Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Reserving the right to object, and I have no desire to object, my time was starting at 6 o'clock, and then Senator Sessions has 10 minutes. He needs to leave by 6:20. He is not here. I think that was the original agreement. Would the Senator be willing to start at 6:20 and have 5 minutes then?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to U.S. Army PFC Nicholas R. Cournoyer of Gilmanton, NH, for his service and his supreme sacrifice for his country. Nicholas, also called Nick by family and friends, grew up in Gilmanton and was a graduate of the Guilford High School class of 2000. On January 22, 2005, he answered a call to serve our country during these tense and turbulent times by enlisting in the U.S. Army. He was sent to Fort Benning, GA where as a member of an infantry training battalion he successfully completed Infantry One Station Unit Training, which combines in one location basic training with advanced individual training. Upon graduation, he left for assignment in June 2005 with the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Light Infantry, Fort Drum, NY, where he served as an infantryman. On August 11, 2005, he deployed with his unit to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Tragically, on May 18, 2006, this brave 25-year-old soldier was killed in action along with three of his comrades and an interpreter when an improvised explosive device explosion detonated near their military vehicle during combat operations in the vicinity of Baghdad in Iraq. His awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart, Army Achievement Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon, Combat Infantryman Badge, and Weapons Qualification Badge. Patriots from the State of New Hampshire have served our Nation with honor and distinction from Bunker Hill to Baghdad--and Nick served in that--fine tradition. Daniel Webster said, ``God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.'' Nick was a courageous and dedicated volunteer who loved his family and his country and was proud of being a soldier. He served honorably doing the job he wanted to do. This generous, fun-loving young man had a big heart and understood that the freedoms and opportunities provided by this Nation need continuous defense and that they are among the most precious gifts he can give to his family and loved ones. My heartfelt sympathy, condolences, and prayers go out to Nick's parents, Denis and Lenda, his sister Natalie, and his family and friends who have suffered this grievous loss. Because of his devotion and sense of duty, the safety and liberty of each and every American is more secure. May God bless PFC Nicholas Cournoyer.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, may I inquire of the floor manager, on a separate matter. I am going to speak, obviously, to this amendment which Senator Byrd has offered, which I am happy to cosponsor. If I could get the manager's attention, I ask unanimous consent that after we complete this amendment we go to my amendment, that I offer with Senator Cantwell, as the next piece of business.

