Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Louisiana who has been effective and courageous in his advocacy on this issue.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I will yield up to 10 minutes to the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I will be pleased to use 30 minutes now, and will reserve the remainder of my time, if I could.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, we are in the process of dealing with a very important issue. A number of our colleagues--in some ways dismissive, I think, of the concerns of the American public--refer it to as an emotional issue. I think it is more than an emotional issue. I think it is a serious issue that requires our serious concern. It requires that this great Senate, on a matter of tremendous importance to our Nation and to our constituents, do it correctly. I love my colleagues who met to try to write this bill. I believe their hearts were correct. But they are not law enforcement officers. They have not investigated and prosecuted cases. They apparently were inundated with information and ideas, and so forth, from special interest groups and others. I have said I wish the American people had been in the room. I wish the head of our Border Patrol association had been in the room or perhaps the chief of Border Patrol during President Reagan's tenure or the chief of Border Patrol during former President Bush's tenure. All of those people, including the current chairman of the association of retired Border Patrol officers, have criticized this bill in the most severe manner, saying it is a slap in the face to people who followed the law, saying it will not work, saying the 24-hour name check is not going to work at all, and will not provide security to our country, that it will actually be a benefit to terrorists. I am not saying this; they said this. It would be a benefit to terrorists. One called it the ``Terrorist Relief Act,'' or something to that effect. What I want to tell my colleagues is, the professionals who deal with these issues absolutely oppose this legislation. Now, we can dismiss that. Maybe you talk to somebody from some news outlet or talk to somebody from some business group or some activist organization, and maybe you have a different view. But the people who enforce the laws every day oppose this legislation. They do not believe it will work. I suggest it will be demoralizing to them. Our own Congressional Budget Office has analyzed the legislation. We have them for our use. We rely on that organization. It operates under the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the majority leader here, and all of us. It is a bipartisan group. But the Congressional Budget Office has analyzed our current law and concluded that if current law is not changed, we will have 10 million more illegal immigrants in our country in the next 20 years. We have 12 million now, maybe 20 million. But we would have 10 million more under current law. They say if this legislation were to be passed, we would have some reduction of illegality at the border--not much--but we would have an increase in visa overstays because we have so many temporary guest worker programs going on, and the net result would be that this Nation would only have a reduction of 13 percent in the illegal flow of immigrants into our country. Indeed, there would be 8.9 million more persons illegally in our country 20 years from now than today. Now, what does that say about my good and well-intentioned colleagues who are trying to tell us all that the thing is going to work, that if you do not pass this amnesty, if you do not give these benefits to people who came here illegally, then you will not get enforcement? Well, we are not getting enforcement, everyone. The bill does not provide enforcement--not in any significant way that would allow us to proceed effectively. We had hearings in our committees that dealt with the question of the impact of large numbers of foreign workers on the wages of American workers. It is not, I think, subject to dispute. At the current rate we are going, at the current rate of immigration, legal and illegal, wages of lower income Americans are being adversely affected. Professor Borjas at Harvard, who has written a most authoritative technical book on immigration at the Kennedy School, has said it has brought down the wage of low-income workers 8 percent. That is a lot. That is a lot, an 8-percent decline in wages. In many areas, it could be even greater than that, I suspect. It is pretty understandable that it would happen. If you bring in more cotton in this country, if you bring in more cotton, you will have a lower price for cotton. If you bring in corn, you will have a lower price for corn. If you bring in large amounts of labor, it will pull down the value of a working man's hourly wage. So I am concerned about that. My colleagues have said a number of times that by getting this--Madam President, there is a little bit of a buzz.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, this has been a very important day, a day that was pretty contentious. The procedural mechanism that the Majority Leader had invoked to control the debate in the Senate had its wheels come off today. The plan by the group, the grand bargainers and the leadership, was to push through a controlled series of 27 or so amendments today. The plan was to vote on this controlled group of hand picked amendments, mostly by motions to table, today. Had they voted on all of these amendments today we would have heard claims about the full and fair amendment process that had taken place this week--even though it was all just a show--no amendment would have gotten a vote unless the Majority Leader had approved it. My amendments, Senator Cornyn's amendments, and amendments by Senators Dole, Vitter, Coburn, and DeMint would not have gotten votes. Well, the Baucus amendment was part of their plan but a surprise happened, it was not tabled. As a result, that amendment remained alive and the majority leader had the plan that had been so carefully constructed, almost to the degree of the Normandy invasion, come to a halt. So we are now no longer voting and debating tonight. But we will be getting ready for a key vote in the morning. So I would say to anyone who might be listening, tomorrow morning is a very important vote. I believe a number of Senators who voted yesterday to move forward on this bill, some of the 64 who did, may not be for the legislation tomorrow. I firmly believe that as the legislation and debate has gone along this week, more people have seen the fatal flaws that are in the legislation. I think we are going to see an erosion of the support tomorrow. I would say to my colleagues, let's end this tomorrow. Let's have this bill come down tomorrow. Let's not invoke cloture. Let's not continue to move forward on this bill because the legislation cannot be fixed in its present form. I have had some people ask me, Jeff, why can't you compromise on this legislation? Why can't a compromise