John Cornyn

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. I will be glad to yield.

Mr. CORNYN. Reclaiming my right to the floor, that is my understanding. I wish to make clear that he has objected, and I wish to make clear that I was not a party to any agreement that would limit us to the number of amendments we would offer today, but I respect that. I offer the amendment to make this point: There are at least 107 amendments that remain to be brought forward and considered. Here we are on Friday completing the first week of what has been set aside as 2 weeks for the consideration of perhaps the most important domestic issue confronting our country today. There will be no votes today. Colleagues are returning either home or off on various travels around the world, and we are here with the most important domestic issue confronting our country today and really not proceeding at a pace that would give us any realistic expectation of getting this matter completed in the way I think this matter needs to be treated. I understand and I respect the Senator from Colorado making an objection to my offering further amendments, but we all can see what is going on here, and I think it portends some very disconcerting things when we are not proceeding at a pace we need to in order to actually get the business of the American people taken care of on this important issue. I expect if I offer other amendments that there likewise will be an objection, so I will not at this time make further offerings of amendments, but I do have in my hand further amendments--amendment No. 1208, which is an amendment I would offer if possible. I also have another amendment, amendment No. 1247, which deals with State impact assistance fees. One of the reasons people are so upset about the Federal Government's complete failure to deal with border security and enforce our immigration laws is that most of the consequences fall on local taxpayers. In my State of Texas, the Federal Government has issued a mandate that says no matter who shows up in your schools, your communities, or in your hospitals, you have to treat them, you have to provide services to them, but the Federal Government doesn't pay for it. The Federal Government needs to pay for these unfunded mandates, and this State impact assistance fee amendment will provide that kind of relief to local taxpayers. I understand where we are, and I respect there has been this agreement between the leaders, and I understand the Senator needs to object, but I reiterate, we need to get moving. We need to have more amendments offered. We need to have more votes and less time off without votes, as we are obviously having today. I will now return to the amendment that I offered this morning and that was allowed. Let me return now to my amendment No. 1250 and explain what this amendment does provide. My hope is that we can, when we return on Monday--actually, I guess it will be Tuesday, June 5--that we will have an opportunity for an early vote on this amendment as well as the pending amendment I have that will prevent rewarding those who have abused our laws and who have really thumbed their nose at our legal system, who have been ordered deported and who have simply gone on the lam, melted into the American landscape and defied the lawful orders of our courts. These are people who have been ordered deported, have actually been deported, but then they returned to the United States in violation of our immigration laws, both of which constitute felonies. It is my hope that I can get a vote on that amendment, which has been pending now for several days, soon after we return. It is my understanding our colleagues are working on some side-by- side agreement to provide some cover for those who don't vote for my amendment, but I think we will have to evaluate that when we see it. I regret the fact that we have not been able to get votes on our amendments because of objections primarily on the other side. There is a major flaw in this legislation, and that flaw is that it will, unless corrected, repeat a fundamental mistake that was made by Congress when Congress last passed massive legalization of undocumented immigrants in 1986. The American people do not expect too much of us, but they do expect that we will not repeat past mistakes. I remember the definition of ``insanity'' once offered was that you do the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. That is the definition of ``insanity.'' This would be a terrible mistake if we pass this legislation without correcting a major flaw in the 1986 amnesty bill that was passed by Congress, after having learned from experience what the consequences of that flaw are. Under this bill, anyone in the United States in violation of our immigration laws can come forward and apply for legal status with impunity. Quite simply, the Department of Homeland Security is prohibited from using internally all of the information from the Z applications as well as sharing information with relevant law enforcement authorities. For example, if an applicant comes forward and is denied legalization because of some disqualifying feature, this legislation, as currently written without my amendment, will prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the immigration enforcement authorities, from using the information from that application to apprehend that person. What we learned from the 1986 amnesty was what the New York Times said--that it created the largest immigration fraud in the history of the United States. That is the mistake my amendment will attempt to correct. As we know from the general counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under President Clinton, the statutory restrictions on sharing information and providing confidentiality of the applications of those who apply for amnesty contributed enormously to that fraud. The population that will benefit from this legislation should be treated with no more confidentiality than any other classes of immigrants. We don't afford this robust confidentiality protection to other immigrant classes, such as asylees or battered women or those applying for temporary protected status, so I ask: Why the double standard? When an asylum seeker applies for legal status, that asylum seeker must submit an application and return at a later date for a decision. If that asylum seeker is denied, he or she is taken into custody or provided a notice to appear on the spot based on the information provided by the applicant. The proponents of this legislation will tell us that without these guarantees of confidentiality, those who are already in the United States in violation of our immigration laws will not come forward and seek legal status. But I must ask: Are we not granting the biggest benefit that can ever be conferred to an immigrant population; that is, legal status after they have violated our immigration laws? And to be clear, we are talking about those who cannot even establish that they meet the minimum requirements to get this valuable benefit and, even worse, have flouted our immigration and criminal laws. Why should we treat individuals who are denied a Z visa with broad privacy protections by the mere filing of an application for that status? Why should they be treated differently from everybody else? The proponents will say they do exempt from confidentiality those individuals who commit fraud or who are part of some other scheme in connection with their application. Of course, this is the very least we should be doing. But this bill does not go nearly far enough to effectively enforce our immigration laws and protect the American people from criminals and others who might do us harm. For example, at page 311 of this bill, in section 604(b) labeled ``Exceptions to Confidentiality,'' the drafters of the compromise have chosen to protect aliens who are criminal absconders who have not been removed from the United States. You may be asking: What is an absconder? Quite simply, an absconder is someone who has ignored a final court-ordered deportation and can be prosecuted for a separate felony offense which is punishable by up to 4 years in prison. So the drafters of this underlying bill have chosen to protect that class of people who have not been removed from the United States. We all know that hundreds of thousands of immigrants come across our borders each year, many legally, a lot more illegally. But what most Americans would be shocked to hear is that according to recent estimates, almost 700,000 of those who have been ordered deported have simply failed to comply with that court order. How many Americans think it is OK to ignore the lawful order of one of our courts? How many Americans, after receiving a subpoena from a court, ignore it and simply skip the court date? As my colleagues know, I have offered a separate amendment that would categorically bar fugitive aliens from receiving amnesty. I believe this is an issue of fundamental fairness and the integrity of the rule of law. In exchange for the largest legalization program in our Nation's history, we should be able to say without any doubt that for any person who applies for and is denied a Z visa on any grounds, we will authorize Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take that application, arrest that individual, and to deport them as not qualifying under the laws of the land. But the bill the Senate is considering would turn a blind eye to those who would apply for this amnesty and are denied. This bill would allow them to slide back into the shadows--the very problem we are trying to solve by this bill. Ask a random citizen on the street today to answer this simple question: Someone who has violated our immigration laws comes forward to apply for legal status under this bill. Because the applicant does not satisfy one of the criteria for being awarded legal status, the applicant is denied a Z visa. What happens to that individual under the present bill if my amendment is not adopted? I don't think we could find 1 out of 100 who would say something other than: Well, they should go home. And I suspect the majority would say they should be arrested on the spot and be deported. Yet the so-called confidentiality provisions in this bill will prevent law enforcement officials from using information on the application to locate and remove a significant population of those who cannot qualify for a Z visa because they are simply disqualified by law. This is, in essence, providing an opportunity to significant categories of individuals whose applications are considered and rejected to slide back into the shadows and to defy our laws. This is the very problem we have been told this legislation was designed to fix. Yet it is designed in reality for failure unless this amendment is accepted. The whole point of this exercise, we continue to be told, is to enhance U.S. security by bringing people out of the shadows and into the open, to allow people who want to cooperate with the law to do so, while allowing our law enforcement officials to focus their efforts on drug traffickers, on criminals, and others who may come here to do us harm. But this bill would draw those who have entered our country in violation