Mr. GREGG. Thank you. Madam President, I join with Senator Byrd in sponsoring his amendment, which is a right and proper amendment in the context of the cost of containing our borders and the fact that most of that cost is incurred as a result of illegal activity occurring on the borders and especially people coming across the borders illegally. The amendment essentially adds $500, which, as I understand it, the way it is constructed, will not be actually called upon unless the Appropriations Committee determines that it needs the money in order to improve border security. It is likely it will be called upon because we do need those funds to improve border security. The total amount this would raise, as the Senator from West Virginia has pointed out, is about $3 billion--$2.8 billion. That is a lot of money, as he pointed out--$3 for every minute, I think he said, since the birth of Jesus. It is, however, only a small portion of what is going to be necessary in order to properly secure the borders. We know, for example, that it will cost us about $2 billion to move forward with fully implemented sensor and surveillance technology on the border. We know it will cost approximately $2 billion, in addition to the $2 billion I just mentioned, to do a fully integrated communications system on the border. And we are talking just the southern border. We know that in order to upgrade the air fleet, which is extremely aged--the P-3s being almost 40 years over their useful life and the helicopters being 20 years over their useful life--it will cost $2.4 billion. So there is a great need for funds to adequately secure the border. I think we have all agreed in this Senate--and I think it is the consensus of the American people--that the first effort in the area of controlling illegal immigration should be the securing of our borders, and especially our southern border, which has been the point of most concern relative to illegal immigrants coming across the border. So this amendment says, if you are going to obtain citizenship in what has been described as earned citizenship, an element of that earning of citizenship--since you are already here illegally, according to the 12 million people who would be qualified for this and be subject to this additional fee--an element of earning that citizenship is to pay a fee, much as you would pay a fine for violating the law, which is what happened here. In addition, of course, they go to the back of the line, and they have to show so many years of having worked here in the United States in a constructive way, and they cannot have violated American laws. But part of the element of earning that citizenship is to pay a fine. What we are suggesting is that in addition to the base fine--which is presently now, I believe, at $2,750, after all the amendments on the floor--we would add an additional $500. So the fine would essentially be--or the fee, however you want to describe it; depending on which side of the debate you are on, we use different terminology, but it is the same thing--the person seeking to change their status from illegal to legal would have to pay this fee. It would be $3,250 total, $500 of which would go to helping us secure the border so we would not have this problem in the future of so many illegals coming across the border. It is not an exceptional amount of money. Some people are going to argue that it is too much money to ask people to pay. That is really not a lot of money to pay to get in line to become an American citizen. It is a fairly reasonable request, in light of the fact that they are already here, they have a job, they are earning money, they are taking advantage of our society, and now they want to participate in the society as legalized citizens. Having come in illegally, it is reasonable to ask them to pay this additional fee. So this $500 which is being proposed by Senator Byrd is both reasonable in the context of what people should be asked to pay and very important in the context of doing an adequate job of protecting our border. Senator Byrd has been one of the most aggressive and effective advocates for a long time for beefing up border security. He has offered amendment after amendment to try to accomplish this. I have greatly respected and, obviously, have enjoyed working with him on the Subcommittee on Homeland Security relative to trying to improve the borders and relative to all things that committee addresses. But this has been a special focus of his, and he understands this issue. This amendment reflects that understanding, that for all the good intentions and all the good words, if they are not backed up by resources--a point I have made on this floor innumerable times, and which is made by this amendment--you simply cannot accomplish your goal. The goal, obviously, is to secure the southern border so that, to the extent you can do it, you limit people coming in here illegally through the use of an intelligent border security system. That means electronics. That means boots on the ground. That means adequate aircraft. That means adequate unmanned aircraft. And that means adequate Coast Guard. But it all takes dollars. As the Senator from West Virginia has pointed out, the dollars simply have not been in the pipeline. The dollars are not in the pipeline. As I have mentioned before on this floor, the budget which was sent up by the President, by the administration, requested additional commitment to the border, but they used a plug number in the sense that they expected to pay for that with $1.2 billion in increased fees for people flying on airplanes. That is not going to happen. Those fees are not going to happen. And it is reasonable they should not happen. People flying on airplanes are not crossing our border illegally. People flying on airplanes are not using land transportation into this country. The land transportation security system should not be paid for by the air traffic security system. The air traffic security system should pay for itself, and to a great extent it does through the taxes put on people who are flying. The TSA is paid for, in large part, by that. But we should not increase further the taxes on people flying and then take that money and use it on the borders to support land transportation security. I have suggested that maybe we should put a toll down on the border. It costs me 75 cents to go from Nashua, NH, to Manchester, NH, which is about 18 miles. With the cost of 50 cents to come across the border, we could raise this money. That was objected to. There are some treaty issues there, and also some cultural issues. But there is another approach, and it is a good approach. It is to say to the people who abused our border, who took advantage of the fact we did not have adequate security on our border and came into our country illegally: Listen, when you want to put yourself in the status of a legal citizen--go to the back of the line, earn your citizenship--part of that is to pay the cost of making the border secure. So the Senator from West Virginia has come up with an excellent proposal. I strongly support it, and I certainly hope the Senate will support it as we go forward. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent to yield back all time on the Byrd-Gregg amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 4114.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time just allocated to the Senator from New York be applied against the time in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, this amendment is offered by myself and Senator Cantwell. The purpose of this amendment is really pretty simple. We as a nation are in the process of addressing how we handle the illegal immigrant situation and immigration generally. We are about to basically give a large number of people--10 million, maybe 12 million--who arrived here illegally the opportunity to get in line and earn their citizenship. Those people, for the most part, don't have any unique skills that made them special to American society. They came here, they were willing to work--which is, of course, great--and they are hard workers, in most instances. We didn't seek them out because we felt they were going to create jobs in the United States. But we do have this program called the lottery program where we essentially say to anybody in certain countries which are alleged to be underserved and have few people, immigrating into this country: You can get into the lottery and you can get in line, get a green card, and become an American citizen. There are 50,000 winners handed out every year. It just seems to us that if we are going to have such a program in the context of overall immigration reform, we ought to be saying that people who participate in this lottery are people who we as a nation actively need in order to make our Nation stronger socially and economically, rather