Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Senator Cornyn indicated that the bill fails with regard to enforcement and enforcement at the border. I could not agree more. In 2007, Senator Cornyn spent a lot of time working on this bill. He proposed an amendment then that would have improved the border enforcement, and he is an expert at that. He is a Senator from Texas. He has wrestled with this over the years, and we should absolutely listen to him. We also know this: The people who are out there enforcing the law every day are telling us the system is not working. They tell us changes and improvements need to be effected, and they are concerned this bill doesn't do it. On June 10, the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office in North Carolina issued a press release stating that more than 75 North Carolina sheriffs warned Congress that the Senate immigration bill would endanger public safety. Well, that is a pretty serious matter. They say this: In a short time, over seventy-five Sheriffs from across North Carolina, serving counties both big and small across this great state, have signed the attached letter opposing the current Senate immigration plan. Our first responsibility and highest duty as Sheriffs is to provide for the safety of the citizens residing in the communities we serve. Unfortunately, this flawed bill which was produced by the ``Gang of Eight'' puts the public safety of citizens across the U.S. at risk and hampers the ability of law enforcement officers to do their job. They go on to say: This Senate Bill should be opposed by lawmakers and instead, Congress should work with law enforcement on reforms that we already have, and were willing to propose, that will enhance public safety. Kenneth Palinkas, American Federation of Government Employees Union president and affiliated with the AFL-CIO, wrote this letter: There has been much public concern over the fact that the legalization occurs prior to any border enforcement. Indeed, from what I understand, every amendment offered in committee which made legalization contingent on first achieving border security was defeated. History tells us that future promises will not be kept and that our border agents will be left high and dry by the executive branch as they have so many times before, regardless of who writes the plan. This is the head of a Federal employees union who represents law enforcement officers--I think the biggest one. He goes on to say: But even if you completely rewrote your proposals to resolve the many border security concerns and changed the ordering to delay legalization, the legislation would still fail and would still endanger the public because of the fatally flawed interior enforcement components. He goes on to say: If passed, S. 744 would lead to the rubber stamping of millions of applications for both amnesty and future admissions. He goes on to say: Why should the Senate pass a bill that makes it even more difficult for the USCIS officers-- They are the citizenship and immigration officers-- to identify, remove, and keep out public safety threats. Maybe those people are criminals in their own countries. What does a person do if they are about to go to jail in another country in the world? Well, if they can flee the country and get to the United States, that is not a bad thing. Over the last decade, we are seeing more criminals who are a part of the mix of the very fine and decent people who come to the country because they are perhaps, in effect, fleeing prosecution in their own country. What about the ICE officers, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council? They wrote a letter with Pennsylvania and North Carolina sheriffs, as well as sheriffs nationwide, on May 29, and they say this: Congress can and must take decisive steps to limit the discretion of political appointees and empower ICE and CBP to perform their respective missions and enforce laws enacted by Congress. This is a bold statement. These people work for the President of the United States--or at least as part of the administration. Two years ago ICE officers voted no confidence in their supervisor, John Morton, because they said he spends more time dealing with pro-amnesty groups and directing them not to enforce the law than doing his duty. They have actually sued Secretary Napolitano and Mr. Morton for blocking them from executing plain congressional mandates. They believe they have no other obligation than to enforce this. They have to do it, but they have been told not to do it. They say: Rather than limiting the power of those political appointees within the DHS, S. 744 provides them with nearly unlimited discretion, which will serve only to further cripple the law enforcement missions of these agencies. I have talked to these officers. They asked to be a participant with the Gang of 8 in writing this legislation, and they were refused. They asked repeatedly. They warned that this was not going to work. They never wanted to hear from the people who enforced the law every day. They wanted to hear from the amnesty crowd, and that is who they met with. They wanted to hear from the big business guys who want more cheap labor, and that is who wrote the bill. They didn't listen to the people who deal with this and put their lives on the line. This letter continues: While business groups, activists, and other special interests were closely involved in drafting S. 744, law enforcement personnel were excluded from those meetings. Immigration officers, state, and local law enforcement working directly with the nation's broken immigration system were prohibited from providing input. As a result, the legislation before us may have many satisfactory components for powerful lobbying groups and other special interests, but on the subjects of public safety, border security, and interior enforcement, this legislation fails. It is a dramatic step in the wrong direction. That is a pretty resounding condemnation, and I think that is fundamentally correct because I met with them. I asked that group of people to meet with them, and they would not do it. Participants on the recent calls that discussed this bill and how to promote it include the heads at Goldman Sachs, the Business Roundtable, Evercore, Silver Lake, Centerbridge Partners, the U.S. Chamber of Congress, as well as the head of Washington trade groups representing banking industries, such as, the Financial Services Roundtable. They all had input into it and were involved. I guess they made contributions to it. On June 10, Thomas Hodgson, sheriff of Bristol County--from Massachusetts--said: I have grave concerns about illegal criminals being eligible for citizenship and gang members being permitted to qualify for RPI status, registered provision immigrant, legal status once they renounce their affiliation. Most troubling, however, is the fact that we do not have adequate systems in place such as biometrics to verify identification for people entering or leaving the United States. Announcing that biometrics will be available at our 30 busiest airports serves only to limit illegal entry at those locations, diverting illegal entry to those locations without the superior technology. The sheriff said: I ask you to make it known to your senators and representative that they vote no on passage of S. 744 until a comprehensive security plan is in place. Peter Nunez, former U.S. attorney in San Diego, a great U.S. attorney whom I had the honor to serve with, said this: But of greatest concern is the so-called ``trigger'' that we are told will delay the path to citizenship until the border is secure. That is what they are saying. We have this thing in place, and until we guarantee the border is secure, the legalization doesn't happen. We have demonstrated already that is absolutely ineffective. Mr. Nunez goes on to say: This is an illusion meant to fool the public into believing that amnesty will only take place after the border is secure. Nothing could be further from the truth. Because on Day One, every one of the 11 million illegal aliens will be eligible for a temporary document allowing them to stay and work in the U.S., their two most important goals. He was a U.S. attorney on the California border and he worked with these issues and understands them. He had the responsibility of prosecuting cases by the thousands--probably hundreds of thousands, frankly. Former U.S. Attorney Nunez is a very wise and experienced person. Pinal County Sheriff's Office, Florence, AZ, Sheriff Babeu said to secure the border first or we will repeat history. Quote: Pinal County Sheriff Babeu has announced his opposition to the proposed immigration reform offered by the so-called ``Gang of Eight.'' Officially titled the ``Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013.'' Sheriff Babeu said: We must secure the border first, prior to any discussion of green cards and a path to citizenship offered to nearly 20 million illegals and their families. This plan gives everything to President Obama up front, while border security is promised once again on the back end. We are about to repeat history, when in 1986 President Reagan gave amnesty to 2 million illegals. Now, the stakes are far higher, yet it seems we haven't learned our lesson. The failure to secure the border after the Reagan amnesty got us to where we are today with 11 million to 20 million illegals in our Country. . . . this plan will repeat history. I think he is exactly right about that. Chris Crane, the head of the ICE union, is outspoken about this. He has testified before the House. He has had press conferences here in which I participated with him. He has warned this will make America less secure, not more secure. He warns it makes the ability of the ICE agents to enforce the law, already handicapped, even more problematic. He says the bill gives to the Secretary essentially more discretion to violate the law than the Secretary has today. In fact, the orders and directives and policies they are giving to the ICE officers about how to do their job are currently in direct violation of the law. This bill ratifies that by explicitly giving statutory authority to the Secretary to make all kinds of waivers for other matters. That is not the way to give confidence to America. Mr. President, I don't know what our time is. I see no one else on the floor. I don't want to take anybody else's time, but if I yielded the floor, I guess their time would run against them anyway.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair. Our law enforcement officers are frustrated. We have three major law enforcement groups, including Border Patrol, which was given considerable funding after the failure of the 2006 and 2007 comprehensive immigration bill, and they have enhanced their efforts as a result of that, but we still are not where we need to be at the border. Indeed, since the announcement of this possible amnesty, illegal entries have increased significantly on our borders. The number of people arrested is considerably higher this year than last year, and 55,000 of the 90,000 people--90,000 who have been arrested this year since January--were not from Mexico; this was primarily on the Mexican border--but from other countries. Some of the countries have a history of terrorism. Senator Cornyn has talked about that previously. We have a surge of it happening, and they are concerned about it, about protecting their officers. Customs and the citizenship and immigration officers are the people who will process the amnesty claims and the requests to be treated as lawful residents that will occur after this bill passes. They are the people who deal with those who make application to come to the United States, and they are the people who process the pathway to citizenship for everybody. They have explicitly voted in opposition to this legislation. They say it does not work. I just read a quote from the head of their union. The ICE officers who deal with all of the interior enforcement--they apprehend people who have been convicted of crimes and are in State and local jails who are noncitizens or who are illegally here and they are supposed to deport them--have been consistently out front pointing out how they have been restricted in their ability to do their job, and that if this bill passes and the vast majority of those here illegally are legalized, they are not in the future going to be placed in a position where they can do their job. They are not going to be placed in a position where they can effectively manage the interior enforcement in America. They say the bill will make us less secure, not more secure. How wrong a direction could that be? So those are the things we have to get a grip on here. That is why the legislation cannot become law, and I don't think--it won't become law as it is written today. That is the truth. One way or the other, it will not become law, because it is fatally flawed. I thank the Chair for the opportunity to share these remarks as we begin the discussion on one of the great issues of our time: immigration. It has to be done right. The American people are rightly, as are these law officers, concerned that we are about to do another 1986, that we are going to give immediate lawful status to millions of people who came here illegally on the promise we will enforce the law in the future. But when we read the bill we can see that won't happen, and we will be sending another message worldwide that the United States is such that if one can get into our country illegally and hold on for long enough, that person too will be a beneficiary of the third major amnesty that occurs. So that is where we are. I thank the Chair and yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I wish to express my appreciation to the Senator from Texas. He is a superb member of the Judiciary Committee. He offered an amendment to this effect in the committee. I thought it should have passed. It would have helped with a flawed bill. But it was voted down. I know that he is working even harder now, and I know that whatever he proposes will be the kind of legislation that will strengthen this bill. I share with the American people a deep frustration with the current failed operation of our immigration system and share some fundamental principles of immigration reform that have been expressed by the Gang of 8. The Gang of 8 has said the current system is broken. I agree. But more accurately, we should say the current law and procedures are not being properly carried out and are resulting in monumental illegality in our country--something that is not worthy of a great nation. The Gang of 8 says that we must toughen our approach to border security and that we can do better. They implicitly, even openly acknowledge that our government officials have a long history of failed border enforcement and that they cannot be reasonably trusted to enforce the law. So even when the American people plead with our government to do something about the illegality, for decades this government has failed to do so. I agree that the gang has touched on something important. But the gang acknowledges, in effect, the governing class and the activists and special interests want amnesty, and these groups lack interest in or a will to sustain a policy of fair enforcement in the future. They say we have to guard against that, but that is what happened before. They acknowledge that. And I agree. To ensure that amnesty does not take effect immediately, with only promised enforcement in the future--which never occurs, it seems, as happened in the 1986 amnesty bill--they have promised that they have triggers that ensure amnesty will not result unless enforcement occurs. That is the promise: We have triggers and we have mechanisms so that you cannot get amnesty unless enforcement occurs. We have a guarantee of that, and we will ensure that happens. So I agree with the sentiment and this concern because we know what has been happening. I have been engaged in this debate since I have been in the Senate, but I do not agree their legislation comes close to fulfilling this promise. It just does not. That is the rub. The comprehensive immigration bill does not fix our failing system. The provisions, the faux triggers, the expression of interest in fencing, commissions, will work no better than current law. It will not end the illegality in the future. So I will discuss some of the flaws in their plan today, but I want to make one thing clear. I think most Americans believe in immigration. I know they do. Most Americans are concerned about people who have been here a very long time and have had no real problems in their lives other than the immigration illegality, and they are prepared to reach out and do some compassionate things for them to give them a legal status that allows them to raise their families and their children who have become citizens. They are willing to do that, but they are concerned about the future. Will we end up again, like in 1986, where a bill is passed that promises enforcement, but the amnesty occurs immediately, and then the promises in the future do not ever occur? What was Wimpy's line? ``I will be glad to pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today.'' I am glad to say we will have amnesty tomorrow, but I want the enforcement today in concrete. A recent Rasmussen poll explains how the people view this issue-- actually it was within the last few days. By a 4-to-1 margin, people say the enforcement should come first. Yes, they are willing to be compassionate, willing to wrestle through a fair and decent way to treat people, but they do believe that enforcement should come first because we have not had it before. On this point the instincts of our citizens are correct. Their compassion is real. Their respect for the rule of law is real. They know amnesty has an erosive, corrosive impact on the rule of law, and we have to be very diligent to ensure in the future that we are not creating the kind of events that erode our law even more. People are not biased. They approve of our system of 1 million people immigrating here every year, but they do want the system followed fairly. The Gang of 8, in their public statements, seem to say that is what good policy should be. That is what they have been talking about. That is what they expect the American people to hear about their legislation. That is what they have promised them they are working on, and that has been produced and laid out here. They say they, too, are upset about what is happening. They say their plan will end illegality in the future, and it is the toughest immigration law in history. One Senator of the gang in the committee said it was ``tough as nails.'' Thus, without equivocation, they say we must have enforcement. But it is in the future, and we have a plan where you can sleep well at night and know it is going to happen. So that is the fundamental test of where we are in this legislation. There are a lot of problems with the bill--a lot of very serious problems--and we will talk about them. But I think fundamentally the question is just: Have our sponsors laid forth a strategy that will work? Let's examine the key components of any system that is laid out, see how it deals with them. There are two ways to become an illegal resident of America. One is to come by visa, overstay that visa, and just not return home. Forty percent of the people here illegally came legally by visa, but they just refused to go back home at the time their visa expired. The other way is simply to cross the border illegally, and we have had that by the millions in recent years. This legislation does not fix the enforcement defects of either one of those entry methods. I have studied this issue. It can be done. We can fix both of them. It is within our grasp. It is something we can accomplish, and I would like to see