility of individuals who apply for jobs to work legally in the country. That is what a real border security trigger looks like. That is why it is so important. Because we need to incentivize everybody who cares passionately about border security and restoring the rule of law to our broken immigration system, on the one hand, and those who, on the other hand, more than anything else want an opportunity for people to eventually become American citizens, even if they have entered the country illegally, after they have paid a fine and proceeded down a tough but fair path to citizenship. What we need to do is incentivize the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the entire bureaucracy to make sure we guarantee that those will happen. This is the only way I know of to do it. Unfortunately, many of our colleagues do not want a real trigger when it comes to border security. Above all, they want a pathway to citizenship. I am not convinced beyond that they have much concern for whether we keep our promises with regard to border security. They are hoping that once again the American people will put their faith in empty promises. But the time for empty promises is over when it comes to our broken immigration system. If we are ever going to push immigration reform across the finish line, which I want to do, we need to guarantee results. My amendment does that. I would contend that rather than my amendment being the poison pill, the failure to pass a credible provision ensuring border security and interior enforcement will be the poison pill that causes immigration reform to die. That is not a result I want. I want us to see a solution. I do not want the status quo because the status quo is broken. It serves no one's best interests. I am just amazed at some of my colleagues who are resisting this amendment. Why will they not take yes for an answer? Why will they not take yes for an answer on something that unites Republicans and Democrats, who are actually desperately interested in finding a solution and believe the status quo is simply unacceptable? As I have repeatedly emphasized, my amendment simply uses the same border security standards as the underlying Gang of 8 bill. They are the ones who came up with the standard 100 percent situational awareness. They are the ones who came up with a 90-percent apprehension rate. But their bill reiterates a promise but guarantees no results. We have had 27 years of input since the 1986 amnesty, and we still do not have secure borders. Now it is beyond time to guarantee not just more promises or inputs but real outputs. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes.