Jon Kyl

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, will the chairman of the Judiciary Committee yield for the purpose of my propounding another unanimous consent request?

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, will the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee yield for a question, please?

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I think I misspoke a while ago and talked about the amendment that I introduced last Friday--actually, it was last Thursday--that Senator Cornyn and I, and I believe Senator George Allen is a cosponsor--introduced, amendment No. 3206. My question to the chairman is this: In the bill, there is a variety of benefits that are provided to illegal immigrants who are in the United States today in that they are allowed to gain a legal status which can lead to legal permanent residency, sometimes called a green card, from which one can apply for citizenship. There are some conditions attached to that. Is it not correct that the amendment Senator Cornyn and I offered simply adds to those requirements, or those benefits, the additional requirement that the individual seeking the benefit not have been convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors, or have violated a judge's order of departure from the United States?

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I will take a couple of minutes to close. I gather this will be a 100-to-nothing vote not to table. I agree with the Senator from Texas. We should not table the amendment, but we should have a vote up or down on it. If you don't like it, then vote against it. I will make something very clear. If you came across the border from Mexico into the United States, into Texas, Arizona, California or New Mexico, and you came across illegally, this amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with you--unless you also are a criminal or you have been convicted of a felony or of three misdemeanors or you are an absconder--that is to say, after you came into the country illegally, and you were ordered to leave by a judge, and you refused to leave. Those are the circumstances this amendment applies to. It doesn't apply to you if all you did was come in illegally. In other words, that status is not implicated by this amendment. We simply seek to deny the benefits of this legislation--legal permanent residency and a pathway to citizenship--to people convicted of a felony, three misdemeanors or, in this category of an absconder, which the Senator from Texas talked about. Why is this important? It is because there are a certain number of people who have violated such an order. They have failed to leave the country when they were ordered to do so. According to the testimony before the subcommittee I chair in the Judiciary Committee, about a month ago, the statistics are now that about 10 percent of the people entering the country illegally are criminals; it is between 10 and 15 percent. They are serious criminals. I hope that my colleagues vote ``no'' on the motion to table.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, in your view, is that an amendment that is germane and relevant and very specific in that it would add one more requirement to the conditions that are allowed--with the benefits--that are allowed under the bill, and would it be your view that in no way would that be a nongermane or nonrelevant kind of amendment?

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, might I direct an inquiry to the Senator from Vermont?

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, Senator Cornyn and I have introduced legislation that is comprehensive in nature, and I wish to briefly describe some of the key provisions of that legislation because I believe we will have an opportunity to vote on it as an amendment to the pending bill at some point during our procedure. In significant part, the bill before us embodies many of the provisions of our legislation that deal with border security. I want to emphasize at the beginning that almost all of us agree the first step we have to take in dealing with comprehensive immigration reform is securing the border. It is going to take time to get that done. It is going to take money and it is going to take will. The provisions of our bill provide a significant sum of money for more Border Patrol agents, more fencing--it is not a wall, but it does provide some additional fencing--and it provides for high technology to help with the border security, including unmanned aerial vehicles, sensors, cameras, and things of that sort. It also requires that the Department of Homeland Security acquire more detention spaces so that people who come here from countries other than Mexico and, therefore, can't just be returned to the border, will actually be detained pending their removal to their own country. Today, if you are an illegal immigrant from China, for example, we can't take you down to the border with Mexico and drop you off there; we have to send you back to China. This costs a lot of money. It takes a long time. In fact, the Chinese Government is very slow to take Chinese citizens back. There are now some 39,000 Chinese citizens whom we apprehended who came here illegally, but who have not been returned to China. We don't have the detention space for all of them, so they are released on their own recognizance. Do you have any idea how many of them show up when it is time for them to go? The smart ones don't show up, obviously. So we need more detention space, and that is part of our legislation. The key point is that we provide the funding and the authorization necessary to get a handle on controlling the border and to deal with the apprehensions that occur as a result of that. The next thing we do is to provide for more internal enforcement, and for all of the different parts of the Department of Homeland Security that have a responsibility for enforcing the law in the interior. Today, an illegal immigrant knows if you get about 60 miles north of the border, you are literally home free in your new home because we don't have the law enforcement officials to do anything about it. That is especially difficult at the employment site. As you know, we have laws against hiring illegal immigrants, but they are not enforced. I think there were something like three actions brought last year against however many million employers we have in this country. The bottom line is we need an enforcement mechanism to ensure that whoever is entitled to be employed here, the employer can verify their eligibility, that it is easy to do, and that it is foolproof. So another part of our legislation is to provide a mechanism whereby it is the Government, not the employer, that decides who is eligible to be employed. Anybody with forged documents today can walk in to an employer and be hired, and the employer can't look behind those documents and see whether it is a forgery. That burden should be on the Government, particularly since the simplest way to verify eligibility is with a good Social Security number, which our bill provides for. The Social Security database today is, frankly, a mess. It needs to be cleaned up. It can be cleaned up so you don't have 10 different people all using the same phony number. In fact, we have over 100,000 people today using the number 000-00-0000. It doesn't take a real bright person to figure out there is something wrong with that situation. So the database can be cleaned up and then the employer can simply by law--and this is what the Cornyn-Kyl bill requires--type in the number that has been given to the respective employee and determine electronically whether that is a valid number. If the electronic message comes back that it is not a valid number, then don't hire the person or you are going to be in big trouble under our bill. But if it comes back and says it is a valid number, then you only have one thing to do, and that is match the number with the individual standing before you. That can be done by a couple of mechanisms: with a driver's license, and--depending upon what gets written into the bill--with the date of birth and place-of-birth verification information as well. So you are verifying the employee's eligibility under the law and that the individual applying for the job is the person with that number. Those are key components to the legislation we have introduced. We also think it is important to do two other key things. We should provide for work requirements in the future, with a temporary worker program. Let us forget for a moment the illegal immigrants who are already here. What the Cornyn-Kyl bill says is we are going to create a new temporary program for unskilled labor such as we have for skilled labor today. Today if you are a computer company and you need some more software designers and you can't get any from American universities, you can apply under a special American program for temporary workers to come from China or India or wherever they may come from. But they are only here for a temporary period of time. When you need those workers, you can apply for the visas, but when there are no jobs for those kinds of temporary workers, then visas are not issued. So it depends upon whether there is a job available that you can't find an American to do. We should do no more than that with regard to unskilled laborers because they present more potential problems in our society if times go bad and they don't have a job. So for unskilled, less educated workers, we need the same kind of temporary status, not permanent status. If, for example, in the construction industry--and I have a statistic here which I will cite in a moment--but we have a lot of illegal immigrants working in construction today. In my State of Arizona, we can't find enough people to build homes, there is such a housing boom right now. Under our program, we would be issuing more temporary work visas for people to come in and help us build homes. But I also know there have been many times when I have lived in Arizona that a good American citizen with good carpentry skills can't find a job. There are no jobs to be had. The housing market has fallen through the floor because we are in a recession and people are looking for work and they can't find it. In that situation it doesn't make sense to issue more temporary work visas for foreign workers, foreign construction workers In that case you wouldn't issue those permits because there is no job here. Under the notion that you should have a willing worker and willing employer, clearly if you don't have a job, you don't want to be issuing work permits. Our program is designed to be flexible enough to issue permits when you need the workers and not to issue the visas when you don't need the workers. Contrast it with the bill that is before us. There is no such flexibility. The number of visas is set, and it doesn't matter whether there is a job for the individual. People can still come into the country, and they are entitled to stay here forever, permanently. They are even put on a path to citizenship, even if there is no job here for them. That is not right. Our bill, as distinguished from that, is for temporary periods of time only. Then, finally we deal with the illegal immigrants who are here already who could, by the way, join up for that temporary worker program. We don't penalize them to prevent them from doing that. All of the bills or proposals I have looked at, including the Cornyn-Kyl proposal, provide that on an effective date, the illegal immigrants who are here go check in someplace. There are different places where they can check in, but the bottom line is they turn in their bad documents and get a new document that would enable them to stay in the United States for a period of time. In our bill it is 5 years. The President has proposed a total of 3 plus 3, 6 years. The Kennedy and McCain bill that is part of the bill before us has another period of time. But all of them have them check in and get a temporary visa. Here, that is good for a period of time. You get to travel back and forth during that period of time with no restriction. That is fine. We allow the person to stay here for up to 5 years. We do one other thing. There is a background check that is also provided in every bill. Under the bill that is before us, the background check is not followed up. That is to say, if you are a criminal, it doesn't matter. You can still participate in the program. Under the Cornyn-Kyl program, you would not be able to participate in the program if you are a criminal. We have an amendment pending that would make that the case for the bill that is on the Senate floor as well, so people who are so-called absconders--they have violated the judge's order to leave the country or who have committed a felony or three misdemeanors--would not be entitled to participate in the program. In any event, under the Cornyn-Kyl bill you are allowed to stay in the country up to 5 years. You can return to your home country at any time and start participating in the temporary worker program. If you stay here for the full 5 years, you also have to be working. But, if you want to go home, for example, to Mexico and get a laser visa, which is what would be required, that is a matter of days, less than a week. If you have a job with an American employer, you take with you a certificate of employment. So you leave the United States, you go to a consular office in Mexico, obtain your laser visa, and then present that at the border to come back into the United States and resume your work. The whole thing should take no more than a week, probably less than that. There are those who say: Why would people voluntarily participate in this program? I think it is fairly evident. We provide incentives for people to participate in it. The sooner you leave the United States and get your laser visa so that you can come in and work temporarily, the longer you could work in the temporary work program. We provide visas for up 2 years at a time. You can have a total of 6 years' worth of temporary work in the United States. So the sooner you start that process, obviously, the sooner you can start working under the temporary worker program. What is hard about that? In addition, you would be able to take with you, after you have finished your temporary worker status, the money that has accumulated in a savings account that is paid through a system which is parallel to the Social Security system today. You pay into the system, it is like your own personal account, and you take that money with you when you voluntarily depart the United States when your temporary visa expires--or before that if you want to. So there are incentives for people to comply with the law. Finally, there is this question of why people would report to be deported? I make it crystal clear that in our bill there is no deportation. I don't know what legislation they are talking about. I am not even sure there is any such thing in the House bill. In any event, the Cornyn-Kyl bill has no provision for deportation. It doesn't require people to report to be deported--nothing of the kind. It is the same kind of check-in that is present in all the other bills. You check in, you get your temporary document that enables you to stay in the country, and, again, it is for up to 5 years. There is a Pew Hispanic research poll of Mexican immigrants here, who are illegal, who say that if they had an opportunity to continue to work here for up to 5 years--7 percent say they would then be willing to return home. I think it is a myth to say that someone who came here simply to work and earn money for their family, let's say from Mexico or El Salvador or whatever country you want to make it, that they would be unwilling to return home under the relatively generous provisions that we have established in our legislation. There are disincentives to stay beyond the time and there are incentives to leave within that period of time. You are entitled to become a temporary worker and, therefore, it seems to me, we are ascribing a pretty bad motive to people who would not voluntarily return to their home. In fact, to the extent that people say these are hard-working folks who just came here to work and make money, I am willing to accept that and therefore I think you don't all of a sudden change your mind after you get here and say: But I am not leaving no matter what you make the law to be. If these folks are otherwise law-abiding folks, I think they would want to comply with the law as we have set it out. The bottom line is, the Cornyn-Kyl bill provides a way for temporary workers to work in the United States. It provides a way for people who came here illegally to become legal, to stay here for up to 5 years, if they want, to continue to participate in the worker program after that, and, finally, if they decide they want to become legal permanent residents and therefore citizens of the United States, there is nothing that prohibits them from applying to do that as well. They would do it in the same way as you apply for it today. They wouldn't be given any advantage, nor would they be given any disadvantage under the Cornyn- Kyl legislation. Might I inquire, under the unanimous consent agreement there is 15 minutes for my time. How much time do I have?