be reached? Well, I would just say that if you are trying to fix a leaky bucket, you can't compromise to fix the bucket by fixing four holes in the bucket and leaving six more holes in the bucket. Under that compromise, all of the water is still going to leak out. The problem with the immigration bill currently before the Senate, and I have seen this problem repeatedly in the immigration realm, is that when we come up with provisions and concepts that would actually work, ones that would restore lawfulness to the immigration system, we pull back, we compromise too much. In my own mind, it has been like trying to jump across a 10-foot cavern, but only jumping 9 feet. You still fall to the bottom. You do not get across, you do not achieve your goal. Until we complete some of the currently inadequate enforcement provisions, until we draft a bill that will create a legal system that will actually work, compromising about this or that matter is not going to amount to much. The bill, I do believe, as I have indicated before, is only going to reduce illegal immigration by a net 13 percent over the next 20 years. That number comes straight from the Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate on this bill, which they released June 4th, I did not make it up. Our own Congressional Budget Office, has told the Senate that we can expect to have an additional 8.7 million people illegally in our country after this bill becomes law. That is not what we had been promised by the grand bargainers that brought this bill back to the floor. That is not what they are claiming will happen. They have promised us that this bill will secure the border. I assume that they mean they believe this bill will end illegal immigration. Well, it just simply will not secure the border and end or even substantially reduce illegal immigration. The Congressional Budget Office has told us it will not. In the beginning, I analyzed the bill and my staff worked on it, and we did not believe it would be an effective enforcement mechanism. The Congressional Budget Office has now also concluded that the bill will not fulfil the enforcement promises being made on the floor of this Senate. I will note again that the Association of Retired Border Patrol Agents roundly criticized the legislation. Two former chiefs of the Border Patrol of the United States, one of them under President Bush, one under President Reagan, have strongly and totally condemned the legislation. The current Association of Border Patrol Officers opposes the legislation. The former Assistant Attorney General, Kris Kobach, who served in the as counsel to Attorney General Ashcroft on issues dealing with immigration and national security says this bill will not make us safer but will make us less safe. So does Mr. Cutler, a former INS agent of many years of experience. He is worried that we will be issuing U.S. government identities to people who we have no idea who they really are. So, bottom line, the bill is not going to do what supporters are promising it will do. Those of us who were not in the little group of grand bargainers certainly have no responsibility to affirm the deal they may have reached, especially if we know that it is not going to work. If the bill before us was a good piece of legislation and it solved the problems it claims to solve, then maybe we would just have to hold our noses and live with this sort of secret pressure that our good friends, the masters of the universe, have put on us by meeting and writing up a bill and telling us we have to take it or leave it. They tell us they will only allow a few little amendments, but anything that goes to the core of the legislation we will not allow you to change. They tell us they are all going to stick together and vote against it amendments that offer any real changes to the deal. I have had members of the group say to me, and I find this very disturbing: Well, Jeff, that is a pretty good amendment you have, but it changes what we agreed on. I might agree with your amendment, but I cannot support your amendment. That is a rather unusual way to do business on the floor of the Senate, it is not a way of doing business that should make us proud, not one that is worthy of a matter of this importance. Constituents all across the country are opposed to this legislation. I think I earlier said 20 percent support it. I think more accurately it is 22 percent that support this legislation. According to the latest Rasmussen poll, there has been a continual drop in support for the last 3 consecutive weeks in the tracking they have been doing. Twice as many said they prefer no legislation at all to the bill that is before us today. We have been told by our colleagues promoting this legislation, that the only way to get the enforcement we want, is to vote for this legislation. Well, I don't think that all enforcement items should be held hostage to amnesty, and I have just explained why the enforcement they promise is not going to work. The bill does have some concepts that are fairly significant. For example, the idea that people get legal status in the form of the probationary benefits visa a mere 24 hours after filing an amnesty application is very significant. These are legal documents we will be giving them, a certification that a person is in our country legally. It can then be utilized to get a state driver's license, a Social Security card, and those kind of things. So the only thing that is going to be done before people are given this document just 24 hours after filing an application is a cursory background check. I submit to my colleagues that a full background check can not possibly be performed within 24 hours. The only way an amnesty application will not get legal status in 24 hours is if they had been arrested and fingerprinted somewhere in the country, and their fingerprints have been put into the national fingerprint index. That is really the only thing that will disqualify them within that 24 hour period. But I wish my colleagues would think back to 9/11. Several of the 9/ 11 hijackers were stopped by state and local police at various times prior to 9/11 for speeding or such and each time they were let go by local law enforcement. Local law enforcement was now aware that some of them were here illegally. In the future, all of these 12 million would be given an identification document that would give them legal status, so, in fact, their position would be enhanced to an even greater status than the 9/11 hijackers. They would have U.S. government issued identification and a driver's license. They could travel the whole country with freedom under these documents. So Mr. Kris Kobach and Mr. Mike Cutler and others have written op-eds and editorials that point out that this could be a tremendous advantage for terrorists, not a disadvantage. These are complex issues. I think it would be better if our wise colleagues had invited somebody like Mr. Kobach, who is a professor of law now, a former Assistant Attorney General, to speak on these issues. Maybe they