Ted Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, how much time do I have?

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from New York.

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I yield 12 minutes to the Senator from Pennsylvania.

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield 4 more minutes to the Senator. How much time will I have remaining?

Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Chair.

Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield as a point of interest?

Mr. KENNEDY. I think I have 6\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. KENNEDY. I am trying to get some information to the Senators who will follow along. Does the Senator plan to use the remainder of his time? I am not trying to hurry him; it is only for information purposes.

Mr. KENNEDY. Why don't we sort of move along but indicate to our colleagues that we are reaching a conclusion and we expect votes fairly soon. Then we will have follow-on amendments with Senator DeMint and, hopefully, Senator Bingaman. If we can work those out in the next 20 minutes or so, we can get stacked votes; otherwise, we plan to have these two votes reasonably soon.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I listened carefully to the Senator's presentation. I have come to a different conclusion. The Senator said a ``no'' vote means we are really not for dealing with this issue. We have a bipartisan group that has worked long and hard. The Senator from Texas was involved in a lot of the discussions. As we pointed out previously, we wanted to have tough law enforcement internally. We wanted recognition that those 12.5 million people here were going to be able to be secure, they weren't going to be deported, they were going to go to the end of the line, they would have to go through the earned legalization program, bring families together again, set up a program in terms of a temporary worker program. I don't know what 90 percent the Senator agrees with because I haven't heard much. What is important is what his amendment does and what its impact would be. We ought to come back at the conclusion of this debate to the point that was raised at the beginning because after all the rhetoric, after all is said and done, listen to the example that was given by my friend from Illinois. Senator Durbin describes a mother of four U.S. citizens, married to a U.S. citizen, who is herself undocumented. She left the country to visit her sick mother. She was apprehended after she snuck back in. That means she has reentered the United States at least twice, and under the Cornyn amendment on page 2, she could be convicted of illegal reentry. That would make her an aggregated felon. Even if she is not convicted, the Cornyn amendment makes her ineligible for the Z program. On page 10 of the amendment, he eliminates the waiver for final orders available in the bill. This is a waiver for hardship to family, and he eliminates it. No harm, the Senator says, because she can get a different waiver as the wife of a U.S. citizen. That didn't stop DHS from deporting her. So why should people come out of the shadows? Why should they come out of the shadows if they are here with false papers, undocumented? Why should they come out of the shadows when they have seen what has happened to a mother of four citizens married to an American citizen? That is what we are basically talking about. That is undermining the basic core because we are talking about 12\1/2\ million people who are here, who came here to work in order to provide for their families, and they have been trying to do that for their families. More often than not, they probably went back to their countries of origin and came back in again. Probably more often than not they had false papers in order to be able to get their jobs. That in and of itself, under the Cornyn amendment, would effectively exclude them from participating in this program and would subject them to deportation. End of story. End of story because that undermines, obviously, the essential aspect of this legislation. The rest of the Cornyn amendment--which I mentioned earlier with the list of the amendments that we have put through--covers the bars, the criminal gang members, including the new provisions of gang members engaged in gun crimes. Sex offenders are covered by the comprehensive Adam Walsh Act. The sex offenders are not going to get Z visas. The Senator from Texas can say, under our language, under his interpretation, they will, but they would not. End of story. They would not. On the provisions regarding drunk-driving convictions and individuals convicted of domestic violence, stalking, child abuse, and other serious crimes, we increase the penalties for perjury, fraud, and firearm offenses. It is important that after all is said and done--and we gave the illustration earlier about the questions of material support--the terrorists are out. One thing about managing a bill, for those of us who have been here, we understand it; that there is always the possibility and the likelihood people will misrepresent what is in the bill and then differ with it. It is an old technique. I have even used it myself. But we ought to understand when we see it that it is just a technique that is being used. So with all respect to my friend and colleague, and I have a good deal of respect for him, the effect of the underlying Cornyn amendment would effectively exclude from the Z visa program any immigrant who had been or will be convicted of using false documents. That is the problem today. Because of our broken immigration system, almost every hard- working immigrant in the country has been forced at one time or another to use false documents to get a job. These people have come here to work. They have been lured by the employers offering work. They are the very people this program is designed to bring out of the shadows. The Cornyn amendment will ensure they cannot come forward. Indeed, if they did come forward, they could be subject to prosecution and mandatory deportation for using a fake Social Security card. I believe we have addressed many of the concerns the Members have had on dealing with some of these other issues and questions with the Kennedy amendment, and I would hope the Members would vote in favor of that and against the Cornyn amendment. Mr. President, I withhold the remainder of my time.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, with regard to Senator Durbin, he could come back and speak to this issue, this was a mother of four U.S. citizens, herself undocumented, who left the country to visit her sick mother and was apprehended after she snuck back in. She had entered and reentered the U.S. twice. She had false documents, and she has been effectively deported. The Senator says, well, she had rights to appeal, rights to do this and to do that. This is the real impact. This is the real impact of the Cornyn amendment. This is what the Cornyn amendment is all about. We know the people who have come in here. Why do they come in here? They come to work. Why do they come to work? Because the job is there. They are devoted to their families, devoted to their work and faith, in many instances devoted to this country--with 70,000 of them working in the Armed Forces of the United States. But in order to be able to do that, somewhere along the way they get the false papers. That is what the facts are. The great majority have them. Under the Cornyn amendment, it says those individuals are subject to deportation. He thinks all 12\1/2\ million people are all going to volunteer and come out and say, well, by the way, Senator Cornyn gave us assurance that somebody down there in DHS can give me a waiver and let me stay. Come on. Come on. We believe that? That is going to be sufficient assurance to get these people to come out of the shadows so that they are not going to continue to be exploited? I don't believe that. I have a lot of respect for my friend. I know what he is attempting to do in order to deal with some of these other issues, and we have attempted to address that. But the fact remains his amendment undermines the basic core of this--recognizing that people here are undocumented, and the ones who are undocumented, by and large, have these false papers. That is a part of the reality. The question is: Are we going to say to those individuals: Look, you came here and are undocumented. You are going to pay a fine, and you are going to have to demonstrate that you are going to work, and you are going to show that you are going to be a good citizen. And in 8 years, after all the other people who have been waiting in line, after all of that period, when you are able to pay the fine, demonstrate that you have worked all that time, and have been a good citizen trying to make a difference in terms of going into the country, that then you will be able to at least start--start--on the potential road to citizenship.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, does the Senator desire the yeas and nays?