us do so. Unfortunately, analysis of this bill shows we have a problem. First, the Gang of 8's written principles that they announced at the beginning of their discussions said the path to citizenship in their bill would be ``contingent upon securing the borders and tracking whether legal immigrants have left the country when required.'' So that is both areas: the failure to leave upon expiration of a visa and the illegal crossing of the border. Senator Rubio went so far as to say: The process of legalization . . . none of that happens-- None of that happens--until until we have been able to certify that indeed the workplace security thing is in place, the visa tracking is in place, and there is some level of operational control of the border. That was in January of this year. Well, that is right. We should not be doing this until we can certify and we know we have this system under control. But around the same time it was reported that Frank Sharry, the head of the proamnesty group, America's Voice, said Democratic Senators privately reassured amnesty advocates that the border commission--one of the so-called triggers--would not be constructed in a way that would hold up the amnesty process for too long. He said the Democrats cannot ``allow the commission to have a real veto'' over setting in motion the path to citizenship. He also noted that the Democrats see the commission as ``something that gives the Republicans a talking point''--a talking point--to claim they are prioritizing tough enforcement, giving themselves cover to back a process that ``won't stop people from getting citizenship.'' In other words, the gang apparently seemed to be quite happy to allow people to go out and make these promises. But to the people who are actively engaged for amnesty, they said: Do not worry about it. It is not going to keep anybody from getting their full legality and eventually citizenship. This should be a concern because the American people are unhappy with their government. The American people have asked for a lawful system of immigration for 30 years, and the Congress has refused to do so. They have passed laws that they have said will work and never have had them effectively carried out, never effectively ending the illegality, and the American people are unhappy about it. I have suggested Mr. Sharry's statement is a good indication that the people who are behind this bill--particularly the staff and special interests and lawyers who have come together from all kinds of groups to help write the bill--do not care about enforcement in the future. All they care about is what they want today. That is letting the cat out of the bag, and the American people need to be very nervous about it. They have every right to be because I will talk about the history of some of the things that have been happening, and it should make every American concerned. Shortly before the bill was introduced, the lead sponsor, Senator Schumer, frankly and openly--this is after the initial comments--openly on ``Meet the Press'' said this: First, people will be legalized. . . . Then we'll make sure the border is secure. It is undisputed that the bill will provide amnesty first without a single border security or enforcement measure ever having to be put in place. On Sunday, in an interview with Univision, Senator Rubio said: First comes legalization, then comes this border security measure and then comes the permanent residency process. What we are talking about here is the permanent residency system. Regarding legalization, a vast majority of my colleagues have already accepted that: that it must take place and that it must start at the same time we start with what has to do with security. That is not conditional. Legalization is not conditional. What he is saying is that there is no condition in this bill--no requirement of any security to be achieved before the legalization occurs. The legalization occurs without condition, and then it is just a mere promise in the future to effectuate a legal system that we have not done for the last 30 years. Even the Wall Street Journal agrees with that analysis. Indeed, nothing at all needs to happen for those eligible for the DREAM Act and for agricultural workers amnesty to receive it. Their process, which covers roughly 4 million people is not connected in any way to any trigger or enforcement measure whatsoever. The American people reject such a policy. That is not what they have asked for. That is what the June 7 Rasmussen poll said. The Rasmussen report says this: The bill ``legalizes the status of immigrants first and promises to secure the border later. By a 4 to 1 margin, voters want that order reversed.'' That is the polling data, and I think that is a good response from the American people. They know the system has been manipulated before. Madam President, I see our majority leader. I know he is a very busy man. I say to Senator Reid, I have some time left before 5 o'clock, but if you have something that needs to be done--

Mr. SESSIONS. In a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report, prepared by the research arm for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, it says this: Virtually all immigration experts agree that it would be counterproductive to offer an explicit or implied path to permanent residence status (or citizenship) during any legalization program. That would simply encourage fraud and [encourage] illegal border crossings that other features of the program seek to discourage. In fact, for that reason and from that perspective, it would be best if the legislation did not even address future permanent resident status or citizenship. This a government agency making a plainly commonsensical statement that is virtually undeniable. A grant of amnesty is going to be counterproductive, and it is the kind of thing that would incentivize actions that our policies are designed to discourage--illegal entry into the United States. Indeed, increased illegal entries into our country are happening right now. The numbers are going up. Just on hearing that there is an amnesty plan afoot, immigration illegality is increasing. According to the Border Patrol, so far in this year 90,000 people illegally crossing the border have been taken into custody. That is 50 percent more than the same time last year. And 55,000 of them--I would note for those who are interested in this and recognize the international nature of it--55,000 of the 90,000 are not Mexican nationals. During markup, Senator Grassley offered an amendment to require the Secretary to certify to Congress that she had maintained effective control over the entire border for 6 months before amnesty begins, but it was rejected by a 12-to-6 vote. We were told the bill would have the toughest enforcement measures in the history of the United States, potentially in the world, and would fix the illegal immigration problem once and for all. Would that not be great? That is one of the Gang of 8 members on national TV, ``Meet the Press,'' recently. Would that not be good? I think that is something we should strive for. But does the legislation do this? I see the majority leader. He approved my time this afternoon. I have only so much of it left. I am due to have the floor until 5. I see there is important business to be done. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I am delighted to see the administering of the oath to our new Senator. As a former Federal prosecutor, I know he understands much of the Federal law we deal with around here. Having been one of those myself, I welcome him and believe there will be many gifts and experiences he has had from that role that will help him serve in the Senate, writing laws that will actually be the laws enforced by his former fellow prosecutors around the country. A closer examination of the legislation before us, this is it here, over 1,000 pages now. But you have to study it because it makes all sorts of references to ``except as provided by'' in this section and that section and subsection E(2)(I)(1)(3) and things like that. It is hard to read. But a close examination reveals that the promised enforcement of immigration law in the future that is so critical, and the American people deserve, the American people have asked for, for decades, is not there. The triggers are not triggers at all. In fact, it would actually weaken even current law, granting the Secretary of Homeland Security, now Secretary Napolitano in particular, unprecedented power to determine how and when the border is secured, if ever. Remember, at this moment, the Secretary of Homeland Security is being sued by Federal law officers, ICE officers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, of her own department because they say she is issuing directives to them to keep them from complying with plain Federal law. In other words, she is directing them not to comply with Federal law. The Federal judge has taken the case and allowed it to go forward and is taking testimony on it. But the bill that illegal immigrants can receive amnesty, not when the border is secured but when Secretary Napolitano tells Congress she is starting to try to secure the border. Within 6 months of enactment of the legislation, Secretary Napolitano need only submit to Congress her views on a comprehensive southern border strategy and a southern border fencing strategy and give notice that she has begun implementing whatever plans she decides to implement. At that point, she may begin processing applications and granting amnesty. Indeed, she will be doing that without any border security or enforcement measures ever being required to be in place. The reality is, once amnesty has been granted, it is never going to be revoked. Under this scheme, enforcement is unlikely ever to occur. That is just like 1986, which Senator Grassley earlier today, ranking member on the Judiciary Committee from Iowa, who was here in 1986, says was a great failure at that time. He voted for the bill. He says it was a mistake. It was a mistake because we did not put in mechanisms to ensure that in the future the enforcement would actually occur. That is why he opposes this bill. Frank Sharry, the head of America's Voice, a pro-amnesty advocate, recently said about these triggers, ``The triggers are based on developing plans and spending money, not on reaching that effectiveness''-- In other words, not reaching an effective system of security in the future--it is not tied to that. Then he goes on to say, ``which is really quite clever.'' Really clever, is it not, to see if they can fool the American people. They have written something that looks like a real trigger, that has teeth in it, that says you do not get your amnesty and legal status until enforcement occurs. But when we read the bill it is not there. Mr. Sharry actually lays it out. In fact, in 2007, Senator Isakson first came up with an idea of a trigger mechanism. That gained popularity. I think he was the one who wrote the language that was in that bill. It is much stronger than this one. It was much stronger than what is in the bill today. Actually, it had the potential to work. Remember, this was what was said when the bill was rolled out. Basically, they said the American people, we got a good bill. You can trust us. The enforcement will occur because we have triggers in the bill to guarantee it is enforced. That is not so, is it? Colleagues, does that not make you uneasy? Should it not make the American people uneasy, when they have seen Congress time and time again avoid going forward with real law enforcement? The bill states that the southern border strategy should detail a plan for achieving and maintaining ``effective control'' of the southern border. Effective control is defined as ``persistent surveillance,'' which itself is not defined, plus ``an effectiveness rate of 90 percent or higher.'' What effectiveness rate? This is calculated by dividing the number of apprehensions and turnbacks in a sector during a fiscal year by the total number of illegal entries in the sector during that fiscal year. But this does not account for those who escape detection by the Border Patrol. During her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Secretary Napolitano all but acknowledged the effectiveness rate is meaningless because, by definition, the Department of Homeland Security has no idea how many people avoid detection. How can you have that formula? The measure is subject to almost limitless manipulation. One thing we all should remember, having been involved in this for a number of years now, the border should already be secure. It should already be secure. The Secure Fence Act of 2006, passed by both Houses of Congress, already requires, right now, the Department of Homeland Security to maintain 100-percent operational control of all land and maritime borders and required the Homeland Security to do so within 18 months of the bill having been passed in 2006. That mandate has been ignored, not complied with, and the border is certainly far from 100- percent operational control. We are going to pass a new bill that is even weaker than this and expect it is going to result in some major improvement in law enforcement? By contrast, the rejected 2007 immigration bill set a stronger target of 100-percent operational control of the entire border, which had to be met before illegal immigrants could be given the probationary legal status. The current bill is essentially the same as the failed 1986 bill. It is legality immediately and a promise of enforcement in the future. It is important to know that nothing in the bill prevents Secretary Napolitano from submitting a strategy--that is all she has to submit, is a strategy--that simply reiterates her publicly stated views about the border. She says first that the border is ``more secure than it has ever been.'' While the bill states that Homeland Security shall start ``the implementation'' of the plan ``immediately after'' submission and give notice to Congress of its commencement and provide reports on its progress, nothing in the bill actually requires the Secretary to implement anything. It just doesn't. It is not there. All she has to do is start the amnesty process, what she intends to do, and then to submit reports in the future. We have heard there will be more fencing. You have heard that talk. The bill is going to make sure we have more fencing. But no language in the bill requires the Secretary to construct any fencing at all. Rather, the bill states the Secretary shall submit to Congress, within 6 months of enactment, her views on a fencing ``plan'' to identify where fencing, if any, including double-layer fencing, infrastructure technology, including ports of entry, should be deployed along the border. The problem is Secretary Napolitano, who will be responsible for implementing these provisions, has said multiple times that no further fencing is necessary. She recently testified before the Judiciary Committee that Homeland Security would prefer to rely on drones and high-tech surveillance: We would prefer money . . . if we have our druthers, we would not so designate a fence fund. Does it make more sense to use technology to observe people entering the country illegally, or does it make more sense to stop them from entering? After the Secure Fence Act was passed in 2006 requiring 700 miles of double-layer fencing, they said, well, we are not going to build double-layer 700 miles of fencing. We have a better idea. We are going to have a virtual fence. We are going to use technology, balloons, and things of that nature. We have this sophisticated plan. They spent $1 billion on that plan--totally abandoned; an utter failure. That is what is upsetting the American people in this country. Promises are made. We are going to build a fence. We all vote for a fence. Then, oh, no, we are not going to vote for a fence, we have a better idea. Then we spend $1 billion and get zero for it. This is not necessary. We can make great improvements at the border if we have the will to do so. The will and the determination is what is lacking. Proponents of this bill have repeatedly said ``this legislation contains the toughest border immigration enforcement measures in U.S. history.'' If that is the case, then why is the bill weaker than current law? Why is it weaker than in 2007, the bill that was offered and rejected? Congress overwhelmingly passed the mandate to build a fence in 2006--and I was engaged in that debate--by 80 to 19 votes, with the support of then-Senators Biden and Obama. Vice President Biden and President Obama voted for it. It hasn't come close to having been built. I think we have 36 miles of fencing having been completed, when the bill called for 700. If we had done that, we would be in a lot better place to ask the American people today, let's be compassionate and see if we can't do something kind to people who have entered our country illegally. According to a Rasmussen's poll in April of this year, a substantial majority of Americans want the fence built, but Congress has failed to do so. The bill would authorize $8.3 billion in additional funding to carry out all of its provisions. You notice, it has some fencing language in it, $1.5 billion, but what is the $1.5 billion for? Is it to build a fence? You can build a lot of fence with that much money. No. It is for the developing of a fencing strategy, and the other things that money would be spent for too. In fact, a fence does save money. Since the fence is a force multiplier, fewer Border Patrol agents will be needed. They can cover more miles, and it reduces costs. It makes a clear statement to the world that the United States is serious: Our borders are no longer open. Don't come here illegally. If you do, we are going to apprehend you, and you will be disciplined in some fashion and deported. If we do that, we will see a dramatic reduction in the number of people coming to our country illegally. During our Judiciary Committee markup on this legislation, an amendment sponsored by Senator Leahy was adopted that says nothing in this provision ``shall require the Secretary to install fencing'' if the Secretary in her discretion determines that fencing is not necessary. Of course, she says she doesn't favor more fencing. In addition, the amendment requires that the Secretary consult with the Secretaries of Interior, Agriculture, States, local governments, Indian tribes, and property owners, before she could ever build a fence, and to minimize the impact on the environment, culture, commerce, and quality of life for residents. Well, you always try to do those things. All of this is an indication that with regard to the question of barriers and fencing to enhance the lawfulness at our border, this bill doesn't do it. Actually, this bill is hostile to it. Can you see that language in there? This was discussed at Judiciary. It passed in the committee. Only 36.3 miles of fencing out of the 700 has ever been completed. Had the rest of it been completed, we would be in a lot better shape today. We were told: If, in 5 years, the [Secretary's border security] plan has not reached 100 percent awareness and 90 percent apprehension, the Department of Homeland Security will lose control of the issue and it will be turned over to the board of governors to finish the job. That was Senator Rubio on the ``Mark Levin Show.'' This commission they talk about at the border, the mere existence is left to the sole discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security only if she determined that Homeland Security, her own department, ``has not achieved effective control'' of the border 5 years after enactment. Wait 5 years, and if she hasn't done the job--she has certified she hasn't done the job, and after the legalization has already been granted--it is then entirely up to the Secretary to determine whether her plans are ``substantially completed'' and ``substantially implemented''--then and only then would the Southern Border Security Commission be formed. The bill's proponents claim the commission would be ``a powerful and important policy-making body,'' and that the Secretary of Homeland Security will be compelled to implement the commission's recommendations. That was one of the Gang of 8's news releases. Not so. The commission is empowered only to make recommendations to the President, the Secretary, and Congress, which are then to be reviewed by the Comptroller General. Nothing in the bill requires any other commission's recommendations to be implemented. They don't have any power. Once it makes its recommendations, the commission dissolves in 30 days, kaput. As Byron York noted in the Washington Examiner in his column today: There is nothing in the bill requiring the commission to finish the job of border security, and indeed it would have no authority to do so. Indeed, it would have no authority to do anything, really, except issue a report. The second issue that deals with illegality in our country is the visa question. We were told the path to citizenship in the bill would be ``contingent upon . . . tracking whether legal immigrants have left the country when required.'' That has a plain meaning, have they left when required. Under current law, we have a mechanism where people are fingerprinted and they are identified when they come into the country. There is no clocking out when they leave the country. What does the bill do? Does it fix that problem? Let's look at the history of it. The bill rolls back the requirements in current law, laws that were passed on six different occasions by Congress since 1996 for a biometric exit system. We have a biometric entry system at some points, but not an exit system. Yet instead of forcing the administration's hand, making this happen, this bill gives in to the executive branch's obstinacy over at least two administrations and provides for only an ``electronic,'' not biometric, exit system, and only at air and seaports, not land ports. It is estimated that nearly 40 percent of the illegal population here today are visa overstays. GAO, our Government Accountability Office, has repeatedly said a system such as the one called for in this bill will not reliably identify visa overstays, and that without a biometric exit system: DHS cannot ensure the integrity of the immigration system by identifying and removing those people who have overstayed the original period of admission. That is the Government Accountability Office's objective, nonpartisan analysis of the legislation. Beyond violating our laws, visa overstays pose a substantial threat to national security. Visa overstayers come from all over the world. The 9/11 Commission, after the 9/11 attacks, recommended that: The Department of Homeland Security, properly supported by Congress, should complete, as quickly as possible, a biometric entry-exit system. In a report entitled ``Tenth Anniversary Report Card: The Status of the 9/11 Commission Recommendations,'' they came back together to see how well their recommendations had been carried out. They praised the fact that we have an entry system, a biometric entry system known as US- VISIT. It has been proven to be valuable, they say, in national security too. Despite this successful deployment of the entry component of US- VISIT, the Commission notes there is still no comprehensive exit system in place. As important as it is to note when foreign nationals arrive, it is also important to note when they leave. Full deployment of the biometric exit component of US-VISIT should be a high priority. Such a capability would have assisted law enforcement and intelligence officials in August and September of 2001 in conducting a search for two of the 9/11 hijackers who were in the United States on expired visas.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair. I believe 5 o'clock has arrived. I thank the managers of the Agriculture bill. I know they worked hard on their legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Chair grant privileges of the floor to Joseph McCormack of the Budget Committee for the remainder of the first session of the 113th Congress.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we are looking at now and considering an immigration bill. S. 744 is before us. This is a two-volume set consisting of over 1,000 pages, and unfortunately it doesn't do what its sponsors say it does. It doesn't provide the security and other important items we want in an immigration reform bill, and therefore it cannot be passed in its present form and should not be passed in that form. It is just that simple. This is a big, important issue. When we pass immigration reform, we do not need to be back in the situation that occurred in 1986 when they passed immigration reform and promised to do enforcement in the future. We gave the amnesty immediately, and the promises of enforcement never occurred. This is not a little matter. It has resulted in 11 million people now being in our country illegally. This is a result directly of the failure of the 1986 bill to carry out its enforcement promises, a direct result of Presidents and Congress not insisting that happen. So there is a general consensus even among the Gang of 8 that Congress and the President can't be trusted, and we need to have legislation that somehow mandates that to happen because we have to have--in their minds--the amnesty first. That is just the way it has to be, and once that is given, well, we will promise to take care of it in the future. I have been discussing the two aspects of immigration that cause us to have the illegal immigrants. The first part is obvious--it is people who cross the border illegally. At any number of our borders and ports, they come in illegally, and that is a big part of our problem-- actually, though, only 60 percent. Forty percent of the problem is the people coming into our country legally on a visa. The others just come illegally. They have no right to enter the country; they just enter. These have a right to enter the country. They come in on a visa and they just don't go home. They just stay. And history tells them nothing ever happens. Nobody knows they didn't return home. Nobody clocks them out when they go home. Nobody knows they are here, and they just stay. The President of the United States, through the Secretary of Homeland Security, has directed its ICE agents--Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who are all over and around our country, although small in number, about 5,000--to basically not execute any deportation proceedings against anybody--almost none. They have to be convicted of a big felony, a serious crime, and only then do they initiate deportation. We also have cities that are failing to support the Federal Government in any way. When they catch somebody for a crime in their city and discover they are illegally in the country, they won't notify the Federal Government they are there so they can come and pick them up and carry out the deportation that is required. This is the kind of sad state we are in, and it certainly is a sad state indeed. So the American people, by a 4-to-1 margin in a poll of just a few days ago, said: We are prepared to be generous to people who entered the country illegally and haven't gotten into trouble. We will be compassionate to them. But we want to see the enforcement occur. By a 4-to-1 margin, that poll showed that the American people said the enforcement should come first before we grant the legality--before we give the amnesty. Now, isn't that good common sense? As I go through the second part of my concern about this process, you will see the ineffectiveness and unwillingness of the Federal Government to fulfill its role of ensuring that our sovereignty is defended through the elimination of illegal immigration. And we can do that. We can do it, but we are not doing it. So the first part, dealing with the border, as I mentioned today, they softened the current law. Current law is you have to have 100 percent operational control at the border. Under the standards they utilize there, this bill says 90 percent of border patrol encounters and otherwise reduces the enforceability and the enforcement standards of making sure our border is lawful. I would just say, first and foremost, each one of these matters are exceedingly complex and must be done properly. As we talked about earlier, the crafting of legislation necessary to ensure that our border is lawful requires a lot of work and a lot of different strategies and capabilities for our men and women who are out there at risk enforcing that law. That is the fundamental reason we should have legislation that goes step by step. We should have a piece of legislation that has been worked on very hard involving Immigration and Border Patrol officers. That legislation should be brought forth and we would pass it to fix the border. Then, the second part, as I am talking about today, the entry-exit visa situation where people enter the country lawfully according to a visa but don't return to their home country, that has its own unique and complex systems that need to be dealt with, and that needs to be done independently and separately. We need a separate and independent analysis of how to deal with the workplace to ensure that people who come into the country illegally don't get jobs in the future. We have to end this. So I am taking the bill at its word. They want to give legal status to everybody who is here. So what do we do to try to ensure this doesn't happen again in the future? We are not saying go out and try to find everybody who is in the country illegally and capture and deport them. That is not a practical solution at this point in our history. We do need to figure out how to compassionately deal with those individuals, but we don't need to be where we can't enforce the law in the future so we have another amnesty upon us, another situation with millions of people here illegally because we failed to do our duty. The way we do the entry-exit visa has been determined by Congress for a number of years. It is to use a biometric entry-exit visa system. So we take fingerprints of everybody who comes to the country. They are clocked in when they enter the United States, and that fingerprint identifies them as the person who has the visa. Then, when they leave, they are supposed to clock out and use their fingerprint--which is the best biometric proven system. You put maybe just two fingers on the reader as you go onto the airplane to fly out of the country and it reads it and sees if you are a terrorist or you are a criminal fleeing prosecution for a crime you may have committed in the United States. It is as simple and easy as can be, but for one reason or another this has been blocked. The history of the biometric exit system is so instructive for us because it tells us how the Presidential and congressional authorities of America have failed to carry out what ought to be a universally accepted bipartisan plan to make our entry-exit visa system work right and reduce that 40 percent of illegal immigrants in our country who come by visa. In 1996, Congress first adopted a requirement for an entry-exit system to track those who were entering and leaving the United States in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The first time we passed it was in 1996. In 2000, Congress passed another law requiring the entry-exit system be electronic and to be implemented at all air, sea, and land ports of entry. That was 2000, 13 years ago. Again in 2000, when amending the visa waiver program, Congress required a ``fully automated entry and exit control system'' to record entry and departure information for all aliens participating in the program. Congress also required that passports be machine readable. After 9/11, a time of national introspection and study, Congress once again demanded the implementation of an entry-exit system through the passage of the PATRIOT Act. The intent of Congress was made clear at that time: In light of the terrorist attacks perpetrated against the United States on September 11, 2001, it is the sense of Congress that the Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of State, should fully implement the integrated entry and exit data system for airports, seaports, and land border ports of entry with all deliberate speed as expeditiously as practical. Congress demanded that the entry-exit system be biometric and based on tamper-resistant machine readable documents. A biometric system requires that an immigration document match the individual presenting the document. In other words, there is a biometric capability to make sure the person who presents a document is the person named in the document. There are a variety of ways to make a document biometric, but the most common is to use digital fingerprints which can easily be run through computer data bases to match records on file. This is done every day. According to the Department of Homeland Security's own Web site: Unlike names and dates of birth which can be changed, biometrics are unique and virtually impossible to forge. Collecting biometrics helps the U.S. government prevent people from using fraudulent documents to enter the country illegally. Collecting biometrics also helps protect your identity in the event your travel documents are lost or stolen. That is on the Web site today of Homeland Security, and it is absolutely correct. In 2002, Congress reiterated the demand for a biometric entry-exit system at all ports of entry, requiring Homeland Security issue aliens ``only machine readable tamper-resistant visas and other travel and entry documents that use biometric identifiers.'' That was what we passed in 2002. It also required that the government install biometric readers and scanners ``at all ports of entry in the United States.'' Also, in 2002, the Department of Homeland Security initiated the US- VISIT system, which has great potential, and it has done some good things, but it hasn't been completed. That system was to develop this entire process. Two years later, US-VISIT was collecting biometric data on all aliens entering the United States. In 2004, Congress again demanded a biometric entry-exit system through the passage of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. In that act, Congress said: Congress finds that completing a biometric entry and exit data system as expeditiously as possible is an essential investment in the effort to protect the United States by preventing the entry of terrorists. It goes on: The Secretary of Homeland Security shall develop a plan to accelerate the full implementation of an automated biometric entry and exit data system. In 2007, now the 9/11 Commission comes back together again. They had issued a report with a whole lot of recommendations. They met to see how many of their recommendations had been adopted. They reiterated the need for an exit visa system and demanded that the exits apply to all foreign nationals entering under the visa waiver program and added a biometric component. That was in 2007 when that was passed. Congress is crystal clear and consistent that this is what we expect to be done. Has it been done? No. It has not yet been done. What about this new immigration bill that has 1,000 pages in it and we are told is the toughest in history? We are told--Senator Schumer said ``tough as nails.'' Does it require it? Will it ensure that it finally gets done? No. Not only that, it alters the law. It says it doesn't have to be done. It eliminates biometrics, and it eliminates land entry and exit systems. So you do not have an exit visa system at anything but the airports under their plan, and it is not biometric. It actually weakens dramatically repeated law enactments of the Congress, so it is not stronger on the visa program, where 40 percent of the overstays come from. Forty percent of the people entering the country illegally come from visa overstays. It doesn't fix that. It weakens that law. I don't see how my colleagues can come here and brag about this when, plain as day, that is what their bill does. I do not think the bill should be considered in this form. The struggle continues. Get this. Last week the House, still frustrated about this matter--Representative Barletta of Pennsylvania got an amendment passed to prohibit funding for Department of Homeland Security parties and receptions until the biometric entry-exit system was fully implemented as the 2004 law required. What do we draw from this? We draw several things. One of them is that the American people already get it. They don't trust Congress to do anything they say. We pass laws and we go home and we say we fixed the biometric bill, and it never happens. We passed six different laws requiring it, and it doesn't happen. Then they say they are passing the toughest bill that has ever been written about entry-exit visas and we are going to fix this problem and we recognize that 40 percent of the people come through that way, and is it fixed? No. It undermines current law. Current law is not being enforced, I acknowledge. They just surrender--give in. This can be done. First of all, we need to go back. I think the frustration of the American people with what is happening in this Congress is well-earned. They have a right to be unhappy. A recent poll, a poll not too long ago, showed this. It asked people: Are you more frustrated or angry with people who enter the country illegally or the government officials who have allowed it to happen? And 88 percent said they were mad at Congress and the government. The American people are not mad at people who want to come to the country illegally. They are frustrated and angry that their elected representatives, who year after year, decade after decade, promised to fix this system, blithely go about their business and never do it. They say one thing and they do another. It is not right. They say: You know, it just cannot be done. It is too hard. It is too expensive. It slows down entry-exits. People just don't want to do this, and that is why we just never got around to it. We just discovered a report that never got any publicity, but I didn't realize what was in it, that was published in 2011. It went to the Appropriations Committee. They are not the immigration committee. It sat around; nobody paid much attention to it. In 2009 the Department of Homeland Security conducted a pilot program at the Detroit and Atlanta airports to deal with what would happen if we had an entry-exit biometric visa system at those two airports. They found that a biometric exit system--we have the entry, remember--was not only feasible but fast, accurate, and did not slow passengers as they boarded the departing flights. During 1 month of heavy international travel time, June and July, the biometric exit system in Detroit processed 9,448 aliens and identified 44 from the watch list and 60 suspected overstays--out of less than 10,000 people. This is a terrorist watch list and a criminal watch list. Some of these were arrested for violation of Federal law and had warrants out for their arrest on nonterrorist charges. Some of them showed up on watch lists, and 60 of them were suspected overstays. What about Atlanta? They processed 20,296 aliens subject to US-VISIT and identified 131 on the watch list and 90 overstays. Since 9/11, at least 36 individuals who have overstayed their visas have been convicted of terrorism-related charges. Thirty-six since the 9/11 attacks have been arrested for terrorism charges. They were visa overstays, including Amine el-Khalifi, who attempted to bomb the Capitol last year; the Christmas Day bomb plot; and a near getaway by the would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, who