of our immigration laws or who have overstayed in violation of those laws to do so and to slide back into the shadows without allowing the law to be enforced. I would like to remind my colleagues of our Nation's recent history with a massive legalization program and the consequences of prohibitions of Federal agencies on information sharing. As I have stated, reasonable observers have concluded that the 1986 amnesty was rife with fraud. There was an article written in the New York Times, I believe it was 1989, and it called this one of the most massive frauds in American history. We know, for example, from the 9/11 Commission staff statements that Mohammed and Abouhalima, conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, were granted green cards, or legal permanent resident status, under the special agricultural worker program, which was an amnesty program created by the 1986 bill. Under this special agricultural worker program, a key component of that 1986 amnesty bill, applicants had to provide evidence that they had worked on perishable crops for at least 90 days between May 1, 1985, and May 1, 1986. Their residence did not have to be continuous or unlawful. Nearly 1 million of these individuals who applied received legal permanent resident status under this amnesty, twice the number of foreigners normally employed in agriculture at that time according to the 9/11 Commission and staff. I would like to make one last significant point about the ill- conceived confidentiality protections contained in this compromise bill. Under this bill we are considering, Congress would even prohibit the use of information from the sworn third-party affidavits that are one of the documents that can prove eligibility. Let me say that again. Under this bill, you can get some third party--there is no requirement of who they might be: a friend, a family member, anybody--to sign an affidavit attesting that you were lawfully present--or that you were present, not lawfully but you were present--in the United States as of a certain date in order to qualify for benefits under this bill. We already know from well-documented prosecutions of document vendors and other legalization cases that the type of documents submitted, especially these kinds of sworn affidavits, without limitation, were used to further fraud. At the very least, we should not repeat the mistakes of 1986 by allowing the continued use of sworn affidavits by those who have already shown their willingness to violate our laws in order to gain the benefits under this bill. My amendment takes care of that concern because it will allow those sort of false documents to be investigated and, where necessary, prosecuted. Those who engage in cottage industries of massive fraud on a huge scale can be investigated by our authorities and prosecuted where warranted. My amendment takes care of that concern. We know one thing, criminals and terrorists have abused and will continue to seek ways to abuse our immigration system in order to enter and remain in our country. I regret to say that the bill we are debating today fails to give law enforcement the commonsense tools that would prevent terrorists and others who seek to do us harm from exploiting the vulnerabilities inherent in any massive legalization program. My colleagues may say there is a confidentiality exception for national security and for fraud, but to rely solely on these narrow exceptions is to engage in wishful thinking and, as far as I am concerned, ignores history and hard experience and the terrorist and criminal threats that we face. Why would we leave any of this to chance? Why would we turn a blind eye to the type of abuses that we have seen happen in the past and risk it happening again in this bill? I submit that any rejected application not only will provide valuable information to assist in deporting a person that is not entitled under our own laws to the benefits under this bill but may provide law enforcement with a valuable lead that they were previously unaware of, a lead that could--and this is not too much of a stretch--potentially save lives and, at the very least, improve public safety. Failure to allow law enforcement to connect the dots is a deadly mistake. I have heard many of my colleagues promise never would that happen again. So I urge those who are truly serious about their commitment to make sure the mistakes of the past don't occur again, and that we don't expose the American people to an unnecessary risk and ultimately lose their confidence by enacting a law that cannot be enforced. If we do that, I think we will not have done our job. So I urge all of us who are serious about this commitment to support my amendment to make this crucial improvement to this legislation. Mr. President, I have to make one correction. Apparently, affidavits are not allowed from relatives but are from nonrelatives. So you can't get your brother-in-law, I guess, to sign an affidavit saying when you were in the United States, but you can get a stranger on the street or someone else to sign an affidavit saying, yes, John Cornyn was present in the United States as of this date. What we want to do is bring a little sunshine to this process to allow our law enforcement officials to do what they have sworn to do, and which they do so nobly and so valiantly day in and day out, and that is investigate crime, bring those who break our laws to justice, to root out fraud, and to make sure our laws do work.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I expected the distinguished Senator from Colorado to lodge an objection to my amendment.