Mr. KYL. Then I will be happy to summarize. The bottom line is we are going to have the opportunity to vote on several different alternative proposals. The Cornyn-Kyl proposal is one we will be able to vote for. I believe it provides a reasonable alternative to the proposal on the floor. It treats people humanely and fairly but doesn't provide that people stay here permanently when there is no job for them, and certainly in our history we know there have been times when our economy is not as good as it is now, and there will not be a job for everyone. Temporary work status, treating people humanely and fairly, providing for enforcement at the workplace, and, importantly, enforcement at the border, we think that is a good proposition. I hope when the time comes for us to consider our alternatives, my colleagues will give that a good opportunity, will discuss it thoroughly, and agree it is a good alternative to be discussing.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Allen be added as a cosponsor to amendment No. 3206.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 30, 2006 at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed hearing.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Water and Power be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 30 at 2:30 p.m. The purpose of the hearing is to receive testimony on S. 1577, to facilitate the transfer of Spearfish Hydroelectric Plant Number 1 to the city of Spearfish, SD; S. 1962 and H.R. 4000, bills to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to revise certain repayment contracts with the Bostwick Irrigation District in Nebraska, the Kansas Bostwick Irrigation District No. 2, the Frenchman-Cambridge Irrigation District, and the Webster Irrigation District No. 4, all a part of the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program; S. 2028, to provide for the reinstatement of a license for a certain Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Project; S. 2035, to extend the time required for construction of a hydroelectric project in the State of Idaho; S. 2054, to direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a study of water resources in the State of Vermont; S. 2205, to direct the Secretary of the Interior to convey certain parcels of land acquired for the Blunt Reservoir and Pierre Canal features of the initial stage of the Oahe Unit, James Division, SD, to the Commission of Schools and Public Lands and the Department of Game, Fish, and Parks of the State of South Dakota for the purpose of mitigating lost wildlife habitat, on the condition that the current preferential leaseholders shall have an option to purchase the parcels from the Commission; and H.R. 3812, to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to prepare a feasibility study with respect to the Mokelumne River, and for other purposes.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 30, 2006, at 10 a.m. to mark up an original bill entitled ``Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2006.''