should have sought his opinion instead of the special interests they were listening to when they cobbled together this political deal. Maybe they would have been better off if they asked some of experts, such as the former chairmen of the Border Patrol, what they thought, or the present head of the Border Patrol Association. SO, the question is, what do we need to do now? The first thing we need to do is take this bill off the agenda tomorrow by defeating the cloture motion. Let's just end this agony, please. Let's not continue down this path. Let's say: No, it is time to pay a decent respect to the opinions of our constituents. They do not like this. Let's respect them. Let's acknowledge that independent experts say this bill will not work. This is not just the opinions of some radio talk show hosts, as I have heard my colleagues talking about this week, but we have independent experts saying it will not work. I will just observe that the radio talk show hosts know more about the bill than most of the Senators do, if you want to know the truth. But at any rate, this is where we are. I think we ought to come down with it. We should probably follow what the people have suggested in the polling data that I saw. The American people would favor incremental steps emphasizing enforcement. There are some things that we could do to achieve what the American people want. I suggest that if we can come up with a credible enforcement mechanism--and we can--then we need to enact it. Then we can begin to talk about the future flow in immigration levels. I don't think most people know--I am not sure most Senators have fully understood--this bill over the next 20 years will double the number of people given green cards, legal permanent residence in America. It will double the current numbers. It has only a 13-percent reduction in the 500,000 or so who come illegally every year. Remember, it was last year when we arrested 1 million people coming into our country illegally. What kind of system is this when our Border Patrol agents are out there working their hearts out and risking their lives to arrest a million people and we want to give immigration benefits for those that snuck past our agents? That type of immigration system does not work. The way to make it work is for this Nation to state with crystal clarity that our border is not open anymore. Don't bother to try to illegally cross our border. People are coming from all over the world, not just Mexico, to sneak across the Mexican border, because it is wide open in their thoughts and it has been easier to get into the United States that way. It is not that difficult to create the reality that it is not open, and people will not spend their money trying to go through deserts and so forth to get into this country if the word gets out that it is no longer possible to be successful at it. That is what we need to do, reach that tipping point. We could see a big drop in the flow of illegal immigrants into our country. Then we could focus on a compassionate solution to those who have been here for a long time, who have children and families and have jobs and solid ties to our country. But the legislation before us today moved the date by which you could make claim for legal status from January of 2004 to January of 2007. Basically, no illegal alien is left behind; everybody is going to be a participant in this deal. I was stunned at that. Senator Webb offered an excellent amendment today on that point to say it ought to go back 4 years. Why would we do that? The reason that is important is because we made an announcement that we were going to close the border down. The President said so. He looked the American people in the eye and said we were going to do this. He called out the National Guard last year, and the National Guard has been at the border, I guess, now over a year. This bill would say, if you got past the National Guard before last December 31, then you are in the pot. And the argument that I have heard is that we need to do something about the people who have been here for a long time. They have children. They are deeply embedded in the communities. We can't ask them to leave. But what about a person who ran past the National Guard last December? How can that person be deeply embedded in our society after sneaking in after we have said that the border is no longer open? What do you tell our Border Patrol officers when they are out there trying to enforce the law and somebody just got past them last November and now they are free and on the path to receiving some type of permanent status? Congress just says: Forget it, those who snuck past the border six months ago are going to be given a legal status and a path to citizenship. These concerns should not be lightly dealt with. Politicians can meet and plot and think, but you have to remember what we are doing here. This is a great nation. A great nation creates laws. That nation should see that those laws are enforced and followed through effectively. If the laws are not enforced then that nation loses respect. Its law officers lose respect. Instead, people who are inclined to violate laws are encouraged. Clearly, the nation will have more violations if that nation doesn't enforce the laws it passed. The bottom line is that this bill evidences a lack of commitment to make sure that the system that is getting established will work any better than the old one. So if we are not able to establish with confidence and clarity and conviction a new system of immigration that we intend to enforce, what is the point of legislating another immigration bill that won't achieve those goals? But the American people aren't ready to quit. If any Senator doubts that, I suggest they sit at their front desk a while and answer the phone. That is the deal. We need as a nation to make a decision, are we going to create a lawful system of immigration or not? That is the question. This bill answers it in the negative. This bill is not going to create a legal system. To pass it is one more indication of our lack of will and commitment. It will breed cynicism and unhappiness among our constituents. I thank the Chair for its patience allowing me to wrap up. I do believe the last vote on the Baucus amendment that did not table the amendment sent a signal that Senators are frustrated and uneasy about this process. I do believe more and more Senators, some of whom voted for cloture just yesterday, may not vote for cloture tomorrow. I urge my colleagues not to worry. The issue is not going away. We have had it going since 1986. Just because this grand compromise by the grand compromisers didn't work does not mean we don't have a problem that needs to be fixed. But next time let's make sure we do it right for our country. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, is it now appropriate that I utilize a few of the minutes I have remaining--I am not going to use them all-- before we adjourn? Is that what we agreed to?

Mr. SESSIONS. That will be fine.

Mr. SESSIONS. I ask for 10 minutes.