than simply saying to everyone in the Ukraine: You can participate in the lottery. We might get a cab driver or an unemployed cab driver as a winner of the lottery. We would say to the people in the Ukraine: If you have an advanced degree which America feels would be constructive to our society in making us a stronger society, then you can participate in the lottery. What we have done is taken two-thirds of the lottery options, 33,000, and said for those alleged underserved countries, people with advanced degrees will be able to compete for those options. Then we left one- third for anybody to compete for the lottery status. This only seems to make sense. If we listen to the debate on this floor, we hear a lot about outsourcing of jobs, the fact America is losing jobs overseas. What we are proposing essentially is to bring people into our country who create jobs because they have certain skills and abilities, certain talents which we as a nation know we need. Take, for example, the issue of engineers. We are confronting a world where countries such as Japan and especially China are graduating literally four, five, six times the number of engineers we are graduating. We are just not producing enough people in the science disciplines to keep up with our needs as a nation to be competitive economically. So it makes sense that we should go around the world and say to people who have these types of talents: If you want to come to the United States, we have certain programs we can use to help you come here. One, of course, is the H-1B program which, under this bill, has been significantly expanded and is an appropriate program. But in order to participate in the H-1B program, you must be a family member of somebody in the United States who will sponsor you or you have an employer who has said they want to bring that person to the United States to work for them. What we are suggesting is there are countries where a lot of these American employers are not going to go because the return on their efforts isn't that high and there are a lot of places where people who have these degrees don't have family members in the United States, so they are totally shut out of their ability to participate in coming to America, even though they may have skills and talents which we in America feel strongly will help us. Rather than have a lottery system which says to the unemployed cab driver in Kiev, You should have a chance to come to America, we are going to have a lottery system that says to the physicist in Kiev, You have a shot at coming to America. This seems to make sense because it isn't as if we as a nation haven't already attracted to us a large number of unskilled people. We already have that situation, and this bill is trying to address that situation. We literally have millions of unskilled people who are going to be put in line for American citizenship under this bill. It would be appropriate, therefore, it seems, to take this small number of people who can't qualify to come here, even though they may have the skills we need, because they don't have a family member and they don't have an employer sponsor and say to those folks: Yes, we are going to give you the opportunity to come here, too, through participating in this lottery system. That is what this proposal does. The idea that some of these nations that have been described as diverse--that is one of those nomenclature, feel-good, politically correct terms put on something when it doesn't make a lot of sense. In this instance, it has no applicability at all. The fact is, these countries which qualify under what is called the diversity lottery actually have a large number of people here illegally. Most of those people are unskilled. They have just shown up, they came here illegally, and they are going to be able to get in line now under this bill. So it makes sense that we should say to those nations--for example, we know that Poland has approximately 50,000 people here illegally. Most of them don't have unique skills. We should say: If you are in Poland and you want to come to the United States and you want to use the lottery system to come here, you have to have a skill we need as a nation in order to participate in that lottery. It is estimated that there are almost 200,000 people from Africa who are in this country illegally and who are probably totally unskilled. What we are suggesting is bring a skill with you if you want to come to this country through the lottery system. We are not suggesting these countries won't get their fair share of people who are the types that were described by the Senator from New York who come here with a desire to produce and be successful. Those folks may already be here illegally, and they will be able to get in line or they can compete for a third of the lottery system that is not going to be targeted toward talents that America needs. What we are suggesting is that we should have a win-win situation. If we are going to set up a lottery, not only should the person who wins the lottery be a winner and win the right to come to the United States, but the people of America should be winners by attracting into the country people whom we have a pretty good idea are going to be able to contribute to the betterment of our Nation because they will bring their talents. That is critical in this world today. As I mentioned before, we are confronting a world where our capacity to compete is tied directly to our brain power. We can't compete with the Chinese on labor because they have a billion more people than we have. But where we can compete with them is by producing ideas that are better, by taking ideas that are good and making them better, by adding value through talent and ability. So we should be attracting to America people who can help us do that. We should be going across the world and saying: Give us your best and your brightest; come here and participate in the American dream and raise the waters so that all the boats float higher. This lottery system, to the extent it makes sense, should be built around that concept. It should not be built around the concept if you happen to have a high-school education or you happen to have held a job in 2 out of the last 5 years, you have some right to participate in a lottery to get into the United States. That makes no sense to us as a nation. This is not a unique approach, by the way. In fact, most nations don't do what we do. We basically have an open approach to immigration. Most people require some qualifying talent in order to immigrate to those nations, especially western nations. So with this small group, 50,000, as was pointed out--it is very small in the context of this entire bill when we are dealing with as many as 12 million people--in this small group, at least we should do it the right way because, who knows, one of those folks who comes to this country with an advanced degree in science or an advanced degree in medicine may be the person who produces the vaccine that saves us if we confront a terrorist attack or produces the next thought process or software process that creates the next engine of dramatic expansion in the telecommunications world or is the next Bill Gates of the world. Attracting people who have talent and ability should be one of our purposes. In the context of a lottery system, it should clearly be our purpose. Lottery, by definition, means you should win, and not only should the people who win the lottery win, but the people who are basically underwriting the lottery should win, and the way Americans will win under the lottery system is to attract people who have a likelihood of contributing significantly to the betterment of our Nation. That is why we propose this amendment. It is proposed by myself and Senator Cantwell. Granted there have been some big issues discussed in this Chamber--this is not a big issue, but it is an issue of significance. I appreciate Senator Cantwell being a cosponsor of this amendment. She comes from a State where commitment to high tech and intellectual property is something that has really built up that State and has been a great driver not only of the prosperity of Washington State, but of the whole Nation. So she understands the importance of this type of approach. I thank her for joining me in this approach of taking two-thirds of these available lottery slots and saying they should be made available to people from underserved countries, but people in those countries who have obtained degrees in the areas that we as a nation determine are important to continuing to promote our prosperity as a culture and as an economy. I reserve the remainder of my time. I yield to the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. GREGG. I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. GREGG. And 8 minutes is remaining on the side in opposition, is that correct?