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

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, at this time, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment, No. 1189, and ask for the immediate consideration of my amendment No. 1250, which I believe is at the desk.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I reclaim my time.

Mr. CORNYN. Well, Mr. President, I appreciate the question from the distinguished Senator from Alabama, who was a former U.S. attorney, former attorney general of his State, as the occupant of the chair was of his State, as was, as a matter of fact, Senator Salazar. It seems as if we have a former attorneys general convention right here on the floor of the Senate, all of us engaged in law enforcement actions most of our professional lives. To answer the Senator's question, I am simply at a loss to understand why, on the single most important domestic issue facing our country today--our broken borders and our immigration system. This is designed to fail because of these barriers of information sharing that have been erected and because of the confidentiality provisions that have been slapped on affidavits and other evidence of fraud that might help us root out and investigate wrongdoers and bring them to justice. I think this is the main reason people are so profoundly skeptical of what we are doing today. I don't think any of us should be under any illusion that if we erect this nice, pretty superstructure that we talk about, that the elements of the bill that are meritorious--things such as triggers, things such as enhanced border security, effective worksite verification--if we undermine it, if we simply cut the legs out from under the ability of law enforcement officials to enforce this law in a way that will see it collapse again, like the 1986 amnesty bill did, and we don't learn from that hard experience and improve this bill and eliminate those errors and those flaws, I think we will have failed the essential purpose for which we were sent here--to represent the American people, to see that the laws are respected, to see that law and order are reestablished. I really do believe the reason people are so upset about this issue is because they see rampant lawlessness and disregard for the law in our immigration system. They recognize that in a post-9/11 world that our broken borders can allow economic migrants to come across. We all understand why people want to come to America. It is the same reason they always have: they want a better life. We understand that. But we have to know who is coming into our country and the reasons they come here. We have offered generous temporary worker programs under this bill so they could come legally, so they could be screened, so law enforcement could focus on the criminals, potential terrorists, and others who want to do us harm. But why in the world, I would ask my colleagues, would we want to leave these flaws in the bill which prohibit our law enforcement officials from doing their job, from investigating and rooting out fraud and criminality and bringing wrongdoers to justice?