Mr. SESSIONS. They both agreed. That is the problem. Is there any time set aside for the opposition?

Mr. SESSIONS. How does that happen when they both agree on this bill?

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, what is the plan for debate time in the morning prior to the cloture vote? I have been involved in the debate and would like to be involved in having some opportunity to speak in the morning prior to the vote, if that would be appropriate.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Kentucky. On this question, this fundamental promise by our friends, whom I refer to affectionately as the masters of the universe, that we would secure the border--what does our expert congressional arm say about it? What does the Congressional Budget Office say about it? They say, no, it will not. Senator Cornyn and Senator Bunning have pointed out a number of things that are weaknesses with the bill. Will this weakness and other items they talked about in the bill actually secure the border? According to CBO, the new Senate bill will only reduce the annual illegal immigration by 13 percent. Illegal inflow at the border will be reduced by approximately 25 percent, but that will be substantially offset by increased additional visa overstays, almost over a half million in the next 10 years. According to CBO, the net result will be only a 1.3 million reduction in new illegal immigrants over the next 20 years. Because we expect under current law 10 million to come over that period illegally--that is a lot--enactment would reduce that expectation to 8.7 million new additional illegal immigrants by 2027. Out of 10 million, we have 8.7 million. I ask my colleagues, is that securing the border? Is that effecting a legal and lawful and effective immigration system? I suggest it is not. There is no way you can say it otherwise. One of the key things of an effective immigration system is the US- VISIT exit system. That is not affected in this. I have talked about that some, but I won't go back into that. I see my colleague from Louisiana here, Senator Vitter. He is an outstanding lawyer who has spent a great deal of his time and energy studying these 700 pages and trying to get the amendment of 370 or so pages so he can study it and help decide what it will do. I see Senator Vitter is here. I am pleased to yield to him 5 minutes.

Mr. SESSIONS. I yield 6 minutes to the Senator from Kentucky.

Mr. SESSIONS. Senator Bunning from Kentucky is here and desires to speak on this legislation. I thank him for his comments previously and for his clarity of thought on the issue. How long does the Senator desire to speak?

Mr. SESSIONS. I yield 20 minutes to the Senator from Texas.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I say to my colleagues, the process has not been a pretty one to date. It has been particularly ugly in the last few hours in that we had an amendment yesterday of nearly 400 pages. The people who wrote it apparently found that they made numerous errors which even they were not happy with. They filed another amendment which our Senators don't have a copy of, I don't think even to this moment. At least an hour ago, Senator DeMint was asking for a copy of the amendment so people could see it and actually read what is to be voted on. It is not good, on a matter that almost every American is watching, a matter that is important to our country, to stumble and bumble into this process, and part of the reason, as my good friend and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, said, it would have been better probably had we gone through the committee process. When he was chairman of the committee, it did go through the committee process. It didn't do a lot of good, but at least it was looked at in some of the areas that are inevitably fixed when we go through that kind of process. So I am worried about this process. The procedure the majority leader has chosen, and he says he has support of some kind from the Republican leadership side--I assume he does--he has chosen to utilize a procedure never before used in this Senate. That procedure will allow the majority leader, Senator Reid, to have the power to approve every amendment that will be offered to this legislation. If it is not part of his clay pigeon, you are not in. If some other amendment is offered and accepted, it is because he decided it is appropriate. He could well accept amendments that he knows are going to fail. He could well accept amendments that he doesn't mind passing. But he picks the amendments. That has never happened in the history of the Senate, never happened in this fashion before. We must not allow that procedure to happen now. There will be opportunities for us, before this process is over, to execute votes that will demonstrate we don't accept this process, and it should be a big part of any Senator's vote as we go forward with this process. Mr. President, I have to say to my colleagues, as I indicated to the majority leader earlier, what would Paul Wellstone say, that great liberal advocate, a Senator who enjoyed standing alone, or Senator Jesse Helms, that great conservative who enjoyed standing alone, both doing what they believed was right, something we take great pride in as an institution. We do not have a lot of power here, but if you don't agree to unanimous consent requests and you are consistent in your advocacy of positions you deeply believe in, you can get a vote. Under this procedure you do not get a vote. I offered amendment after amendment before when this bill was before the Senate. As a result, the leadership on the other side objected. I could not get those amendments pending, and that leaves us unable to get a final vote postcloture. I am not exaggerating. It has never been done before. It allows the majority leader, under the procedure that is being used today, to completely approve or disapprove of whether an amendment gets voted on. So I object to that process. It is not right. We should not be doing it, and we shouldn't be doing it on a bill that is 750 pages with a 300- or 400-page amendment that goes to some issues that are important to America. Let me share with my colleagues my concerns about this legislation. I will try to summarize it and go right to the point. Senator Reid, the President, the President's Cabinet members, leaders of the coalition, this grand bargain group--I call them affectionately the masters of the universe--they all tell us this bill is going to fix illegality, and if we don't vote for this legislation, somehow legality will not happen. A group of us have written to the President asking him to utilize 13 special powers he already has under law that will dramatically reduce illegality in immigration. We have not heard from him. We could do additional legislation that would help