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that that time be set aside and we move on to whatever is the next matter, but that time be reserved for debate on this matter at whatever time the parties wish to pursue it later in the day.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, can we have order? Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be added as cosponsors: Senators Frist, Sessions, Alexander, and Bond. I yield my minute to the Senator from Washington.

Mr. GREGG. I will yield my minute to the Senator from Washington.

Mr. GREGG. I filed them with the clerk--Senators Frist, Sessions, Alexander, and Bond. I yield my minute to the Senator from Washington.

Mr. GREGG. It is fine with me.

Mr. GREGG. First, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that from the previous order of the Hutchison amendment be 4101 rather than 4046 and that the time under that amendment be 40 minutes equally divided.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I am not sure of the status of my amendment. I understand there was a unanimous consent agreement that it would be limited to an hour in time; is that correct?

Mr. GREGG. Am I to presume that the statement of the Senator from New York comes off of the opposition's time?

Mr. GREGG. Would the Senator's statement be taken out of that time?

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee, who has been a leader on the issue of education and how we remain competitive in the world, for supporting this amendment and for coming down here and expressing his kind and very effective words with which I obviously totally agree. The cosponsor of the amendment, Senator Cantwell, can't get down here right now. I know Senator Kennedy wishes to speak in opposition to the amendment. I understand we are not going to vote on this amendment or the other amendments until later this afternoon. I would suggest that we be allowed to reserve our time--if it is acceptable to Senator Kennedy--we will reserve our time for Senator Cantwell, even though it may not be taken with the time that is running right now, if that is agreeable.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, it might be as much as 15 minutes that she may wish to take.

Mr. GREGG. As a point of inquiry, if I can get the attention of the Senator to Massachusetts, just for the point of clarification, how much time is remaining on our side?

Mr. GREGG. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.