had already boarded a flight leaving the United States when he was arrested just before he could take off. We are once again reminded that border security is an essential element of national security, and exit control is part of that rubric. Tamerlan Tsarneav, the Boston bomber--alleged--remained invisible to the immigration system, having exited the country for a 6-month stay in Russia because today's biographic exit data was insufficient to identify him as leaving the country--in this case, a misspelling or he used a different spelling and he was not picked up on the list, whereas if we had used his fingerprints, he would have been identified biometrically instantly. While S. 744 requires the use of software to correct misspellings, it may not work for the millions of other names the software does not pick up. It will not pick up the fact that there is an arrest warrant for murder out for him--let's say in Indianapolis--when he is getting on a plane in Boston, but it should get picked up if they use the entry-exit visa. The individual would then successfully have fled the United States and may be able to get away completely with a serious crime. The only way to verify a person is who they claim to be really is through a biometric identifier. During the committee markup, I offered an amendment to require the implementation of the biometric exit system as required by current law as part of the trigger to allow the Secretary to grant green cards to those given amnesty. In other words, if she did not have that fixed and in place as current law required it, the amnesty in 10 years, the green card, would not be issued. A biometric air-sea exit solution is available right now, as it was in 2009. It requires no infrastructure changes to airports and can be deployed immediately. Neither the TSA nor airlines need to be directly involved in this. Also, in 2005, the biometric exit for vehicles and pedestrians at land ports was tested and found to be workable. To implement that solution today would require less than was required during the 2005 testing. We simply use the biometric data already in the system as well as the tamper-resistant card and expansion of the current Trusted Traveler Program in entry lanes to the exit lanes. If we do the entry, we need to do the exit lanes. Nevertheless, my amendment failed 12 to 6. So I guess Senator Schumer and the leaders of the Gang of 8 didn't give a path to the Republican members who might have voted for my bill. They had to stick together. Senator Schumer claimed such a system would cost $25 billion to implement. Well, somebody had used that figure, and I had only then discovered this 2011 report of the exit system in Atlanta and Detroit-- this report right here. We just found out there was actually documented evidence that it doesn't cost anything like that much. However, when we aggregate the 2008 U.S. visa impact analysis data and industry data, the greatest total cost for the first year of technology implementation at air and seaports would be approximately $172 million to $855 million, depending on collection and the units chosen. The most expensive units do not require an attendant to even be there. Instead, there would be a monitoring attendant who can supervise a number of mobile kiosks all at once. In addition, in 2008, an air, sea, and biometric exit project regulatory impact analysis also noted that the air, sea, and biometric system was less costly than a biographic exit system for several reasons: improved detection of aliens overstaying visa, 300 ICE agents have to do overstays now, and cost avoidance resulting from improved Immigration and Customs Enforcement efficiency; in 2007 cost removal per visa violator was $18,375 per individual; improved efficiency and processing of entry-exit data; and improved national security environment. Today the cost is significantly lower because the latest technology requires less manpower to operate and support the process. So in an exit system, when a traveler comes through the airport, before they board the plane, they go to a spot and for a few seconds-- according to this report there is negligible slowing down--they put their finger on it, it reads their fingerprint, and says, yes, indeed, this person who entered the country has permission to leave. It then runs a check of terrorist and crime data to see if there is a warrant for the person's arrest, and then moves right on to the plane. The report found it took less than 2 seconds for a fingerprint capture. That is amazing. Of course, a lot of people don't know, but many police departments provide police officers in their automobiles fingerprint reading data. So they arrest somebody for DUI, they have them put their finger on the machine, and bingo, it comes up they are wanted for rape. That is how fugitives are apprehended today. We do far less hunting them down by name. We wait for them to get picked up with some sort of check or other arrest. Mobile units do that. These systems are now deployed internationally in nine countries and 20 international airports, including Australia, and process over 700 million passengers per month. This can be done, and I am amazed and frustrated it has not happened. When Secretary Ridge was Homeland Security Secretary, we talked about this. My experience in law enforcement was that the fingerprint had to be the data because it is the fingerprint the police officers and the FBI use when they arrest somebody for a crime, and many people flee. Many of the people who flee like to leave the country. The last thing he said when he left office: I have one bit of advice for my successors, and that is use the fingerprint. After much effort and much debate and much conflict, he had distilled that down to that simple decision. Frankly, we are almost there, and we should complete. So in the committee markup, an amendment sponsored by Senator Hatch was adopted that requires yet another pilot program limited to the 10 busiest airports within 2 years, and the FAA designated 30 core airports over 6 years. The amendment, which does not serve as a trigger to amnesty or anything else, fails to require biometric exit at the land ports, which makes the system unenforceable and almost unusable because a person can fly in and they can exit from a land port. We need to record that or we won't know whether they ever left the country. As Senator Grassley said at the time in the committee: In 1996, we passed an entry-exit system, and it is not law. So what I see before us is a fig leaf that leaves us to believe we are doing more than the bill requires, but because the bill does a lot less than what we decided in 1996 we needed to do, I think this amendment should be defeated. But it wasn't; it passed. Finally, we were told that all of the triggers would have to be fully implemented. If they are not fully implemented, there will be no green cards issued. This is one of the Gang of 8 selling and talking about the bill. It had to be fully implemented--all the triggers--or there would be no green card. So let's take a look at what the bill actually says about that. The bill says after 10 years, the Secretary may adjust the status of those illegal immigrants who receive amnesty to lawful, permanent resident or green card status. So the Secretary can adjust the people who came here illegally from their temporary legal status to permanent resident of the United States, or green card, and then be on a guaranteed pathway in 3 years to full citizenship. But that is supposed to only be done when? The Secretary certifies to Congress that her border security strategy is substantially deployed, substantially operational, and that her fencing plans are implemented and substantially completed. These terms are undefined, leaving these determinations to the sole discretion of the Secretary, and she said we don't need anymore fencing. She gets to decide about fencing. What is she required to do? Her fencing plan has to be initiated and approved, or her plan has to be implemented. But the plan doesn't have to call for a single foot of fencing. Also, the green card status can be given when she has implemented the new--this is important--employment verification system required under the bill, which is for new employees, not current employees. They do an E-Verify system to check on something like that, and it is not mandatory for all employers until 5 years after the regulations are published. So the employment effort is not effective for at least 5 years after the amnesty has been provided, and it could take even longer for it to become fully effective. The real deadline for implementation of the employment, the E-Verify successor system they would like to develop, may be as long as 10 years. That is less than what the 2007 bill called for, the bill that failed. In 2007 E-Verify was required for all new hires 18 months after the enactment of the bill and for all current employees 3 years after the enactment of the bill. So their plan for the E-Verify system is far weaker than the plan in 2007, and it suggests that by putting it off and not having current employees have to have it used for them that they are not very serious about it. Also, she is using an electronic but not biometric system exit system at air and sea but not land ports of entry. So another requirement for a trigger is that there must be an end use and an electronic, not biometric, exit system for air and seaports but not land. Experts have told us if we don't do land, we never know when anybody has left the country. Unfortunately, as are most seemingly tough provisions in this bill, it is followed by an exception that swallows the rule. The bill allows the Secretary to grant green cards to those given amnesty without satisfying these triggers if litigation or an act of God has prevented one of the so-called triggers from being implemented, or implementation has been held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, or the Court has simply granted certiorari in a case challenging its constitutionality; and ten years have elapsed since the date of enactment. There are so many loopholes in it, and so she can certify she has a plan. She can certify that with expanding the system electronically but not biometrically, in airports and seaports but not land ports, we end up with what would appear to be a big improvement over current law, but it is not. Current law requires biometric in land, sea, and air. So this reduces that. The bill undermines the ability to deport people who are in the country illegally. There are a whole lot of examples I could give at this point, and I won't--not tonight, to the Chair's relief. So, as in 1986, amnesty comes first. It will occur. The deportations will stop, and it happens now. But the enforcement that is promised will not happen in any effective way. That is clear. If we read the bill, we see there is not a real sense that anybody who knows anything about enforcement was there in the room drafting the bill, driving the legislation, to close loopholes and make this system enforceable in the future and end its brokenness today, end the illegality today, and put us on a path we can be proud of for our future. The bill does not fix illegality that dominates so much of our current system. It surrenders to illegality and does not stand up and fix it. This is not what the good people of this country want for their future: another long period of illegal immigration and another inevitable amnesty. We can fix the border. We can do that. We can fix our visa system. It is not that hard. We know how to do it now. We can fix and dramatically increase the ability of employers to ensure they hire only legal workers and not hire illegal workers, leaving Americans unemployed at record rates. We can establish a strong interior enforcement system, one that has integrity and fairness. This bill is not close to that goal. Even though we could do it, it fails to move us where we need to go to put this system on a sound path. It should not become law. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, this is important legislation, the immigration bill. I was able to have a discussion with Senator Reid yesterday. He was moving forward on the motion to proceed to the bill which requires considerable debate. I asked for and insisted on the opportunity to have some time today to talk about it, and he agreed to that. I think that was a good step, and I thank him for that agreement. We have a lot to talk about. The matters are complex and important, and I urge my colleagues to pay real attention to the legislation. This is the bill, as printed, front and back of each page. It was reportedly going to be 1,000 pages, and our colleagues were proud to say it was 800 pages. Since then, more has been added to it, and now it is over 1,000 pages again. It is very complex and there are certain key points with multiple references to other code sections that are in existing law; therefore, it is very difficult to read. It takes a considerable amount of time, and I don't even suspect the Gang of 8 has had the time to read, digest, and understand fully what is in the legislation. We are a nation of immigrants. The people whom I know who are concerned about this legislation in Congress are not against immigration. I certainly am not. We admit about 1 million people a year legally into our country, and that is a substantial number by any standard. Indeed, it is the highest of any country in the world. It is important we execute that policy in an effective way as it impacts our whole Nation. Immigration has enriched our culture. It has boosted our economy, and we have had tremendously wonderful people who have come here--people who have contributed to our arts, our business and economy, science and sports. We have had a good run with immigration in a lot of ways, but we need to ask ourselves at this point in time: Is it working within limits? Are the American people happy with what we are doing? Are we moving in the right direction? We know our generous policies have resulted in a substantial flow of people into the country, and our challenge today is to create a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interests and admits those people into our country who are most likely to be successful, to prosper, and to flourish, therefore, most likely to be beneficial to America. Surely we can agree that is a good policy, and it has not been our policy prior to this. We have both the enormous illegal flow of people into the country as well as a legal flow that is not evaluated in a way that other advanced nations do when they execute their policies of immigration, for example, Canada. We should establish smart rules for admittance, rules that benefit America, rules that must be enforced, and must be lawful. We cannot reject a dutiful, good person to America and then turn around and allow someone else who came in illegally to benefit from breaking our laws to the disadvantage of the good person who, when told no, had to accept that answer. It is just the way we are. So we must establish smart rules for admittance, rules that benefit America, and these rules have to be enforced--and that is not happening today. The current policies we have are not serving our country well; therefore, a reformed immigration system should spend some time in depth in public analysis of how and what we should consider as we decide who should be admitted, because we cannot admit everybody. When that is done, we need to create a system we can expect to actually work to enforce the standards we have. I believe we can make tremendous progress, and we can fix this system. It needs to be fixed. The legislation that has been offered by the Gang of 8 says they fixed it. Don't worry; we have taken care of all that is needed; we have a plan that will be compassionate to people who have been here and we have a plan which will work in the future and end illegality. Well, it won't do that, and that is the problem. It will definitely give amnesty today. It will definitely give immediate legal status to some 11 million people today, but the promises of enforcement in the future, the promises that the legislation will focus on a way that enhances the success rate of people who come to America is not fulfilled in the legislation. Read the bill and see what is in it. I wish it were different. We will talk about in the days and weeks to come what is in the bill and why it fails. I can share with everyone how it is we came to have such a flawed bill before us. We need to understand that as we go forward. I am amazed the Gang of 8 has sent such legislation forward, and how aggressively they defended it in the Judiciary Committee. We did have a markup in the Judiciary Committee. We were allowed to offer amendments and had some debate there, but it was an odd thing. Repeatedly members who were not even in the Gang of 8 said: I like this amendment, but I cannot vote for it because I understand it upsets the deal. We need to ask ourselves: Who made the deal? Whose deal is this? How is it that the deal is such that Members of the Senate who agreed to an amendment say they must vote against the amendment because it upsets some deal? Who was in this room? Who was in the deal-making process? So I think that was a revealing time in the committee. They had agreed and stated openly there would be no substantial changes in the agreements the Gang of 8 made, and they would stick together and vote against any changes except for minor changes. There were a number of amendments accepted, a number of Republican amendments accepted. Many of those were second degree or altered by the majority in the committee, but none of those fundamentally altered the framework and the substance of this legislation. I don't think that is disputable, and we will talk about that. So this is the problem we are working with. So how did the legislation become as ineffective as it is? I contend--I think it is quite plain--it is because it was not written by independent Members of the Senate in a more open process but was written by special interests. I wish to share some thoughts on that subject right now because I think it goes to the heart of the difficulties we have. There were continual meetings over a period of quite a number of months that got this bill off on the wrong track in the beginning. Powerful groups met, excluding the interests of the American people, excluding the law enforcement community. Throughout the bill we can see the influence these groups had on the drafting of it. Some of the groups actually did the drafting. A lot of the language clearly came from the special interest groups engaged in these secret negotiations. What is a special interest group? A special interest group is a group of people who have a commitment, an interest they want to advance, but they don't pretend to share the national interest. So maybe it is a legitimate special interest, maybe it is not a legitimate special interest, but they have a special interest, a particular interest they want to advance. So this is what happened: Big labor and big business were active in drafting this legislation, with the entire deal obviously hanging on, it was reported, their negotiations. For example, the Wall Street Journal, March 10: Competing interests abound. The Chamber of Commerce and businesses it represents are locked into negotiations with the AFL-CIO about workers in industries like hospitality and landscaping. Meanwhile, farm-worker unions have been quietly negotiating with growers associations about how to revamp short-term visas for agricultural workers. And senators on both sides of the aisle are weighing in to ensure their state industries are protected. The Washington Post, March 10: ``Hush-hush Meetings for Gang of 8 senators as they work on sweeping immigration bill.'' The article reads: They are struggling on the question of legal immigration and future workers, and are trading proposals with leaders of the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce to try to get a deal. ``Try to get a deal,'' they are working on a deal. How about this: Roll Call, March 21: Talks led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO over a new guest-worker program for lower-skilled immigrants are stalled, prompting members of the bipartisan group of eight senators to get personally involved to try to nudge the negotiations on to resolution. So the Senators were not in those discussions. The Senators, when it got to be tough and things weren't moving along, they came in to try to egg it on, to get the agreement. Who is the agreement between? It is between the unions and big business, which are representing the American worker, effectively. New York Times, March 30: The nation's top businesses and labor groups have reached an agreement on a guest worker program for low-skilled immigrants, a person with knowledge of the negotiations said . . . Senator Schumer convened a conference call on Friday night with Thomas J. Donohue, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Richard L. Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's main federation of labor unions, in which they agreed in principle on a guest worker program for low-skilled, year-round, temporary workers. We know there is one group not included in these talks, and that is the group given the duty to enforce the immigration laws. The national ICE union, the customs and enforcement organization, pleaded with the Gang of 8 to consult them. They urged the Gang of 8, they wrote letters to the Gang of 8, and I sent information to the Gang of 8 asking them to consult with the officers who have the duty to enforce this law, but to no avail. They were shut out of every meeting and never have been consulted. It is interesting to note, however, that others weren't shut out of the meeting. They weren't left out of the room. The Washington Post, April 13: While Obama has allowed Senate negotiators to work on a compromise that can win approval, a White House staff member attends each staff-level meeting to monitor progress and assist with the technical aspects of writing the bill. So there has been an attempt to suggest that this is truly a congressional action, that the White House is just sort of hands off. But we know the White House is deeply involved in this and approving every aspect or disapproving aspects they don't like. The question is, Who is influencing this? Who is influencing the White House, President Obama? The Daily Caller, on February 6, notes this: On February 5th, Obama held a White House meeting with a series of industry leaders, progressive advocates and ethnic lobbies, including La Raza, to boost support for his plan that would provide a conditional amnesty to 11 million illegal aliens, allow new immigrants to get residency for their relatives and elderly parents, and also establish rules for a ``Future Flow'' of skilled and unskilled workers. The invitees included the CEO of Goldman-Sachs, Motorola, Marriott, and DeLoitte. So they are in the meeting, apparently. Also, we know participating in a lot of these discussions was the American Immigration Lawyers Association. This group obviously was involved in writing the bill, and I have to tell my colleagues that they will be the biggest winners of this legislation. Time and again, rules that were fairly clear--and probably should have been made clearer--are muddled, provisions were placed in that will create litigation and encourage lawsuits, delays, and will increase costs. For example, ``hardship'' is the new standard for many waivers and exemptions in this bill, in many cases the exemptions are for family problems and other things of that nature. Well, when ICE says a person should be deported, then the deportee has the ability to say: Well, I have a hardship. My mother is here, I have a brother who is sick, or I need this or that. What does ``hardship'' mean? It means a trial. That is what it means. So the Immigration Lawyers Association was substantially involved in the meetings. Politico, on March 9, said: In a bid to capitalize on the shared interest in immigration reform, a budget deal and new trade pacts, the White House has launched a charm offensive toward corporate America since the November election, hosting more than a dozen conference calls with top industry officials--which have not previously been disclosed--along with a flurry of meetings at the White House. Continuing the quote: Participants on the recent calls include the heads of Goldman Sachs, the Business Roundtable, Evercore, Silver Lake, Centerbridge Partners, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as well as the heads of Washington trade groups representing the banking industry, such as the Financial Services Roundtable. So they have been involved in these discussions. Even foreign countries have had a say in drafting our law. The Hill, on February 7, reported: Mexico's new Ambassador to the U.S., Eduardo Medina-Mora, has had a ``number of meetings with the administration'' where the issue of immigration has come up since he took office last month, said a Mexican official familiar with the process. He is expected to meet with lawmakers shortly as legislation begins to take form. ``Probably like no other country, we are a player in this particular issue,'' the source said. Well, the law officers weren't in the room, we know that. People who question economically the size and scope and nature of our immigration system weren't in the room. So in case anyone doubts the role of special interests in drafting the legislation, pay attention to this quote by Frank Sharry, executive director of the liberal pro-amnesty group, America's Voice, in the Wall Street Journal, April 17: The triggers are based on developing plans and spending money, not on reaching that effectiveness, which is really quite clever. In other words, the sponsors of the bill were telling everyone they had triggers in the bill that would guarantee enforcement of laws in the future about immigration flow into America, and that if enforcement didn't occur, the triggers would stop people from being legalized and end the process. That is not so. We have studied the language and we know the triggers are ineffectual and are not significant and won't work. That will be explained in the days to come. Mr. Sharry acknowledges it. He said it was clever to have these faux triggers--these triggers that will not work--because we can tell everybody: Don't worry, the legality will not occur if the enforcement doesn't occur. But in clever ways they drafted a bill that will not work. They will say it works, but it will not work. Again, with all of the slush funds in this bill, there are a number of them that go to private activist groups, community action groups. It is easy to see that special interests had a seat at the negotiation table. The National Review, on May 29, reported: A number of immigration-activist groups, such as the National Council of La Raza, would be eligible to receive millions in taxpayer funding to ``advise'' illegal immigrants applying for legal status under the bill. So money will go to these activist groups, such as La Raza. La Raza is responsible for advocating, not enforcing, our laws. So La Raza is in the meetings. La Raza is an open advocate for not enforcing laws involving illegal immigration. They are active participants in advocating for amnesty. They are going to get money out of the deal with some of the grant programs, while the law officers who have the ability to tell the committee, the Gang of 8, how to make the system work are shut out of the process. Were prosecutors involved in the process? No, they have not been. The National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant group, has been involved in some of these discussions. So some people have said the bill had to be drafted in secret, but that the markup process in the Judiciary Committee would be open and transparent. But that is only partially so. We did have a markup. We were allowed, those who had objections to the bill, to offer amendments, as did those who support the bill. We had the opportunity to talk and offer amendments. But at every turn in the committee the members of the Gang of 8 expressed support on occasions for certain amendments, only to vote against the amendment. Due, they said, to the agreement, they had to vote together and against significant amendments, regardless of their personal feelings. The gang influenced other members on the committee to do the same. The Huffington Post, April 16, headline: ``Senate Immigration Group Turns to Keeping Fragile Agreement Intact.'' It goes on to quote Senator McCain as saying: We will pledge to oppose, all eight of us, provisions that would destroy the fragile agreement we have. So they have an agreement. They have an agreement with the unions and big business and the agribusinesses and the food processors and La Raza and the immigration lawyers. They have an agreement with them, and they are going to defend it, even though they acknowledge amendments that were offered would improve the bill. This is no way to serve the national interest, in my view. In discussing an amendment that would require workers to make a good- faith effort to hire American workers first, Senator Whitehouse said this--this is what happened in the committee-- I'm in a position which I'm being informed that this would be a deal breaker to the deal. I, frankly, don't see how that could be the case, but I'm not privy to that understanding, and so I'm going to vote in support of the agreement that has been reached. In other words, Senator Whitehouse says: Well, I do not understand this. I would like to vote the other way, but I am told you have a deal and this would damage the deal and so I cannot vote for it. He was not even in the Gang of 8 but went along with that. Related to that same amendment, Senator Franken echoed the remarks, saying: I really just want to associate myself with Senator Whitehouse's remarks. He goes on to say: I don't want to be a deal breaker. In discussing an amendment that would increase family-based immigration, Senator Feinstein noted: I think it's been a unique process because those people who are members of a group that put this together have stood together and have voted against amendments that they felt would be a violation of the bipartisan agreement that brought both sides together. I am not sure that is always good. I am not sure that is the right thing to do to set public policy in America: to have some secret agreement, reached with a group of people we hardly know who they are, trump the ability to do the right thing for the American people. I want to say that is what has happened here. And the point to make is, and what I think our colleagues need to understand and the American people need to understand: In reality, the special interests--La Raza, the unions, the corporate world, the big agriculture businesses, the food processors--they are the ones that made the agreement in this process, and the Senators merely ratified it, and they cannot agree to a change because they promised these special interest groups things. So if La Raza would accept point A that somebody wanted accepted, and the unions would accept point B, then they would both agree: I will do A if you will do B. Then the bill gets to the floor and somebody says: A is wrong and we should not put that in the bill. Let's change that. Oh, no, we cannot change that. We have an agreement. The agreement with who? La Raza, the agribusinesses, the Chamber of Commerce, Microsoft, Zuckerberg. That is what happened here. I am just telling you. And the people who drafted this bill, the people who have advocated these special interests--we should not be surprised at their influence. Businesses, groups, organizations have special interests. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. What is wrong is that Members of Congress--Members of the Senate--need to be representing the national interests, the people's interests, the workers' interests in America. That is what we need to be doing--not representing the special interests. I have to tell you, the openness of this is sort of breathtaking to me. Who is protecting the national interests? Did they have any of the top-ranked economists in this country being asked what would be the right number of low-skilled workers to bring into America? Did they have any of the top experts say how many advanced science degrees can we have? How many of our college graduates are unemployed? What is the right number? None of this was apparently discussed by our colleagues who allowed this process to go forward. I would say, finally, with regard to the special interests, they have no interest--virtually none of them that were involved in this process--of guaranteeing in the future that we do not have more illegally immigration. That is the failure here. They do not have any interest in that and, therefore, there was no intensity of interest in that aspect of the legislation. Oh, there was a lot of interest in how many computer programmers could be admitted or how many agriculture workers or how many low- skilled factory workers or construction workers or other workers. They all worried about that. They fought over that. That is what these negotiations were about. There were internal discussions and disagreements. But nobody was investing any time or interest in the second phase of this. If you have an amnesty, if you have a legality of millions of people who came here illegally, what are we going to do to ensure it does not happen in the future? I was a Federal prosecutor. I personally tried an immigration case myself. I bet nobody else here can say that. So I am aware you have to have certain legal processes and certain investments in investigative and enforcement mechanisms to make the system work in the future. As we go forward with this debate, we are going to show--and it is going to be clear--that this has not been fixed and, in fact, the standards of current law with regard to what ought to be done-- requirements in current Federal law--are being weakened, some of them eviscerated by this bill. This bill is far weaker than the 2007 legislation. I do not think there is any doubt about that. It will be clear when we get through it. It was rejected by the American people--the 2007 agreement--and it actually weakens current law in quite a number of significant areas-- weakens current law--while we are being told: Do not worry, this is the toughest bill ever. If I am mistaken, I am sure we will hear about that as we discuss it. This is a great democracy we are part of and I am expressing my view. But I have spent some time on these issues. I was involved with it in 2006 and 2007. I was a Federal prosecutor. I have done this over the years. I know how our ICE agents work, our Border Patrol agents work, our customs and immigration service people work. I have worked with them. I have tried cases for them. I know them personally. They have been left out of this process. The ICE union has voted no confidence in John Morton, their supervisor. What a dramatic event. I am not aware of that ever happening in my 14 years-plus as a Federal prosecutor--the actual employment union declaring that they have no confidence in their supervisor. And what did they say? They said he spends all his time advocating for amnesty and not enforcing the laws. He is directing us to not follow legal requirements we took an oath to follow. And get this: The ICE officers have filed a lawsuit in Federal court attacking Secretary Napolitano, or at least the conduct of her office. They have asserted she is not above the law, she is not authorized to direct them not to follow plain requirements of Federal law. The Federal judge initially seemed to accept the validity of the lawsuit. I have never heard of that before. This is an incredible event. Nobody is even talking about it. It has been the position of this administration, everybody has to know, to see that the law is not being effectively enforced, particularly in the interior of America. That has basically been--some even acknowledge--a de facto amnesty because you are directing your law officers not to do their duty. You basically eliminated the law. The administration should not be doing that. Congress has refused to change these laws time and again. If anything, they have sometimes increased them, strengthened them. And now we have our agents blocked from enforcing them. The U.S. customs and immigration service that deals with the visas, deals with the applications for citizenship--CIS, the Citizenship and Immigration Service, they deal with the citizenship processes and the paperwork and all of that. They have written in opposition to this legislation. So first, the ICE officers--Chris Crane, the head of that group, has written a powerful letter in detail condemning this legislation, saying it will not work, it will make matters worse, and it will endanger national security. The Citizenship and Immigration Service group that deals with the paperwork and the citizenship processing and the visa work--and a lot of that--has likewise written saying this bill will not work and they oppose it. Well, I have to say, somebody needs to be thinking about what is going on here. Right. Amnesty--done. The promise of enforcement, the toughest bill ever in the future--no, sir, not there, not close. That is why we have a problem. I cannot understand why people would not want the legal system to be complete, to be effective, and would be followed so we as Americans could be proud of it. There is a lot of power behind this legislation. I can feel it. When I raise questions, push-back comes. You are not politically correct; you are unkind; you do not like immigrants. That is offensive to me. I believe in immigration. We have a million people who come in here every year legally. I do not oppose that. I do not oppose doing something responsible and compassionate for the people who have been here a long time illegally. But we have to be careful about it. But the American people are so right on their basic instinct about this matter. I have to say how I believe the American people's hearts and souls are good about immigration. A lot of people think: Well, we have to meet in secret and we have to run this bill through as fast as possible because we do not want the American people to find out about it because they do not like immigrants. Not so. A recent poll revealed something very important, and our Members of this body and the House need to know it. It said: If you are angry about the way things are going with regard to immigration, are you angry at the people who came into the country illegally or are you angry at the government officials for allowing it to happen? Mr. President, 12 percent said they were angry at the people who entered illegally. Mr. President, 88 percent said they were angry at public officials for not creating a legal system that will work. Doesn't that speak well of the American people? You could be angry about somebody who came into our country in violation of the law. But I think the American people understand that people want to come here, and it is our duty to stop it. They have been pleading with Congress for over 30 years to do something about it, to create a lawful system, to end the lawlessness, to do the right thing, to create immigration processes that we can be proud of, such as Canada has and other countries around the world have. We believe in immigration. We want to do the right thing, but it needs to be lawful. We have more applicants for admission into America than we can possibly accept. I was in, I believe, Peru with Senator Specter a number of years ago, and a poll