enforcement. I believe that is so. But the bill will not stop illegal immigration and, in fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, June 4, they rendered their report and they concluded that instead of 10 million people coming into the country illegally as they project under current law, 8.7 million people would be entering our country illegally. What kind of legislation is this? We have been promised it is going to stop illegality and it only reduces illegality by 13 percent, a fundamental failure, a fundamental misrepresentation to the American people about what this bill will do. It is shocking. This chart shows that situation. The blue, according to the CBO score over 20 years, the blue shows that 10 million people would be coming into our country at the current rate over the next 20 years. If we pass the bill, the red will occur, 8.7 million people. Every Senator ought to know what our own Congressional Budget Office has reported. Every Senator who is aware of that cannot go home to their constituents and say: I voted for comprehensive immigration reform to make sure we create a legal system in the future. How can you do that? This can't be done. It is an important issue. The legislation would double legal immigration. I don't think that is what the American people want or expect. The blue represents current law. The red represents the new bill--and it could be more--and the number of legal permanent resident statuses, the green cards, will double in the next 20 years under this legislation. I think most people thought we were going to do something to get control of immigration and reduce illegality and reevaluate the numbers who come. Certainly, they don't think we are doubling legal immigration. We also know there are high costs involved. According to the Congressional Budget Office, our study we got back a couple weeks ago, in 10 years this legislation will cost the taxpayers of America in welfare and social benefits $30 billion--this is their number; I didn't make this up--$30 billion. They have been saying this is going to bring in more tax revenue, we are going to legalize people, and they are going to pay taxes. Wrong. It is not going to happen. It is not so. I wish it were so. I wish I could tell my colleagues that the numbers show when this amnesty occurs, everybody is going to pay a lot of taxes and it will help balance our budget. Wrong. It is not going to happen that way. It will cost $30 billion in the first 10 years, and our own Congressional Budget Office says it will be dramatically greater in the next 10 years and increase as the years go by. It is going to increase the cost to the Treasury and, in fact, let me share with you what the highly regarded Heritage Foundation study found. Robert Rector, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the architect of welfare reform for our country, has been alarmed at the cost of this bill. I am not talking about the cost of Border Patrol agents and barriers and those kinds of items. I am talking about the cost of providing all the social benefits we give to American citizens, to people who came into our country illegally, what it will cost in terms of tax credits, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps and the like. If they are all made legal permanent residents, Z card holders, even the temporary visas, they will be entitled to virtually all of these programs. According to Mr. Rector, over the lifetime retirement years of the 12 million who would be given amnesty under this provision, it will cost the taxpayers of America--hold your hat--$2.6 trillion; over $2 trillion. It is a stunning figure. It is a figure so large that we almost can't comprehend it or think about it. But anybody who tells you that somehow legalizing the people who are here illegally and providing them with every benefit we provide to American citizens is somehow going to add revenue to our Treasury cannot be correct. CBO says no. They say it will be even worse in the outyears. And the Heritage Foundation has calculated the outyears to be over $2 trillion. This is a stunning figure. I submit that by passing this law, we will provide a path to citizenship for people, for even those people who broke into our country last December 31, running past the National Guard the President called out. If you could get past the National Guard last December, you will be given amnesty under this bill and be placed on a full path to all these benefits and citizenship. They have been saying we have to help people who have been here for years and have children and deep roots. I am willing to discuss that situation. I don't believe we can ask everybody to leave this country who came here years ago, who have children and roots and are dug in. I am not prepared to ask them to leave--I really am not--and I have said that publicly for some time. But Senator Webb just had an amendment that said if you came here in the last 4 years after we had been talking about this issue, after we have called out the National Guard and made clear we want to do something about it, you don't get on this path, you haven't been here long enough to entitle you to be given amnesty. It was voted down by a substantial vote a few moments ago. His amendment was tabled. It is no longer on the agenda. It will not become law. The current law, what is in the bill, provides amnesty to people who came in last December. I have talked about, and we have had hearings that I think demonstrate with absolute clarity, this incredibly large flow of immigration into America today is, in fact, depressing wages of American workers. Oh, yesterday, we had this great union debate that we are going to eliminate the secret ballot so people will be forced into unions. My Democratic colleagues had charts showing wages haven't gone up in the last few years. And I am inclined to agree because that is what the experts told us on the immigration question. They told us that wages have not gone up--not because of some oppressive businessperson but because we have allowed millions of people to come into our country to take jobs at lower wages that Americans ought to be paid to do. Those are just the facts. Professor Borjas of Harvard, himself a Cuban immigrant, at the Kennedy School--and I suggested Senator Kennedy perhaps should walk over there to Harvard from his Boston home and talk to Professor Borjas. Professor Borjas concludes that for people in this country without certain education levels, their wages from 1980 to 2000 have been depressed 8.2 percent. Anecdotally, I would just note that when I left the Chamber here last Friday, there was a gentleman out here on the street--had gray hair and a gray beard, with a little sign about jobs--and I talked to him. He said he was a master carpenter in Florida and he used to make as much as $75,000 a