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 30, 2006, at 9:30 a.m. to hold a hearing on The Hidden Cost of Oil.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Disaster Prevention and Prediction be authorized to meet on Thursday, March 30, 2006, at 11 a.m., on National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Oversight.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet on Thursday, March 30, 2006, at 2:30 p.m., on Competition and Convergence.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 30, 2006, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing on ``McKinney-Vento Act Reauthorization and Consolidation of HUD's Homeless Programs.''

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet on Thursday, March 30, 2006, at 10 a.m., on pending Committee business.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I yield the floor.

Mr. KYL. I would say to the Senator from Alabama, this is what we have been briefed. The President was at the border. He was briefed likewise on this phenomenon. Sheriff Larry Dever from Cochise County, Sheriff Ralph Ogden from Yuma County, they both told me this. The chiefs of police in Tucson and Phoenix told me this, the Chief of the Border Patrol in both the Tucson and Yuma sector, all of them agree that methamphetamine is now the No. 1 drug coming across and, by the way, also underneath--in some of these tunnels. We need to make that a crime as well. It is not even a crime to dig a tunnel under the border. But we have an amendment that hopefully will cure that. But now a backpack of methamphetamine is said to be worth, by these law enforcement officials I identified to you, to be worth between a quarter of million and a half million dollars. You can take a poor, illegal immigrant, many of them in a group, and put this backpack on each of them and give them $10,000--more money than they have seen in a long time--and say: You scoot across the border and you'll be met by XYZ. That is a cheap way to get it across. They are not making it as much in Arizona, in fact, anymore. It is all coming across the border, as you pointed out.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Alabama, I have to summarize this answer because welling up in my chest is a big complaint about the Congress, about the Clinton administration, about the Bush administration. Let's be honest. Nobody has done their job completely here. We authorized.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I would say to the Senator from Alabama, that is exactly the case. I would cite two parts of the testimony before our Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security. We had the U.S. attorney for Arizona testify that just from last year, the number of assaults at the border has gone up 108 percent. It is not just on law enforcement officers, but a lot of the assaults are perpetrated against them. I intended to get the statistics on the number of homicides. But there are homicides and then there are an awful lot of other kinds of assaults. The border, in many places, is becoming a very violent place. There is one good news element that was confirmed by the testimony that was taken in the committee. The reason for this increased violence, they said, was that the Border Patrol was actually improving its ability to control territory. Territory that previously had been the sole jurisdiction of the cartels and the coyotes was now being contested by law enforcement. So naturally they were fighting back. The bad news, of course, is they fight back with high-caliber weapons. They are organized. It is a very dangerous place. As a result, our officers are seeing assaults every day. The other thing that this testimony confirmed was that it is not just nice people coming across the border, it is over 10 percent who are criminals. I mean, if you stop and think about it, if you have 600,000 people coming into the country illegally who are apprehended, so it is maybe three times that many who are coming in who are not apprehended, and over 10 percent of them are criminals, you are talking about tens of thousands of people who have decided that this is a good way to get into the United States, come in as an illegal immigrant. These are not the kind of people we want in our country. When you look at the type of crimes that the people who have been apprehended have been accused of committing or have been convicted of committing, it is homicides, it has been rapes, serious assaults, drug crimes--serious crimes. So not only is the border becoming more violent, but the people coming into the United States are an increasingly criminal element, and they are continuing to commit crimes in our cities, in particular against other illegal immigrants. That is why we believe it is very important that at least one group that ought not to be able to participate in whatever program we adopt is this group of criminals. That is another reason our first effort should be to get control of the border. Forget the problem of people coming here to work. If for no other reason, you want to keep the people from terrorist countries out, keep out the people smuggling methamphetamine into the country, and keep people with criminal records out of this country. That is why many of us think the first thing we ought to do is get control of the border. I went on a little long in answering the question.