was called to our attention from Nicaragua that said 60 percent of the people in Nicaragua said they would come to America if they could--60 percent. Then the Ambassador in Peru told us they had a poll around there that said 70 percent. Well, everybody cannot come to America. We are not able to assimilate or absorb that. We all know that. We all agree with that. So therefore you set rules and processes that we can be proud of, that are fair and objective, and that people who want to come meet those standards and they wait their turn and they come lawfully. We have had from this administration and prior administrations-- President Bush also--too little interest in seeing that the law is enforced. We have loopholes in our laws and processes that need to be fixed. We can do that with a good immigration bill, but this one does not get it done. I noticed that my friend did an op-ed yesterday--Karl Rove, who was President Bush's political adviser, a man of great talent back in the day that we were in college together. He quotes a lot of polls that say the American people are willing to accept legal processes and status for people in this country. I acknowledge that. They are. But he does not quote the polls that say overwhelmingly that they want the illegality ended. They want border security first because they are smart enough to know that if we do not get border security now, we may never get it. In fact, they want to get it. History tells us so. He did not quote a recent Rasmussen poll. This is what was in the Rasmussen polling report. The so-called Gang of 8 proposal in the Senate legalizes the status of immigrants first and promises to secure the border later. By a 4-to-1 margin, people want that process reversed. My good friend Karl Rove did not quote that. Additionally, while voters think highly of immigrants, which speaks well of us as American people, they do not trust the government. That skepticism is growing. In January 45 percent thought it was at least somewhat likely that the Federal Government would work to secure the border and prevent future illegal immigration. Today only 30 percent has that confidence. Why? Because they are beginning to learn that this bill does not do what they were told it was going to do. The growing awareness of the border control issue has led to other shifts in public opinion as well. Early in the year Democrats were trusted more than Republicans on the issue of immigration. Now that has switched. Well, we are not interested in politics, we are interested in doing the right thing. When we do the right thing, the people will affirm it. So Mr. Rove goes on to say: Now, do not say amnesty. My friend Karl: Do not say amnesty. That is a bad thing for you to say. Well, let me just say that under the legislation that is before us now, we would have a circumstance immediately where people will be given legal status. They will be able to get any job and they are here safe and sound. Unless they get arrested for a felony or something very serious like that, they are put on a path that guarantees them the ability to go all the way to citizenship. Mr. Rove says they have to pay a $1,000 fine over 6 years. What is that--$170 dollars a year, $15, $12 a month? So this is the punishment? You pay $12 a month worth of fines, which allows you not to have to go home even though you entered the country illegally, did not wait your turn, and you are guaranteed a path to citizenship. Then at the end you have to pay another $1,000 some 10, 13 years later. So this is the punishment in the legislation. But the people who came illegally get exactly what they wanted immediately, which is to stay here, have the ability to work here. They will get a Social Security card. They will get the ability to go to any job in the country. They will have an ID that would allow them to do that. So they will be able to compete for any job in America. They will be able to compete for jobs that our husbands and sons and daughters and grandchildren might be competing for out there. There will be 11 million in that position. So I do not think my friend Karl is making a very strong point there that this is some sort of punishment. He says: They must pay taxes. Well, hallelujah. Should you not pay taxes? They are ``barred from receiving any Federal benefits, including welfare and ObamaCare.'' That is a flat statement, and it is flat wrong. The first group, the DREAM Act group, which will be some 2, 2\1/2\ million, maybe 3 million, they will be citizens in 5 years and will be able to get any of the Federal welfare programs in 5 years. Many of the ag workers will be in that position in 10 years. Any workers who qualify for the earned-income tax credit can get that immediately--now. Other provisions are put off for 10, 13 years, and that makes the cost score look better. But over the long term, once the group is given legal status and citizenship, they will then qualify for every program. Since overwhelmingly the number of the workers here today are lower skilled who are illegal--they are lower skilled, and you can expect their incomes to be low--they will qualify for the earned-income tax credit, for Medicaid and program after program, food stamps and others. The score goes up tremendously in the outyears. The Heritage Foundation is the only group who has done an in-depth analysis. They say that over the lifetime of the program, the people who are here illegally--if they are legalized under this bill, it would add $6.3 trillion to the debt and deficit of the United States. That is a lot of money. That is almost as much as the unfunded liability of Social Security, which is about $7 trillion. So this will be $6 trillion. Some say that number is too high, but I have not seen anybody say that number is not in the ball park. Nobody else has done a study to refute it. It is going to be trillions of dollars in the outyears. It is not true that there will be no government benefits going to people who are in the country who get legalized under this. It is just not so. Well, this is another point. To me, this is sort of a fundamental point. It sounds so good when you have a political guru like my friend Carl. He says: To renew their temporary status after 6 years, those waiting to become citizens must prove they have been steadily employed, paid all taxes, and are not on welfare. So let's take what has happened. So we have an individual who has been in the country 3 years. They get the provisional legal status immediately when the bill passes. In 6 years they have to, we are told, show they are steadily employed, paying taxes, and are not on welfare. Well, who is going to investigate that, first? No one. So they have already been here 3 years. As long as they came before December 31, 2011, they are given legal status. Whether they have a job or not, they are given this legal status. Without a family, without roots in America other than having been here, they claim, before December 31, 2011. But we are not willing to deport them. So now 6 years later, they work intermittently, they are unemployed, and we have a recession, and we do not have enough jobs for people, and we are going to send out the feds and uproot them--their children are now in junior high and high school--and send them back home? Give me a break. That is one of the most bogus claims ever. That will not be enforced. There are waiver authorities in the bill, so waivers will be issued. Nobody is going out to enforce this. I am just tired of them saying this. They should not even say it to try to get the American people to believe that we are going to actually go out and deport what could be millions of people who are out of work in the 5- or 6-year period when they have to reestablish themselves. That just bothers me. These individuals, Karl Rove said, ``must stand at the back of the line behind everyone who is waiting patiently and legally to immigrate here.'' That is not so. Give me a break. Those people are here illegally now. They do not want to be deported, which is understandable. They are going to be given permanent status, a Social Security number, and a right to work anywhere in America. They are not ahead of somebody from Honduras waiting in line to come here, or not ahead of somebody in China or Italy or Spain? Of course they are ahead of them. They are not waiting. I am without words to express my concern about that. We need to be accurate about what the legislation says. What about this amnesty? Well, people say: You should not call it amnesty. Well, I think that is a legitimate word. The legislation before us would immediately give legal status, allow people to move to legal permanent residency and citizenship later. You have to pay a few thousand dollars in fines. Well, I think that is amnesty. Someone said: Well, they pay a $1,000 fine. They paid a penalty; therefore, you can't call it amnesty. No, I do not agree. This legislation basically says that everybody here is given legal status and put on a guaranteed path to citizenship; just do not get convicted of a felony. So I really do not think that is a good argument. So that will continue for a bit. But I think the sponsors kind of gave up objecting back in 2007 when the legislation was before us at that time. But I would note that in 2007 the initial fine that people paid had to be paid up front--$3,000. Under this bill you pay a $1,000 fine over 6 years. Then to get a green card, the legal permanent residency, you had to pay an additional $4,000, and an interim review period called for a fine or payment of $1,500. In total, $8,500. So in 2007 the payment required for somebody to move forward to citizenship was up to $8,500. This bill is $2,000--really $1,000 to be able to stay here and work here, and that is a payment which is stretched out over time. The bill allows the fine to be paid in installments. So I would have to say it is difficult for me to accept that these people are earning their citizenship and that they are paying a price for it. Then Mr. Rove mentions they have to pay their taxes. But one of our watchful publications, Politico, did an article about that on June 3. They said with regard to tax payments: After all, it was one of the Gang of Eight's main talking points when it unveiled the immigration blueprint in January. Sponsors vowed that their proposal would include a back tax requirement to ward off critics' claims that their bill would be amnesty. Citizenship would come at a price, they said. But the gang has all but dropped that talking point. The immigration legislation currently moving through the Senate includes a scaled-back provision that relies almost entirely on immigrants coming forward to the Internal Revenue Service voluntarily. Critics call it ``toothless.'' It is toothless. There is no back tax. My friend, Karl Rove, is still out here spinning, claiming you have some great advantage. We are going to collect all these back taxes. Nobody is going to investigate these cases, even if the law is clear. We don't have the money and the ability to do so, and it is not going to happen. That is just a fact. Let's talk about in general some of the other issues that will come before us. I know my colleague, Senator Lee, will be joining us on the floor in a little bit, and I will yield to him if and when he comes, but I wanted to talk about these promises we were given by the people who wrote the bill, a promise that the path to citizenship would be ``contingent upon securing our border and tracking whether legal immigrants have left the country when required.'' Now, that is fundamentally correct. That was the promise. That is one of the Gang of 8 principles they published. Our bill, they say, does that. I wish that were so. A path to citizenship would be ``contingent upon securing our borders and tracking whether legal immigrants have left the country when required.'' But in truth, the bill is amnesty first and a promise of enforcement later. With regard to tracking immigrants who leave the country when they are required to, it devastates and weakens current law, so that can never happen, effectively. It is unbelievable to me they would directly pass a bill that directly contradicts current law. On ``Meet the Press'' not too long ago, Senator Schumer--and one of the Gang of 8--said it flatout. He acknowledged that promise of enforcement first is not going to happen. He said, ``First, people will be legalized. . . . Then we will make sure the border is secure.'' Instead of enforcement first, it is legalization first. That is as plain as day. It is not even disputed in any law. The illegal immigrants would be legalized immediately, and not a single border or interior enforcement measure has to be in place then or ever. All Secretary Napolitano needs to do is submit two reports to Congress. Illegal immigrants will then begin receiving legal status, work permits, Social Security accounts, driver's licenses, travel documents, and other State benefits, financial benefits, that come from the States. Nothing requires that any border security be in place, any fence be built, before this amnesty is ever accomplished. We were told we were going to have a trigger. Until the fences were built, until other enforcement mechanisms were undertaken, until that happened, you weren't going to have amnesty. But it is not so. All the Secretary needs to do is submit a report. She has already said we have better enforcement than ever before in history and indicated she does not believe we need more fencing. The contention from the Gang of 8 that we are going to have major fencing at the border has not been proven. The Secretary of Homeland Security is merely supposed to develop a plan. Frank Sharry, the head of the pro-amnesty group, as I noted, said the following: The triggers are based on developing plans and spending money, not on reaching that effectiveness, which is really quite clever. Mr. Sharry let the cat out of the bag. He said it is a faux trigger, an apparent trigger that is not real. He said it was ``quite clever''-- and indeed it is--but it is now becoming clear that what has been promised is not happening. You could say to the American people: Don't be taken in on this. We can see it now, make your voices heard, follow this debate. If the promises for this bill are not followed, then let your voice be heard in Congress. Tell your Congressmen you are not happy. Tell your Senator you have to do better. The whole crux of it is that if we have an amnesty, if we have a very generous, compassionate treatment of people who violated our laws and come here, shouldn't we have a policy that ends the illegality in the future? That is what the American people have demanded for 30 years. They are good and decent people. That is an absolutely proper thing for them to demand of Congress, and we are not doing it. It is heartbreaking to me that we are here going through this process with a bill as flawed as this one. As times goes by we will talk more about it. I see my friend, the Senator from Utah, Mr. Lee, who is a fabulous new addition to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where this legislation moved. He contributed in many able ways to the discussion, offering excellent amendments. He is a skilled lawyer and a man who is deeply committed to the principles of law that made our country great. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to engage in a colloquy with Senator Lee.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his comments and insight and contribution to the debate, as well as his clear mind and thinking that causes us to analyze how to handle things. The problem we have today, at the most fundamental level, is that in 1987, as Senator Grassley has been so passionate and so clear about, we voted for the 1987 amnesty, and amnesty occurred immediately with the promise of enforcement in the future. So in the view of Senator Grassley, and the view of the American people by a 4-to-1 margin in a recent poll, we should have the enforcement first and then we will talk about amnesty. All right? Senator Lee offered an amendment that dealt with this process. Under the legislation we have here, the question of enforcement is almost entirely given to the Secretary of Homeland Security, who has basically said enforcement is good now and we don't need any more enforcement and that she would basically certify or establish whether we have an effective border and enforcement system, and if not she would issue a report and would turn it over to a commission that had no power and they could review it. But that absolves Congress of their responsibility. With that as background, the Senator offered a very interesting amendment that I think places the responsibility for enforcement where it should be. Would the Senator explain his thinking on that?

Mr. SESSIONS. I would say this is a very important amendment and I think it reveals a lot, as the Senator indicated. When we vote on an amnesty bill, and if that were to pass, the Senators voting for it are basically promising the American people, giving assurances to the American people they will end the illegality in the future. Because as I noted, the polls are 4 to 1 that we should have the enforcement before we give amnesty. And the reason is due to a lack of confidence. So I think if the Senator's amendment had been passed, it would have placed some burden on us, a moral obligation to stand before the world at a point in time in the future and declare whether we have accomplished what we promised the American people we would do. Is that part of the Senator's thinking?

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator. I think that is very wise insight. On the question of immigration, Congress has been irresponsible. The American people have pleaded with us to end the illegality and create a lawful system that serves the national interest--a system we can be proud of. And for 30 years Congress has failed. The Senator's amendment requiring that vote by Congress to assure we do what we have promised to do reminds me of what happened in 2007-- another bill that was a comprehensive immigration bill on the floor. I opposed that bill. It was stronger than this bill, considerably, in a lot of different ways, but it failed because we didn't have confidence about the future. In the course of that debate, I think maybe shortly after the bill failed, we had an amendment to build a certain amount of fencing on the border. I offered that amendment, and it passed overwhelmingly. Republicans and Democrats, virtually everybody, voted to build more fencing at the border--700 miles out of about a 1,700-mile border. Everybody was for that. But that was just the first vote, as our colleagues know. The second vote was whether anybody would appropriate any money to build the fence. So not long afterwards up comes an appropriations bill for homeland security and it had no money for the fence in it. Our colleagues, going back home: I voted to build a fence. But here we have a bill on the floor that doesn't have any money to build a fence. The fence wasn't going to get built. I raised Cain about it and fussed and fussed and sort of mocked the Congress for one moment, saying: You are going to do something and not step up to the plate a little later. And they put money in for the fence. But you know what happened. Of the double-layered fencing that was required, 700 miles of it, only 36 were built. They came up with this idea of a virtual fence--airplanes and computers and radar, I guess. It was a total failure. We spent $1 billion. It was abandoned. There are only 36 miles of double-fencing and 100 or so miles of automobile barriers. It was never built. If we had to vote again to affirm what we did in the year, I think that would make it more likely--from my experience here about how this body works--that what we promised would get done. Does the Senator agree?