year--which is not too much money for a master carpenter, in my opinion--but he can hardly make a living today because of an incredible influx of cheap labor that has pulled down the value of his labor. When I raised this with Senator Kennedy last year in our debate, he said: Well, we are going to raise the minimum wage. Well, how much are we going to raise it? We are going to raise it to $7 an hour. That is not good enough. We want people to make $15 an hour, $20 an hour. If you want to know why wages haven't gone up for working Americans, ask Professor Borjas at Harvard; Professor Chiswick at the University of Chicago; Alan Tonelson, an expert; and one of the other professors we had actually--I think he was with the Chamber of Commerce group, and he admitted it. The Secretary of Treasury just recently admitted he was concerned about the fact that wage earners were not keeping up with the growth in the economy. That is my opinion. If somebody wants to dispute it, so be it. I don't think this legislation in any way provides for assimilation to the degree we would like to see it in accordance with our great American heritage of assimilation. So I think the fundamental issue in this entire debate, the issue that goes to the heart of the question, is whether this Congress and this President really intend to keep the promises they are making. Isn't that the real question? Because in 1986, they spun a beautiful song: one-time amnesty, and we will have law enforcement next. I ask: Does this bill do what the supporters claim it will? Fundamentally, will it work? Will it secure the border? Senator Reid, just a few moments ago, said what the American people want--they want our borders secure. Well, will it do that? Will it enable us to enforce the law in an effective, diligent, and consistent way that breeds respect for law? Will it clearly reward right behavior and firmly penalize bad behavior? Will it encourage immigration by lawful means, a means that serves our national interest and not special interests, or will it continue to encourage illegal immigration? Are we just drifting through, once again, a charade, a predictable cycle where every few decades amnesty is rewarded to lawbreakers and enforcement never follows? Would that not be a tragedy? This Senator has no intention and will not vote for and will oppose in every way he can--and others share this view--a bill that is going to be like 1986, that will fail again. When this cycle occurs again, as I predict it will if this legislation passes, those who ignore our laws will be rewarded; those who dutifully comply will consider themselves to be chumps for going through that process. In recent days, I have had three people who have entered our country legally, done it correctly, come to me and tell me: Senator, stand in there; we support you. We did it the right way. We don't appreciate these people doing it differently. There was a good article in the Montgomery Advertiser about a lady named Singh--I assume she is of Indian ancestry--who spent several years, hired a good lawyer, spent $4,250, and eventually got her citizenship, for which she was most proud. She was absolutely crystal clear that she did not appreciate it that other people came into our country illegally and would get the same privileges she got that she had to work hard for doing it the correct way. I think there is a moral order here that we need to respect. Repeated amnesties erode a moral approach to the law of this country. In the past 2 months, we have heard other Senators and the President make promises that this is going to work. The political elite have all said to our top magazines and newspapers that they promise real enforcement will begin following the passage of this bill. They promise this bill will decrease illegal immigration, it will secure the border, and reform our legal immigration system to better serve the national interests. That is a great promise. If that is what this bill did, I would be for it. In fact, I was quoted in the paper several times this spring when I heard the masters of the universe, our friends who tried to write this bill, promise those very principles. I said that those are principles that are getting close to something I can support. I am really interested in it. But as I read it and studied it, I became more and more discouraged, and as independent critics and other experts examined it, they indicated the same. So will the promises be fulfilled? That is a question I would like to discuss today. Remember this: Even in 1986, President Reagan was the President, and he was a law-and-order man, and when the bill passed in 1986, what did he emphasize? Did he emphasize the amnesty they granted? No, because people were dubious about that. He emphasized the future law enforcement--and this is so familiar today--and he said: It is high time we regained control of our borders, and Senator Alan Simpson's bill will do this. Well, President Reagan was wrong. We had 3 million people here illegally then. Now we are talking about providing amnesty to 12 million, maybe 20 million. It didn't work. Nobody had the Congressional Budget Office score at that time, our own Congressional Budget Office which tells us this bill won't work and we are going to have another 8.7 million people enter our country in the next 20 years. At least we have been warned this time. Why shouldn't that cause us to pause? Why shouldn't that cause us to give a decent respect to the opinions of our own constituents who strongly oppose the bill and have great doubts about it? Why don't we pull back, rethink it, and begin to do what one of the pollsters suggested the American people are saying, which is take some smaller steps incrementally, emphasizing enforcement? That is what I would suggest we should do. I would like to make this point. Even if President Bush--who has done some things in recent years that are better than we have had done in a number of years but still isn't using all the powers of his office-- even if he kept the promises he is making, he is not going to be in the White House after another 18 months. Somebody else is going to be there. There will be a new Congress here. So the test is really going to be when these trigger events are met, and that will be in 2009 when we will have a new President in office. Now, let's think about this: Some of the Democratic candidates already oppose the core components of the bill, such as the merit-based system, like Canada's. Governor Richardson and Senator Obama--if they win the Presidency, are we going to assume they will fulfill the promises made by this administration? It won't be their priority. Let us talk in a little more detail about this No. 1 issue which is so critical: Will we secure the border, and is this legislation going to help? The bill proponents all