Mr. CORNYN

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

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, by way of housekeeping, I wish to submit a modification of my amendment that is pending, amendment No. 1184.

Mr. CORNYN. If I may explain to my colleagues, there is a problem with the pagination in the original draft of the bill. I noticed the original amendment appears to be off. This is to reconcile the problem with the handwritten note on page 224, which was added on the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I understand now, talking to the majority whip, there is no objection to the modification of my amendment, No. 1184. As I was explaining, we checked with the legislative counsel last night and this morning we were told the problem was with the handwritten page, No. 224, that was added on the floor. So it is a matter of pagination. I appreciate the accommodation of my colleagues to allow that modification to go forward. Also, legislative counsel corrected a technical error in the text which this modification corrects. I have two things I want to speak on, briefly. First, on my original amendment, No. 1184, as you recall, this is composed of two parts. The first part is what I would assume to be technical errors in the underlying bill. In the haste of writing the bill, I think there were some errors made that we pointed out in the amendment, errors that need to be corrected. I do not expect there will be a lot of controversy about that. What is more controversial, what I want to address, is the second part. That has to do with excluding from the benefits under this bill individuals who have already come into our country in violation of our immigration laws, who have been detained, who have had due process, a trial, who have had their day in court and then, once they were ordered deported, rather than agree to show up and be deported, they simply went on the lam and went underground and melted into the great American landscape. A second category is people who have had their day in court, who have been deported but then who have reentered illegally. Under section 234 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, both of those actions would constitute felonies. I think it would be a grave error for this bill to reward individuals who have committed that sort of open defiance of our laws. For, whatever you can say about other people who have entered the country in violation of our immigration laws, certainly those who have had a day in court, who have been ordered by court to exit the country but who have gone on the lam, or those who have reentered after they were deported, represent a different type of lawbreaker. I do not believe we should reward those by conferring upon them a Z visa, outlined in the underlying bill. The Senator from New Jersey, Senator Menendez, argued my amendment would amount to an unconstitutional ex post facto rule because of its retroactive application. This is a misreading of the bill. In order for any immigration provisions to have immediate effect, it is imperative that they apply to conduct and convictions that actually occurred before enactment. If prior conduct and convictions were not covered, you would have an immigration regime that essentially welcomes the following people--this is not how the U.S. immigration should operate. Consider an immigration regime where a known criminal gang member could not be removed unless the Department of Homeland Security can show he was a member after the statute was enacted, even if the DHS had videotaped evidence, or even a confession from last month, showing the alien involved in gang activities. Surely that could not be construed as unconstitutionally retroactive or ex post facto. Another example would be an undisputed terrorist fundraiser who would not, unless we agree to this amendment, be barred from naturalization on terrorism grounds. Not only would the citizenship application of someone who has been engaged in terrorist activity not be barred for that reason, unless the terrorist activity occurred after the date of enactment, but this effective date could also be used to call into question the use by the Department of Homeland Security of existing discretionary authority to determine a terrorist did not possess good moral character. To create a regime that turns a blind eye to these known facts would be foolish and would not be in our country's national interest. To avoid such perverse and unintended consequences, Congress has on many occasions enacted grounds of deportability and inadmissibility that are based on past conduct and criminal convictions. For example, section 5502 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act made aliens who committed acts of torture or extra judicial killings abroad a ground of inadmissibility and a ground of deportability. That provision applies to offenses committed before, on, or after the date of enactment. The Holtzman amendment, enacted in 1978, rendered Nazi criminals excludable and deportable. It applied to individuals who ordered, advocated, assisted, or otherwise participated in persecution on behalf of Nazi Germany or its allies at least 33 years earlier, between the years of 1933 and 1945. It is clear from past experience, as well as common sense, that the only actions we would be taking in this legislation would be to say to those who have had their day in court, who literally thumb their nose at our legal system and at our court system, you will not be rewarded with the benefits under this act; that you will be excluded. You have had your chance, you have blown it, you have defied the American legal system and, in fact, this is not the kind of acts from somebody we would expect to be a law-abiding citizen in the future. I also want to speak briefly on an amendment Senator Menendez has offered. Ironically, I find myself in opposition to him on amendment No. 1184, the amendment I have offered, but I find there is a lot to like in his amendment. I want to explain why. This is what I would call the line-jumping amendment Senator Menendez has offered. I have heard the proponents explain that the underlying bill is not an amnesty because it does not allow anyone to jump in line. This is a fundamentally important concept. It is a matter of fundamental fairness and crucial to the integrity, not only of our immigration system, but to our entire legal system. It would be extremely unfair to allow someone who has not respected our laws to be able to obtain a green card as a legal permanent resident before someone who has respected our laws and waited in line for a chance to legally enter this country. Please understand, I am not just talking about the fact that those who wait in line legally have to do so in their home country while someone who has entered our country in violation of our immigration laws and obtains Z status can wait in our country. That certainly is an issue, that those here are getting the advantage over those who are observing our laws. I point to a story in today's USA Today, where the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Chertoff, admits there is ``a fundamental unfairness'' in allowing undocumented immigrants to stay in the country while those who have respected our laws wait patiently outside the country. Should we make what even Secretary Chertoff admits is ``a fundamental unfairness'' that much more unfair? To the proponents' credit, they have attempted to craft a proposal that would not allow anyone who came here illegally obtain their green card until everyone who chose to follow the law gets their green card. But the problem with the bill is this: The compromise bill arbitrarily sets the cutoff date for being in line legally at May 1, 2005, while setting the date for the end of the line for those illegally here at January 1, 2007. I understand the reason why that was done. It was so there would not have to be added a huge number of additional green cards in order to clear the backlog of people who have been waiting patiently, legally, in line to clear before Z visa holders would get the benefits under the law. But the problem is this: What this means is someone who chose to respect the law, chose not to enter illegally, and filed the proper immigration paperwork on, for example, June 1, 2005, is not considered to be ``in line'' under the terms of the bill, while someone who decided not to respect the laws and entered illegally on the very same date can obtain Z status and ultimately obtain citizenship. Family groups such as Interfaith Immigration Coalition, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the U.S. Conference of Bishops, and MALDEF, have written to my office to explain that those people who played by the rules and applied after May 1, 2005 will not be cleared as part of the family backlog pursuant to the terms of this bill and will lose their chance to immigrate under the current rules and be placed in line behind the Z visa applicants. Some of these family groups reported that more than 800,000 people who will have patiently waited in line will, in essence, be kicked out of the line. I ask unanimous consent that the letters I just referred to from these organizations, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, Interfaith Immigration Coalition, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, and MALDEF, be printed in the Record following my remarks.