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank my colleague because the dangerous problem is so very real. As Senator Grassley has so eloquently discussed, it is one thing to grant amnesty today, it is another to see in the future that we follow through on a system that will end illegality in America. Senator Lee, you are a good lawyer. You have been involved in a number of these issues. It is very clear that the American Immigration Lawyers Association was involved in the drafting of this legislation. I do not say it was all done just for their personal gain, but did the Senator notice quite a number of alterations in current law that gave more flexibility, and resulted in more uncertainty; where the law says thus and so, but it can be waived for hardship or family problems or other matters? As a lawyer, consider what at first glance would be an open-and-shut case where your client is in the country illegally and due to be deported, but now under the bill, the client can demand a trial and perhaps overload the system. Everybody claims hardship; everybody claims some other exception to the rule. Is there a danger that our whole enforcement system would be bogged down in litigation we never had before?

Mr. SESSIONS. I couldn't agree more. When you, as I had the honor to do, prosecute violations of Federal law for over 14 years, you feel a deep, abiding sense that fairness has to occur. You are putting somebody in jail for a period of time. You are saying ``you don't get this money'' if they submit a claim you cannot give them, even though they might benefit but they do not qualify. When you do these things day after day, you have to believe that the system works. With regard to immigration, it is so deeply important that people who wait in line and who do things the right way, believe others are not getting away with it and are not beating the system. Otherwise, they feel like chumps. They feel as though they have been had by the system. It is such a deep moral responsibility, not just for the Federal prosecutors. The ones I know feel deeply about this. They really feel that sense because you cannot do your job every day and go to bed and sleep if you do not believe that everybody is equal and the system works. You do a tough job one day: You don't qualify for disability; you don't qualify for money; you have to go to jail. The guidelines say you go. And then the next guy comes along and the guidelines don't apply to him. The next guy files a claim and he gets some money and you didn't. It is so critical for the magnificent legal heritage of our country that the law be followed equally. Anybody who suggests that this amnesty that will occur has no moral consequences does not understand the depth of the question involved. If we do it and if we do something very compassionate for people who are here illegally, the American people are correct to say: Do not let it happen again. Do not let this happen again. The way the law should work in America: You come legally--OK. You don't come legally, you get deported. That is what the law is. That is what it should be. Anything less than that cannot be defended morally. It cannot be defended constitutionally. It cannot be defended legally. It cannot be defended as a matter of policy. People blithely suggest we can just reward an American who came into this country illegally, 18 months ago, and never had a job, but because they were not caught and deported in the interim, they get to stay here legally forever and be on a guaranteed path to citizenship. Whereas your friend who came here legally and followed the rules, the lady who wrote you, has to go back home? We cannot treat this lightly. If we do this--and I am prepared to work on it and try to do it in a good way--we absolutely have to do it in a way that does not damage, too much, the rule of law. It will damage the rule of law because it is a violation of the rule of law to reward somebody who came illegally by giving them the benefit of their act. If people rob a bank and you catch them, they have to give the money back. They don't get to keep the money. They don't get to keep the benefits of their activity, normally. We are willing to reconsider that. We are willing, as a nation, to compassionately reconsider that. I think the American people are willing to do this. But I ask my colleague Senator Lee whether he believes people feel uneasy about this. They don't like it that this is a thing they believe they must do, but they know it is not a good thing and should be avoided in the future?

Mr. SESSIONS. That is a very interesting insight the Senator made. I believe Senator Schumer was particularly hostile to that amendment and said: Without citizenship, there is no reform. In other words, we will not agree to anything; that is absolutely nonnegotiable. I thought about that bill a lot since 2007 and have been thinking about it ever since. I believe after 1986 we gave amnesty and citizenship with the promise of enforcement, and that didn't happen. We promised it wouldn't happen again and that we wouldn't do another amnesty. This was supposed to be a one-time amnesty which wouldn't happen again. It was supposed to be the clear policy of the United States that if someone entered the country illegally, that person would not get every single thing America could provide, and we would not provide such benefits as would be provided to people who entered lawfully. I don't believe we should--and certainly are not required--to provide citizenship to somebody who entered the country unlawfully. It is just not required. I thought attacking Senator Cruz's amendment was odd and revealing as the junior Senator from Utah did. It was a surprise to me as far as the intensity of their pushback on that. I don't believe it should happen. I don't think it is the right thing. So the person would be able to get permanent, legal, resident status; participate in America; and, of course, their children would be citizens; but they can't get everything if they come illegally. I read a brilliant piece recently by a Yale graduate lawyer, a marine, and he talked about the military. We act as though, if somebody comes into this country illegally, it would be unthinkable that they would be required to move themselves back to where they came from. We tell our military guys all the time to move their families. They get orders to go to west Texas, Alabama, Germany, Japan, and Korea. They spend 18 months in Iraq with their lives on the line. They have to leave their families, and they do it all the time. So they come to this country under the lawful condition that they can come for so many months--and they volunteer, they sign up. I come in, I get to stay so many years, and I am supposed to go home. Is this somehow unkind? Is it immoral to expect those people--when their time is up--to go home? Some of the thinking, which came up in the committee, seemed to be totally oblivious to this fundamental concept. There are certain requirements. They are not allowed to pay a guide to come across the border illegally and 18 months later demand a pathway to citizenship in the United States. It is just not law. I don't know what that is, but it is not law. It is not the way principled policies should be executed. We are willing to consider and work through a process. For some time I have said we want to be compassionate to those people who have been here a long time and have done well. We can work through it. But when they come through this system, they need to have no doubt that in the future, if they overstay their visa or come into the country illegally, and they are apprehended, they will be deported. If we don't make that commitment intellectually, morally, and legally, then we have guaranteed we will have another amnesty, or fight, and the integrity of our immigration law will be further degraded.

Mr. SESSIONS. I am glad Senator Lee mentioned that because we have to have an honest debate. We have to have an honest discussion about what is in the national interest of the United States and how immigration fits into that. First and foremost, do we want to have a lawful system or not? Do we want to allow lawlessness to continue in the future? It is not unkind to talk about that. Prime Minister Cameron, of the UK in London, recently made this remark--they are wrestling with immigration and how to do it the right way in the United Kingdom. He says: There are those who say you can't have a sensible debate because it is somehow wrong to express concerns about immigration. Now I think that is nonsense. I think we can have a sensible discussion about it when we ask about how many people will come, what skills they should possess, and what America would benefit from most with the immigrants we have coming to our country; what immigrants would be most likely to be successful, flourish, and do well. We have had statistics established that people who come with about 2 years of college and speak English almost always do very well, but people who come without high school diplomas don't do as well. If we cannot accept everybody, we ought to think about and try to develop a system which allows people who can be the most successful to take advantage of America. That would be helpful. Prime Minister Cameron goes on to say: While I've always believed in the benefits of migration and immigration, I've also always believed that immigration has to be properly controlled. Without proper controls, community confidence is sapped, resources are stretched and the benefits that immigration can bring are lost or forgotten. I think that is somewhat in line with the points the Senator from Utah was making. I see the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, who has wrestled with these issues longer than I have. He conducted a markup which allowed a large number of amendments. Unfortunately, some of the members, even though they liked their amendments, wouldn't agree to vote for them. We have a process that allowed some airing of the details of the bill, and a lot of amendments were offered. I thank Senator Lee for participating in this discussion and coming to the Senate with fresh ideas, enthusiasm, and passion for America, the rule of law, the proper functioning of our branches of government, and the classical constitutional heritage of this Nation. I am honored to serve with my distinguished colleague. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, as we begin to discuss this legislation, the immigration bill that is before us, a lot of people have not realized it is coming up. A lot of people do not realize the breadth of it and a lot of people are concerned about it. We have gotten a lot of phone calls in my office. People are wondering who is speaking up about the bill and they want to know what is in the bill. So I think that is a big part of what we should be doing in the days to come--going over the bill in a careful way concerning any progress the bill makes and any deficiencies the legislation has. As I noted previously, the fundamental challenge we must recognize-- based on the way Congress works and the difficulty it has had with these issues over the last number of years--is that we have to be sure that once the amnesty is granted that there is enforcement in the future. In 1986, that bill, as Senator Grassley has so passionately delineated--he voted for it. Amnesty was given to 3 million people, but the enforcement never occurred, and now we have 11 million people here illegally. This cannot happen again. If we allow this to happen again, we will have eviscerated any ability we have to ask people to comply with the law because people who do not comply with the law are not held to account. There is nothing wrong with saying a person can come to America under certain conditions for certain periods of time and then they must leave. If they do not leave, and they are apprehended, they should be deported. We are in a condition today where nobody is being deported. Ask your law officers in whatever city and county you are in--and this has been going on since before President Obama took office--if they catch somebody who was speeding in their town in Alabama or Indiana or Colorado and they discover they are here illegally what happens. Isn't this a fundamental question? What happens is they turn them loose--you ask them, your law officers--because nobody will come and get them. The Federal Government has reached a point now where virtually no one is being deported except those convicted of serious crimes. It has led to the ICE union--the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who deal with deportations and arrests--these officers voting no confidence in the head of the ICE Department, John Morton--the head man, John Morton, no confidence. I never heard of it. Then, in addition, they have opposed the bill. They said it makes things worse. It will diminish America's national security. And it will not make the law better. So we have the association, the union for customs--Citizenship and Immigration Services, which deals with the citizenship processing--they have opposed the bill. They say it will make the situation worse than present law, which is not being enforced today. That is what we are wrestling with here overall. I know the American people need to get alerted to this. We have been told by the supporters of the legislation: Do not worry--we are going to have the toughest enforcement legislation in history. Senator Schumer said: ``Tough as nails.'' ``The toughest ever.'' Well, this is not in the bill. So what happened in 1987 was that once the amnesty was given, everybody forgot in the future to worry about enforcement. Enforcement just did not happen. It is going to happen again. That is exactly what is going to happen again. The people who are concerned about the legislation and are objecting to this legislation are not against immigration. We allow 1 million people to come into the country legally every year--more than any other country in the world. We are not trying to stop that. What we are trying to say is that you need a good future now for immigration, and you need to be sure it is enforceable. More people want to come to this great land than can come here. I do not blame them for wanting to come here. If somebody convinces them that the American people or the American Government does not care if they come illegally and stay here and eventually they will be given citizenship, why should they not come illegally? So we have to have a national consensus that as we treat compassionately people who have been here a long time and have been good people and we try be generous there, that we do not create a further flow of illegal immigration. We have been warned of what will happen by governmental experts. We have to have a national consensus that we tighten up the enforcement mechanisms that are so clearly broken today. So that is the fundamental principle of what we are about. I am going to mention some of that now. We will talk about more of those problems in the future. The whole fundamental principle is that we need to create a lawful system of immigration that works in the future as well as today. Our sponsors, the Gang of 8, have said that is what they have. They have told us their bill does that. They say: Our bill will end the illegality at the border. They say they are going to have strong enforcement on visa violations, which is really not true. They say they have guaranteed enforcement at the workplace. That one has some benefits, but the way they have done it, it delays it longer than it should be. It creates some changes there. But good workforce enforcement would be a step forward. Then they claim they have mechanisms that lead to removal of dangerous people from the country-- all of which I have to say is fundamentally not accurate. So they acknowledge what needs to be done. So the Members of the Senate and the Members of Congress and the American people need to be asking: Does this bill do what has been promised? If it does, we may be on the track to doing something good. But if it does not, it needs to be rejected. We cannot go down the path of amnesty now and another massive illegality in the future. We cannot do that. We have to do the right thing. Isn't that the right thing? Our sponsors of the bill say it. They promised this is going to be ``as tough as nails,'' ``the toughest bill ever.'' Well, I can tell you with absolute confidence that it is not as strong as the bill in 2007 that was voted down and rejected. It is weaker than that was. It is weaker than current law in so many important areas. You say: Well, you can say that, Jeff. It is not true. It is true. Fundamentally, we will show that the legislation is not where it needs to be. Even Senator Rubio is saying he will not vote for the bill itself. He is one of the Gang of 8 who wrote it, but he says there are enough loopholes that he would not vote for it now. It has to be reformed. It absolutely has to be reformed, there is no doubt about that. But the problem is, except for Senator Rubio, I guess the Gang of 8 agreed to stick together and had no real amendments passed. They did that in the committee. We had a committee process. We had a lot of amendments offered. They stuck together and voted down all of the amendments that were significant. A lot of smaller amendments were passed. But, you know, Senator Schumer apparently said: Well, the Republicans have a pass on this vote. That means, did the Republicans on the Gang of 8, those Members--were they allowed to vote their conscience or were they still expected to be voting like the Gang of 8, who signed in blood to vote? They gave them a pass on a few votes. So this is not a way to do the public's business. It is just not. One thing I think I do believe is important for us to understand--and I have been wrestling with this for a long time. I have been a Federal prosecutor. I will tell you that we can make the system work. A lot of people think it is just hopeless, that we cannot make the system work. Not so. We have made some progress at the border. If we had really strong leadership, were really effective in identifying where the gaps are, in moving resources and stepping up our fencing and our equipment, we could see real progress at the border--real progress. A lot of it is math, I would say from my law enforcement experience. If you add more police officers and crime rates are going down, then you have more police officers per criminal, per crime. You have more ability to drive down crime in a virtual cycle. So we added, after 2007, a number of Border Patrol officers. President Obama claims credit for it, but he did not have credit. It happened before he took office. They were hiring into his term, I am sure, but it was passed before he took office. So we have more people there. We have fewer illegal immigrants for a whole lot of reasons. And then if you have more officers per illegal immigrant, you can do better at the border. Secondly, biometrics. Entry-exit visas have been required by six different pieces of congressional legislation. It was recommended by the 9/11 Commission. When people come into the country, they have a fingerprint taken and they are admitted into the country. What we are not doing is verifying that they ever leave the country. We know that most of the 9/11 attackers came on a visa. People do not know if they are legal or overstaying or have ever left. It is easy. They said it is going to cost billions of dollars--$25 billion to do this. One of our Gang of 8 said that in the committee. It is not going to cost $25 billion. We discovered, I believe, a 2009 report issued by the Department of Homeland Security. That report discovered that you could easily identify people when they depart the country. One of the complaints is that we have to build all of these new buildings and structures and so forth. But when you leave, all you have to do is put your finger on a fingerprint-recording machine and it leaves your fingerprint. It identifies