make the same claims--that without this bill, the border cannot be secured. But if we pass the bill, they say, we will secure the border. Essentially, they are claiming that enforcement can't be done unless we get amnesty and enforcement. They also claim to be adding 18,000 Border Patrol officers, increasing the detention bedspace, and expanding fencing. Now, you have heard that said. Of course, I want to remind everyone we passed a law which already requires that last year. In my view, that is not contingent on this bill being passed. And I will go into that in some detail. In its first articulated principle about the immigration legislation, the White House PowerPoint that was shown to Senators this spring--and that was intriguing to those of us who have been concerned about creating a lawful system of immigration--the PowerPoint promised ``to secure U.S. borders'' and ``not to repeat the 1986 failure.'' Senator Kennedy, at the famous press conference just about a month ago, said this: The agreement we have reached is the best possible chance we will have in years to secure our borders. Best chance in years. In this legislation, we are doubling the border patrol, we are increasing detention space. Senator McCain said this: This legislation will finally accomplish the extraordinary goal of security at our borders. Another Senator: I am delighted we are going to secure the border. Another one: It will make sure our borders become secure. We have had broken borders in this country for 20 years. It is time to get them fixed. This bill will do that. Another: What happens if we fail? Our borders continue to be broken at a time when we need to secure our country. That is what they all said. Oh, gosh. Well, let's talk about it. They said: Well, we started out in this legislation with 18,000 additional Border Patrol officers; we will increase detention capacity to 27,500 beds; and another one--this is former Governor Jed Bush and Ken Melman--``It doubles the border patrol and expands the border fence.'' That is what they said in their May 31 Wall Street Journal Open Borders editorial. It doubles the Border Patrol and expands the border fence. Maybe these people think this. All right. Let's see if we can get this straight. Before we address whether this bill actually will secure the border, it is important to clarify for the record that the bill does not require a doubling of the Border Patrol, it does not require more bed space than required by current law, and it does not require more fence than current law requires. If anybody doesn't agree with that, come on down and show me that I am wrong. This is a promotion. What about agents? The bill does not add 18,000 Border Patrol agents, Senators. When these statements were made, the trigger only required that a total of 18,000 Border Patrol agents be hired. Since then, Senator Judd Gregg got the number up to 20,000. I think we have that. So we are close to that number now. We are close to 18,000 now and are already on track to have that number hired by the end of 2008, so no more Border Patrol agents are required to be hired under this bill's enforcement trigger than current law requires. Those of you who want to see enforcement are not being given anything on Border Patrol officers. What the bill does do for agents outside the trigger is add 6,000 to the total authorized level by requiring 2,400 agents to be hired in 2011, and again in 2012, and increasing the numbers that are supposed to be hired in 2008, 2009, 2010, from 2,000 to 2,400 per year. In other words, we are already projected to hire 2,000; they say we will add 2,400 a year. Current law authorization only went through 2010 at 2,000 a year, so this bill does increase the authorization by about 30 percent. But it certainly does not require an actual doubling of the Border Patrol, and a 30-percent increase is not in the trigger. The reason that is important is, if it is not required as part of the trigger that kicks off the amnesty and the permanent residence, then appropriators in the future are not likely to do it. I can give you a string of examples of us authorizing Border Patrol, authorizing fencing, and never coming up with the money to fund it. What about bedspace? What is inside the trigger? The claim the bill increases the detention bedspace is factually false. The bill does nothing more than current law. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Act of 2004 requires that 43,000 beds be in place by the end of this year. In 2004 we require 43,000 bedspaces by the end of 2007. The enforcement trigger contained in this bill, though it improved a bit after the Gregg amendment, still only requires 31,500 beds. It really weakens the number. What about bedspace outside the trigger? Even with the bill's latest section on bedspace found outside the trigger, which requires the eventual addition of 20,000 beds, the bill still only gets to 38,000 beds, still below current law. So that is a problem. Let me mention the fencing. We hear so much about that. The claim that the bill expands the border fence is also not true. The trigger requires only the building of 370 miles of fencing. Listen to me now. The trigger--the thing that was set up to make sure it happened, knowing how in the outyears things never get funded and seldom get funded and are unlikely to get funded, we were trying to mandate that with the trigger--it only requires 370 miles of fencing. Current law since last year's enactment of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 requires the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the southern border. In a recent column published in the National Review, Deroy Murdock asked: Americans who want secure borders wonder why the 700-mile southern frontier fence Congress authorized last year, of which only 12 miles have been built to date, stretches only 370 miles. All I am saying to my colleagues is, we in the Senate have been around here a long time. We have heard how these things go, and we know a song and dance when we see one. But if you read the bill carefully you will conclude that the promises, though promises that sound so good, are not reality. They were absolutely headed to a failure, just like the Congressional Budget Office said, of almost as much illegality in immigration in the next 20 years as we had in the last 20 years-- only a 13-percent reduction. It is just not sufficient. I see my colleague from Texas, Senator John Cornyn, one of our most able Members, who is exceedingly knowledgeable about this issue. He is a member of the Judiciary Committee. Of course, he was a former attorney general in Texas and a member of the Texas Supreme Court. I value his judgment. Out of the time left to me, I will yield--how much time would the Senator request? First, let me ask how much time is left?