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to consider the yeas and nays on both amendments.

Mr. KENNEDY. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President: There are going to be two back-to-back votes. The first one will be on the Kennedy amendment and the second one is on the Cornyn amendment; is that correct?

Mr. KENNEDY. And the second vote is the Cornyn amendment. I thank the Chair. To continue, Mr. President, it is our hope that we will move toward the DeMint amendment. We had good debate on that yesterday, and the Bingaman amendment, and then have votes on those fairly soon after. I thank all our Members for their cooperation.

Mr. KENNEDY. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, we are making some good progress. The Senator from South Carolina, Mr. DeMint, had a good discussion last evening, as well as Senator Bingaman. We are grateful to them. We will have a good discussion prior to 2 o'clock on these issues. We are hopeful, then, we will be moving along. Senator Cornyn had an amendment on confidentiality. We have Senator Dodd. There are a number of those where we are trying to go back one side to the other. We hope those Senators who have amendments who are ready, particularly those who would like to enter into a time agreement, will let us know as quickly as possible. We will be in touch with others during this luncheon period and continue to move along. But we are thankful for all the help and cooperation we have received.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, will the Senator yield? As I understand, 1 o'clock today is the deadline for the filing of amendments.

Mr. KENNEDY. A number of Senators have spoken to me about having their amendments filed. Many of them I have given the insurances that we would. The Senator from Texas, Mrs. Hutchison, had asked that 2 days ago, and we are working with the Finance Committee. I see her in the Chamber. I think Senator Thune was here last evening. I objected to those individuals proceeding. It would appear to me, out of fairness we ought to make sure they are not excluded. Is our policy to make sure they are at least within--if they have indicated to the floor managers, they want to be in, we have them meet the deadline?