Mr. CORNYN. Surely.

Mr. CORNYN. Absolutely. I am glad to do that and withhold until that time. I do have some other comments I wish to make.

Mr. CORNYN. Certainly. I yield without losing my right to the floor.

Mr. CORNYN

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I yield for that purpose but claim my right to the floor.

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

Mr. CORNYN. I hate to identify them until they have made a decision to cosponsor the amendment or to speak on it, because they may want to study in confidence and then make a decision whether they want to cosponsor it or come to the floor. We are in communication with them, encouraging them.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment, and I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I agree with the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania and will certainly try to work to accommodate everybody. It is not my intention to keep people hanging around here if we are not going to vote, but I can't enter into a time agreement specifically yet until we can get some people who are examining the amendment, the cosponsors who might wish to speak on it.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I appreciate the concerns of my distinguished colleague. It is a fair point; this is more than a technical amendment. He may not have heard my entire earlier statement. I indicated that some aspects of my amendment were what I thought were technical, but there was a second part that was far from technical, it was very substantive, and I knew it would be controversial because we discussed it during the course of the negotiations in which the distinguished Senator from New Jersey participated, as did I, and it was, the best I can tell, consciously omitted from the draft. So my effort here is to insert it by way of amendment. I do believe it deserves full and fair consideration. People need to understand what the impact of it will be. Indeed, this whole subject matter has a lot of ramifications and a lot of moving parts, and that is the reason I am so glad we have not only this week but also a second week after the recess which the majority leader has scheduled to conclude the debate and vote on the bill. I certainly understand the Senator's concerns, and I would welcome the debate that will ensue, but I can understand why he would object to a vote tonight. We have actually talked with the bill managers and suggested that perhaps, if unanimous consent can be obtained, this amendment would be set aside temporarily and perhaps other amendments can be laid down and even voted on tonight but that we can wait until tomorrow, perhaps, to schedule a vote on this after everyone has had a chance to digest it and consider its ramifications. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, the second part of my amendment has, I think it is fair to say, a substantial impact on the underlying bill, but one I hope my colleagues will agree is necessary and important to adopt. My amendment would close the loophole in this bill that allows legalization of those illegal aliens who have already violated court- ordered deportations. They are sometimes known as absconders because they literally have absconded from the law, but they are, in fact, under section 243 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act felons by virtue of their having absconded either after they have been ordered deported--they have simply gone on the lam and been fugitives from justice--or they have left the country pursuant to their order of deportation and then reentered the country illegally. They are, under section 243 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, felons if found guilty of those offenses. Unlike the first half of my amendment, this is not, as I said, a technical correction. In other words, the decision to legalize this population was no drafting oversight. It was a conscious part of the negotiated package that is now represented by the substitute amendment pending before the Members of the Senate. The drafters of this bill have made a conscious decision that Congress will allow exceptions for individuals who are illegally in the United States, in defiance of a court order, as well as those who have previously been deported from the United States pursuant to a court order and have again reentered illegally. It is important to note that Congress has determined that each of these crimes is a felony. The laws, as I said, are already on the books. These acts of defiance of our legal system are not actions which would signal an individual's likelihood of future compliance with the laws of the land. I don't think Congress should be in the business of allowing exceptions to a class of individuals who can reasonably be dubbed as fugitive aliens. In fact, it was Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff who said during our negotiations that illegal aliens who have defied our court system after having been given full due process of law do not deserve to be rewarded with legalization. Unfortunately, the drafters of this bill, in an effort to accommodate certain advocacy groups, have ignored Secretary Chertoff's commonsense observation, what is being peddled as ``discretion'' by way of a ``waiver.'' We can't guarantee the American people that future Presidents will appoint, nor the Senate confirm, Secretaries of Homeland Security with the good sense and judgment of Secretary Chertoff. Thus, I think we need to eliminate any discretion in allowing these individuals to remain in the country and obtain the benefits of this legalization. I submit that discretion is something Congress gives away to a bureaucracy when Members don't have the intestinal fortitude to create a bright-line rule. This bright-line rule would affect roughly 700,000 absconders who are still in the United States. The underlying bill would allow them a path to legal status and perhaps even to citizenship. My amendment would say these people have had their opportunity to have their day in court and do not deserve the benefits that this underlying bill would give to other persons who have not similarly defied our U.S. legal system and, indeed, have committed, perhaps, felonies. I ask my colleagues this. What is the message we send about the rule of law in America when Congress would not even categorically prohibit rewarding those illegal aliens who have defied lawful orders? What is the message we are sending to immigrants who are lawfully waiting outside the country when we reward those who have not simply violated our laws by entering illegally but who have also thumbed their noses at our legal system, after having been ordered or actually been removed? I urge my colleagues to reject the policy in this bill that would reward felony conduct with legal status. I hope my colleagues will support me in that effort. I yield the floor.

Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Chair. Madam President, I have discussed what I would call technical corrections or oversights that have been left out of this bill, in haste, perhaps, because I know that following the negotiations that went on for several weeks leading up to the announcement of an agreement by a bipartisan group of Senators on Friday, there was a lot of effort made to try to then turn that agreement into bill text. It wasn't until roughly midnight, I believe on Saturday night, that an original, or I should say a rough draft for discussion purposes was created; and then, if I am not mistaken, it was the night before last, about 9 o'clock, when this original amendment was laid down, this substitute amendment, which actually reflects bill text, that we could then go to legislative counsel to try and craft our amendments to be addressed. Before I talk a little bit more about the second part of my amendment, which I think was consciously omitted from the bill, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Senator DeMint of South Carolina be added as original cosponsors to my amendment.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be reinstated as the pending amendment.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, if the Senator from Massachusetts will yield, I am happy to offer my amendment tonight and wait to vote on it tomorrow, if that suits the schedule of the bill managers. I wanted to offer that. I would like to offer it tonight and have the debate tonight, but if you would like to stack the vote up with others tomorrow, that is fine.

Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, is there a pending amendment?