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Louisiana. Let me say what I believe is not in dispute. The procedure Majority Leader Reid has chosen to utilize is a procedure never before utilized in the Senate. They say: You are just saying it is unfair. Everybody says things are unfair. The reason this is more than a question of fairness is because it is a transfer, an arrogation of power to the leadership by which, for the first time in the history of the Senate, the majority leader will be able to approve or disapprove whether a Senator gets a vote on an amendment. If one wanted to do that up until this time, since the founding of our Republic, they stayed down here and didn't agree to unanimous consent requests. They stood their guns. It might not be easy, but one could get a vote. They could talk about what they wanted to talk about. But this process by which the leadership will select a limited number of amendments, place them in this clay-pigeon maneuver and only those amendments get voted on and every other amendment is rejected, is unprecedented in the Senate. I had a senior Member of the Senate come up to me with some alarm not long ago this morning and say: You need to be able to get amendments. I don't think we have thought this through. It is dawning on me how significant this is. I said earlier: What would Paul Wellstone say? What would Jesse Helms say? What would other Senators say, individual Senators who are proud of the ability--seldom used, perhaps--they could utilize to raise a point that they believe in, even if everybody else disagrees. That is part of our heritage. It will be eroded if we go through this process. I know my time is up. I appreciate the personal courtesies of the majority leader. He has always been courteous to me. In this instance, a bad decision has been made. Hopefully it will be rectified in some fashion one way or the other by denying cloture on the legislation.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I have a brief question. I thank the majority leader for his courtesy. I had asked, in exchange for agreeing to a process that kept us from working this past weekend, that I would have 2 hours in the debate today set aside. It is in the agreement. But I am hearing that people want to push that into the wee hours of the night, if not into the morning. I ask that I have a substantial portion of that before the afternoon is over. What is the status of that negotiation and discussion?

Mr. SESSIONS. Is the proposal--

Mr. SESSIONS. I think that is the fundamental thing. I am flabbergasted and amazed our leaders keep telling us this bill is essential to have security. You have to have this amnesty. You have to give up and we will have amnesty. In exchange for that, we will have a legal system that will work in the future. But it will not work. That is what they said in 1986. Senator Grassley noted on the floor, people in this body do not even say there will not be another amnesty anymore, as they did in 1986, because they know this bill will not create a legal system. There will be 8.7 million more people in our country illegally and the same group will be here, asking for amnesty again. It is a failed system. Let me add one thing. One thing I have learned in this debate, we can make this immigration system lawful and we can make it work. We ought not to be having a 13-percent reduction in illegality, as the Congressional Budget Office says. We can get to 90, 95 percent reduction of illegality. We can create a system of immigration that serves our national interests. It is within our power to do so. This bill will not do it. We must not go forward with it because it will not work. I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of the time.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I know Senator Reid has assured people of what is in the bill, but he hasn't read what is in this amendment-- neither has any Senator in this body, I suggest. Only a few staffers have, and there have been tremendous errors made already in the previous amendment they offered. And just to say there have been nothing but minor changes is not something I think Senators ought to rely on. My good friend, Senator Reid, has always been courteous to me, but we disagree on this issue. He said he wants to make people happy. How about making the American people happy? They oppose this bill overwhelmingly, and yet the leadership here continues to use every parliamentary tactic that we have ever used, and new tactics never before used, to limit debate and move this bill to final passage. I object to that. I think about our former colleagues, Senator Paul Wellstone and Senator Helms. I wonder how they would feel if it was said: Well, this is unprecedented, we are going to eliminate debate, but I have talked to the leader on the other side, and we two leaders have just decided, since it is bipartisan, we will do that. Make no mistake about what is being done here, Mr. President. There is no dispute whatsoever. Amendments will not be allowed to be voted on that the majority leader does not personally sign off on. The power to control this process is in the majority leader's hands, and he has met with a group of people who are interested in this legislation and they have agreed to control this process. It has never been done like this before in the history of the Senate to eliminate these amendments. It is not right. My colleagues, I urge you to understand this is an unprecedented step. It is a step by which the leadership is creating a new tactic that will eliminate the power, the ability of individual Senators to offer amendments and engage in debate. This is a body of 100. Yes, we have leaders. They have significant authority and we understand that. But that is a limited power and we have always celebrated the great potential of this body that any one Senator can raise an objection, any one Senator can have an amendment voted on. I tried to offer amendments when the bill was up before. Time and time again they were objected to. Other Senators objected. Why? Because they were able to object to making those amendments pending. Then, when cloture is filed, they are not able to be voted on because they have never been made pending, although they were filed. This is not a small matter. I do not think our colleagues understand. I see Senator Specter here. He will stand by himself on an issue in which he believes. There are other Senators here who share those same independent views. We do not need to go down this path. I think it is a big mistake. I would say this: The majority leader said the people want one thing, they want border security. What do we know about this legislation? It does not give us border security. The Congressional Budget Office, our own analysis team, has looked at this bill and concluded in the next 20 years we will have another 8.7 million people in our country illegally. It will only reduce illegal immigration by 13 percent. That is what our own staff, under the majority leader's control, has told us.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, what is the pending business?