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I understand, all they have to do is be filed by this time.

Mr. KENNEDY. So for those who are back in their offices, they do not have to be called up. They just have to be filed. So they have until 1 o'clock for the filing of amendments. We urge those who want to have amendments filed to make sure they understand that. They do not have to call them up. They are protected in that way.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I understand, under the rules, the filing time was set for 1 o'clock, and the leader has indicated for filing any amendments that we extend that. I ask unanimous consent that the filing time be extended until 2 o'clock.

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

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I expect that Senator DeMint will come to the floor to address his amendment, but in the next 5 minutes that we have before he does so, I would say his amendment is basically saying there will be no adjustment in status unless all these individuals are going to be able to buy into the high-deductible HSAs, health savings accounts, and that because of the fact that immigrants are a burden on the health care system, that they should be required to do this additional kind of work to meet their responsibilities under this legislation. There are a couple factors I wish to mention. First of all, if you take the fact that you have 12 million of these individuals, the 12 million who are the undocumentable, they are going to, as part of their fine, pay $500 per individual. That comes to some $6 billion--$6 billion--that can go for support for various health care offsets into local communities. That is not an insignificant amount of resources. We anticipated this possibility, No. 1. No. 2, we ought to make an examination of what happens to these undocumented individuals. What is the utilization by the undocumented? We know they are basically healthier, they are younger, and the various information and statistics we see says there is not an overutilization of the health services. I have statistics for undocumented immigrants in one of the border States, this is in Texas, and I will read this and include the appropriate part in the Record. The Comptroller's office estimates the absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas would have been a loss to their gross State product of $17 billion. Also, the Comptroller's office estimates State revenues collected from undocumented immigrants exceed what the State spends on services, with the difference being $424 million. That is today, one State--Texas--in the utilization of services. So we find this population where there has not been an overutilization of services, and we have provisions in the current legislation to deal with this problem and deal with it generously. But the Senator from South Carolina wants to insist on a high-deductible program. Let us look at the average high-deductible program. The average annual deductible for a high-deductible plan required under the DeMint amendment is $1,900 for an individual and $4,000 for a family. The average annual premium for the plan: $2,700 for an individual and $7,900 for a family. The total average cost for an individual would be $4,600 and $11,000 for a family. That is for the average individual and family. This includes the fees and also the deductibility. We have the various studies that have been done, the reports, and this information is from the Los Angeles Times. It points out that plans with high deductibles of $1,000 or higher monthly premiums that can be less than $100, as Senator DeMint provides, are a good fit for healthy people with some financial resources. The median annual income of those using the high-deductible plans is $75,000. This is a fit for $75,000. Although the lower premiums make plans attractive, cash- strapped families run the risk of being unable to afford the deductibles. Those are the facts. So the effect of the DeMint amendment is another way of denying the 12 million undocumented from being able to participate in the other provisions of the legislation, which we have very carefully crafted. They have to pay a high fine, they have to pay the State a set-aside, they are going to have to pay the fees as they move along. These are not insignificant. We are talking about thousands and thousands of dollars which have been worked out carefully and considered. This kind of additional burden will say to men and women whose average income may be $10,000 or $11,000 that they are not going to be able to do it. Take those individual Americans who are making $10,000 and $11,000 and look at how many of them are able to afford health insurance. Virtually none. We know about that in Massachusetts because Massachusetts has passed a very effective program to bring those individuals in and to help and assist those individuals. So the idea that we are going to put this in as a requirement is another way of saying to those individuals, look, we might like other provisions of the legislation, but this is a way of effectively barring you from being able to participate in this program. That undermines the object of a very important aspect of this whole endeavor. Therefore, I hope the amendment will be defeated. As I understand from the Chair, the last several minutes are supposed to be for the Senator from South Carolina; is that correct?