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

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, there is one more thing I wanted to say this evening about the amendment Senator Cornyn and I offered, an amendment which provides that criminals cannot participate in the program that we adopt here--whatever that program is--in terms of being temporary workers or being put on the path of citizenship, or however this body ultimately defines what happens to immigrants who have come here illegally, or so-called future flow workers. I think almost everybody can agree it shouldn't apply to criminals, or to people who have violated a court order to depart the country. I made the point earlier, and I want to reiterate it, that it is important to separate out the group of people who have come here, albeit illegally, to do hard work and not otherwise violate our laws, except perhaps using fraudulent documents. Those people end up being the primary targets of other illegal immigrants who commit heinous crimes against them. So one of the reasons for denying these criminals the right to participate in the same program is to get them away from the people who are most susceptible to being preyed upon. We talked to chiefs of police, to sheriffs, to the Border Patrol, to other law enforcement officials, and they have different statistics, but by and large they all agree that predominantly the serious crime in their communities, particularly large communities, is immigrant on immigrant and it is mostly illegal immigrant. And the crimes that are committed would just break your heart. There are stories like this. Immigrants pay a couple of thousand dollars, roughly $2,000 is the going price now, to a coyote to be smuggled into Arizona from Mexico. They may have had to pay different people along the way on the bus up to Altar, where they could then come across, or wherever. But the fee is probably in the neighborhood of $2,000. Before they come across somebody comes and says it is now going to cost you an additional $500 or, I am sorry, we can't do it. So they have to somehow communicate to somebody else in their family or a friend to come up with some more money. They then attach themselves to the coyote who brings them across the border. A lot of different things can happen. First of all, another group vies for that group of illegal immigrants because they are all worth money. We had a shootout on Interstate 10 between Tucson and Phoenix involving two vehicles with illegal immigrants in them with two different coyote gangs. They were having a shootout on the freeway, and people were killed and injured, over who was going to control the load of immigrants because that is value. You could hold the illegal immigrants here in a safe house and tell them that until they come up with another $1,000, let's say, they are going to be held hostage, basically, or the coyote or his friends will call the police or Border Patrol if they don't come up with the money. Women are forced to commit improper acts. There are assaults, sexual assaults. There is a great deal of crime perpetrated on these illegal immigrants. If they have not been beaten or raped or robbed or held ransom for more money, then what happens is they are waiting in the safe house and the Phoenix Police Department shows up at the safe house because they have gotten a call of a disturbance in a house. It wasn't a disturbance at all. It was the coyote calling the Phoenix police because he has another load coming in that night and he needs to get rid of these people. He has gotten all he can out of them. He sucked them dry. They don't have any more money. He has taken all they have. They don't dare go to the police. Now he has called the police and said there is a disturbance. They show up at the house and pick up these illegal immigrants. If they are from Mexico they are put on a bus back to Mexico. That is what can happen to these people. These are the ones who do not die in the desert and who are not abused some other way. We cannot allow the criminal element here, people who have committed crimes, who are criminals, to continue to prey on these people. It is one of the reasons our amendment says that criminals cannot participate in this program. There is another reason. Citizenship in this country is a tremendous privilege. Anyone who knows immigrants who have come here or who has participated in a swearing-in ceremony knows how much legal immigrants value this privilege. As I said before, my grandparents came here and they were so proud of their American citizenship. They felt so privileged to have been able to come here. It is not fair to them or for the millions who are waiting in some country, waiting to come here and who have to attest to their good character. They have abided by the laws. They have committed no crimes. To then see somebody else who has not only entered the country illegally but also in some other way has committed crimes or has refused to depart after a judge's order, to then be able to participate in a legal program allowing them to become a temporary worker or be on a path to citizenship--what kind of a signal does that send? It cheapens American citizenship. It cheapens legal permanent residency. It is wrong to simply say that because we have a hard time with the amount of people who have come here illegally, we are not going to differentiate among them in any way, we are just going to take them all in and let them all get on this path to citizenship. That is wrong. I do not think the American people will allow us to permit that kind of individual to participate in this program. That is what the underlying bill allows. There are a lot of things wrong with this underlying bill. This is just one of them. But I hope with each of these things that we point out, our colleagues will come to realize that there is an answer here somewhere, but it is not every provision of this bill. So, piece by piece, we will focus attention on this bill to try to determine where we can make changes so at the end of the day we have a good product--comprehensive immigration reform, enforcement, and an opportunity for people our society needs to work here on a temporary but legal basis. If we can do that, we will have succeeded. But if we simply pass a bill that has a tremendous number of flaws in it, we will have failed. I hope we can correct this first flaw with the amendment that Senator Cornyn and I have offered to at least ensure that criminals can't participate in this program.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I think that is a very important point. I know there are many people who were concerned about the House bill. Much of the marching that was done last week was against the House bill on the grounds that it was creating new crimes and even felony crimes. Nothing in either the legislation that Senator Cornyn and I have introduced nor in this amendment creates any felony offense, nor does this amendment create any misdemeanor offense. It simply says people who have already committed crimes should not participate in this program or who have violated a court order of removal. There are millions of people who have come to the United States illegally but who otherwise, other than perhaps using false documents, have worked hard and abided by the rules. It is not in their interest to violate our laws. Yet when the subject is discussed, it is easy to roll all of the people up in one group and suggest that good and decent people are no better than people who have committed crimes, and they ought to all be treated the same. And some people have even said they ought to all be made criminals and thrown out of the country. While we may not like the fact that we have permitted people to come into this country illegally, I believe it does a great injustice to people to assume they are all alike and to bunch them up into the same group. We need to extract out of this group of people who all of us intend to try to treat in the most humane and responsible way we can, however, the ultimate framework of a guest worker program or other programs are developed, we need to separate that group of people from those who have committed crimes, people whom we don't want to be here. That is the purpose of our amendment. We have decided it is important for us to distinguish between the people who do not deserve to be automatically eliminated from consideration for whatever program is going to be adopted here, those people who have actually committed crimes and whom we would not want to bring into the country if we had a choice in the initial instance, in other words, people who would be admittable in the country, certainly people who would be deportable for having committed these kinds of crimes. So clearly if they should not be admitted into the country or they should have been deported for committing certain kinds of crimes, it wouldn't make any sense to allow them then to participate in a guest worker program or to put them on the path to citizenship. That is the essence of our amendment. Of all of the things we disagree about--we understand there are many--we think it is important to distinguish between that group of people who otherwise have been law-abiding people and the group of people who have committed crimes. And ironically, most often the crimes these people are in jail for are committed against other immigrants, frequently illegal immigrants. They rape them. They rob them. They beat them up. They hold them for ransom. In all of the big cities in the Southwest, the largest number of crimes are committed by illegal immigrants against primarily illegal immigrants. So to help those who are otherwise innocent from being further preyed upon, we need to remove from this country, not allow them to participate in the program, to remove those people who would continue to prey upon the innocent. That is what our amendment would do. I hope when it comes time to vote, our colleagues will recognize that whatever other disagreements there are, these are the people who should not be allowed to participate in the program.

Mr. KYL. We are all ears.