you. What they found was that in Atlanta when they were doing this, like 20,000 or 25,000, I believe, were exiting, and over 100 were hits from the watch list. Some of them had felony warrants out. Some of them were on the terrorist list. That is a large number. It did not cost much money and was not hard to do. So that could be done. We can absolutely make the workplace secure by using an E-Verify system at all employment places. That is the key. So there are things we do. Fundamentally, we can make the system work. Unfortunately, the promises made in this legislation do not do it. What would happen under this bill is that Secretary Napolitano, after the enforcement officially stopped, must give two reports to Congress within 6 months--two reports. Not do anything--two reports. Then all the people here illegally will be given provisional status, be legal, get a Social Security card, and have the ability to work. So there are no real actions that have to occur at the border or anyplace else. That is the fundamental flaw we have to deal with. But the American people are saying it: First deal with the illegality and then let's talk about how to be compassionate for people who have been here for a long time. But the more troubling issue that has not been fully discussed, the other half of the immigration equation, is interior enforcement. The bill further weakens an already decimated interior enforcement system. Immigration reform will never work. This bill will never work unless the U.S. immigration and customs officers are given the resources and the authority they need to do their job. It will not work. Their morale has plummeted because their leadership has blocked them from enforcing plain law. They have virtually the lowest morale rating of any agency in government. Over a year ago, I asked Secretary Napolitano was she not concerned about it and would she meet with the ICE agents and determine what the problem was? So she came back. I asked her had she met with them. No. They voted no confidence in their supervisor, John Morton. They have written us a long letter detailing the failures in this bill, saying it will make it worse than current law and will leave this country more insecure than we are. It is really remarkable. But they have to be allowed to be a part of the game. It cannot be the policy of the United States of America that if someone gets into the country illegally, they are home free; if they get past the Border Patrol at the border, nobody will ever deport them. That is what we are doing now unless they are convicted of a serious felony. Nobody is being deported. So you say: Well, people have been here a long time. We do not want to start deporting people. We are about to give them amnesty. But the bill, if passed, assumes everybody has been given amnesty. The bill assumes that everybody has been given permanent legal status or legal status, which is basically a guaranteed permanent status in the country. They will be given a Social Security card, identification, and the right to work anywhere. So what about people who come illegally after that? Are we never going to enforce the law again if other people come illegally, overstay visas, come through the border, stow away on ships? We have to know that it is going to be fixed. It cannot be that if somebody gets past the border, nobody will ever apprehend them and make them be deported because they shouldn't be here. You are not entitled to come to America illegally and then protest when you are apprehended: Oh, no, I have a right to be here. I have been here for 18 months. You cannot deport me. Once this amnesty occurs, we have to know that we have the mechanism in place to do the job that immigration enforcement at a minimum requires. I think that is so important. Chris Crane, the president of the ICE officers union, an ICE officer himself, and a former marine, explained the situation in his testimony before the House of Representatives recently. Agents report that if they encounter suspected illegal aliens in public-- I am talking about Federal agents, ICE agents, immigration agents-- they cannot arrest them. They cannot arrest them. The day-to-day duties of ICE agents and officers often seem in conflict with the law as ICE officers are prohibited from enforcing many laws enacted by Congress; laws they took an oath to enforce. . . . ICE is now guided in large part by influences of powerful special interest groups that advocate on behalf of illegal aliens. Does that not cause any concern? We have to deal with this. We have to get our ICE people off the mat and into the game. He also testified: Morale is at an all-time low as criminal aliens are released to the streets. Criminal aliens. He is not talking about people who violate the immigration law; he is talking about aliens who committed crimes such as drug offenses and assault. Continuing: Criminal aliens are released to the streets and ICE instead takes disciplinary-- He is talking about his supervisors-- actions against its own officers for making lawful arrests. . . . It appears clear that Federal law enforcement officers are the enemy and not those who break our Nation's laws. He is saying that the supervisors are punishing the ICE officers who actually go out and arrest people because they have set a policy not to enforce the law of the United States. People may not think that is true, but it is absolutely a fact that we have basically made it impossible to enforce the law, and that has come from Secretary Napolitano right on down. That is why she doesn't want to meet with them--because she doesn't have an answer. She is telling them and her deputy is telling them not to enforce the law. Mr. Crane further testified: If an alien is arrested by local police and placed in jail, again, ICE agents may not arrest them for illegal entry or VISA overstay . . . New policies require that illegal aliens have a felony arrest or conviction or be convicted of three or more misdemeanors . . . So, many illegal aliens with criminal convictions are also now untouchable. That is the reality of law enforcement in this country. It is very, very serious. This is a sad state of affairs, no doubt about it. Were these officers consulted when the Gang of 8 wrote the bill? They tell us they have a bill that is going to work to end the lawlessness in America in the future, but did they ever consult with the people who are out there trying to enforce the law now to get their ideas about how to make the system work better in the future? Do they have new provisions in the bill that give our ICE agents, Border Patrol agents, and citizen immigration officers more authority to do their job? No. The bill actually gives more discretion to the Secretary to eviscerate enforcement by not having to enforce plain law. There are a number of provisions in the Code that say that if somebody is arrested and they are due to be deported, they shall be deported. That is the law. Well, they are not doing that. I don't think this is, frankly, just loophole or failure of attention. I don't think the Gang of 8 was really on top of all of the details of the legislation. I think they spent most of their time consulting with Mr. Trumka at the AFL-CIO, Mr. Donohue at the chamber of commerce, La Raza, the immigration lawyers association, the meat packers, and the grocery folks or the big agribusinesses. That is whom they have been talking with, the computer gurus demanding more and more. They didn't focus on this. The people who are actually in there writing it--the immigration lawyers, the chamber of commerce, the union lawyers, and all who have been working on this bill--they knew what they were doing. These scribes, these drafters of the legislation I believe fully understood what it meant. Under this bill, amnesty will occur at once, just as it did in 1987, and like then, we get a mere promise of enforcement in the future--a mere promise. Far from making our laws tougher, as the Gang of 8 has promised and as we need to do, the enforcement of laws is greatly weakened in a whole number of significant areas. Ladies and gentlemen, the drafters of the bill will have received what they want. They will have received amnesty for the 11 million. They will get a dramatic increase in the flow of workers and low- skilled workers into America. That is what they want. They are not interested in future enforcement. In fact, many of them felt as though the big increases in immigration in the future aren't enough, so they have no objection to illegal immigration, it seems, or they would have put a lot more intention in drafting a legislation that would have improved the illegal system. This bill fails. We will go into more detail about it as time goes by. This bill still fails as a matter of law enforcement. That is going to be clear. I am looking at a new piece of legislation introduced by Trey Gowdy, who is the chairman of the House subcommittee. He is a former prosecutor, a Federal prosecutor, 6 years as assistant U.S. attorney. He is a real prosecutor who understands how the system works. Mr. Gowdy has put together a good bill. He says this: ``robust internal immigration enforcement.'' That is what the ICE agents do in Denver, in Memphis, and in Indianapolis. Robust internal immigration enforcement, paired with border security, is our safeguard against repeating the mistakes of 1986. The SAFE Act is a critical step in our efforts to fix our broken immigration system and ensures we will not be having this conversation again in 10, 20, or 30 years. It ensures we won't be back here with another amnesty demand because we have enforced the law. He has put together some good principles that are not in this bill. First, it grants states and localities the authority to enforce immigration laws. The Supreme Court says: You can't do that, it is unconstitutional. Not so. The Supreme Court says the U.S. Congress, by the way it passed this legislation, preempted local enforcement in a lot of areas. They couldn't participate because when Attorney General Holder tells the Federal agents not to enforce the laws, State people can't enforce them either, basically. Attorney General Holder says we are not enforcing these laws. Secretary Napolitano: We are not enforcing these laws. Then the State can't do it because it is totally preempted, essentially, by the Federal Government, except for peripheral areas, like a business can't get a business license if it knowingly hires illegal workers. That is probably a State issue. Well, it is just a matter of Congress's actions. Mr. Gowdy would explicitly allow help from State and local officers. Now, let's get this straight. If a police officer in Alabama arrests somebody who is in the country illegally, they cannot prosecute them. They can only hold them for a short period of time. All they can do is turn them over to Federal officials. That is clear. Mr. Gowdy doesn't change that, really. The fundamental thing is that they could do that. That is the way the system works. What we need to be thinking about is, don't we have to have local law enforcement to be participants in any system that guarantees legality? There are 600,000 State and local law enforcement officers. There are 5,000 interior Federal immigration officers, 5,000 ICE officers, and many of them have other duties. It is our local police and sheriffs who are out on the highways and State troopers who are out there every day coming in touch with thousands of people, and they are the ones who identify people here illegally. When the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security rejected agreements for State and Federal officers to have their assistance in identifying people here, they knew what they were doing. They were effectively eliminating the identification of many of the people here illegally. That was a deliberate, calculated act. People need to know it, and it was wrong. For a good system of immigration for America in the future--remember now, we are talking about after people have been given the amnesty under the bill--the bill should welcome the assistance of State and Federal officers and make up policies that will help with that. The Gowdy bill would protect American communities from dangerous criminals by facilitating and expediting the removal of criminal aliens. This has been delayed. It is not working effectively. It is costing us a lot of money. If someone is here illegally and has been convicted a felony, they ought to be removed and there ought not to be a big deal about it. How much trouble is that? His bill would speed that up and make the system work better. It improves visa security. It helps the ICE agents do a better job. It assists the ICE officers in carrying out their jobs by enforcing Federal immigration laws, by allowing them to make arrests. They basically are being prohibited from making arrests today--can you believe it--for Federal felonies, for Federal criminal offenses, for bringing in and harboring unlawful aliens. The officers need to be able to enforce those laws. It strengthens border security in a number of ways. It reviews the prosecutorial authority that basically is a directive not to follow the law, not to enforce the law that is out there. It strengthens national security in quite a number of ways. This is a good piece of legislation. He knew what he was doing. He drafted something that will make a difference. It will make the law stronger. I would ask my colleagues, why wouldn't you put something like that in the legislation? You say want to have a tough bill. You say your bill is tough. This will be called to the attention of the bill's sponsors. We will ask for legislation like this to be passed as an amendment to the bill, and we will see if it passes. If it doesn't pass, then we can draw a conclusion that the sponsors of the bill and the people who are promoting the bill don't really want to see the law enforced better in the future than it is today. That would be a sad admission, it seems to me. To wrap up, this is a great institution, the Senate. I am glad Senator Reid acquiesced to my insistence to at least have the opportunity to begin our discussion today. It is just the beginning. We will begin to talk about the legislation, talk about how to make our system work better, talk about the American people's desire--good and decent people that they are--to be compassionate to the people who have been here for a long time but their insistence that in the process we create a system of lawful immigration in the future so we are not back here. Again, as I indicated earlier, a poll shows 88 percent of the people said they are angry with their elected officials about failure to enforce the law, whereas only 12 percent said they were angry at people who entered the country illegally. The American people are willing to create a legal status for people who come here illegally. But we need to do it in a way that works. They are demanding we create a system of lawfulness that will work, and we can do it. It is absolutely possible, and that will be demonstrated as we go forward. We are going to have to change this bill, however, and put some teeth in it and give some real power to our dedicated law officers whose lives are at risk every day out there on the streets. We must give them the backing and the mechanisms in law that allow them to be effective. If we do it right, the whole world will say: Uh-oh, the United States has gotten their act together. The United States is serious about their immigration system being lawful. If you try to enter, they are liable to catch you. If you try to enter, you won't be able to get a job legally. And if you enter and get past the border and hide out in Minneapolis and you get caught, you are going to be deported. So don't try to go there illegally. Apply to go there legally. We could see a rather dramatic drop in the attempts to enter illegally if we do that. That is what a system of integrity requires. First, people need to know they shouldn't do it, that the United States will enforce this law. They need to know if they come into the country illegally, they will be deported. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I would like to take a brief moment to commend the Senate on the confirmation of Judge William H. Pryor, Jr., to the United States Sentencing Commission. Judge Pryor is superbly qualified and has the requisite background and experience to serve and contribute greatly to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. I am grateful to the President for acknowledging Judge Pryor's qualifications and nominating him to this important position. Judge Pryor succeeded me as Attorney General of Alabama. I was proud of him then and I was also proud when he was confirmed to serve on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Pryor is a man of character and his actions both on and off the bench reflect that. He is committed to equal justice, without prejudice. As Bill Baxley, a mutual friend, a Democrat, and another former attorney general of Alabama said, ``In every difficult decision he has made, Judge Pryor's actions were supported by his interpretation of the law, without race, gender, age, political power, wealth, community standing, or any other competing interest affecting his judgment.'' That was certainly the case when he carried the banner for sentencing reform in Alabama. Judge Pryor insisted that the legislature address critical problems in Alabama's system of sentencing. He has always been in favor of ``truth in sentencing.'' Advocates of sentencing reform have applauded Judge Pryor's efforts in Alabama, as before we had a sentencing commission and sentencing guidelines, criminal defendants often received different sentences for the same crime based on their race, their sex, or where they lived. Judge Pryor was instrumental in changing that. Advocates of stricter law enforcement also supported Judge Pryor in his efforts to effect reform in Alabama, because ``truth in sentencing'' also meant that a convicted criminal would be more likely to serve the sentence imposed by the judge rather than just a fraction of the sentence based on the discretion of a parole officer. He has stated that when a court enters a sentence of imprisonment, there should be a reliable expectation that the offender will serve a substantial majority of that term of imprisonment. Judge Pryor is reasonable and rational, acknowledging the Nation's overburdened and overcrowded correctional facilities and the need for more community- based programs for first-time or non-violent offenders. Although the Federal guidelines themselves have been completed for many years now, the members of the commission are tasked with ensuring that the guidelines do not result in the same disparity or injustice that they were designed to prevent. The guidelines perform an invaluable function, one which I think Judge Pryor's background and experience have made him uniquely well-suited to oversee. Judge Pryor is a life-long public servant who will certainly be an asset to the U.S. Sentencing Commission as he represents the highest quality of leadership. I appreciate the support of my colleagues in Judge Pryor's confirmation.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, today I wish to discuss amendment No. 945, which was accepted by the Senate yesterday via unanimous consent. This is an important amendment, and I would like to thank the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Senator Stabenow, and the ranking member, Senator Cochran, for their willingness to work with me to see that this amendment was accepted. My amendment will help farmers in Alabama and many other States benefit from Federal agricultural irrigation programs. Expanding irrigation can help protect against drought and can dramatically increase agricultural production, which is why I supported the creation of the Agricultural Water Enhancement Program, AWEP, several years ago. AWEP, which receives approximately $60 million annually, is a ``voluntary conservation initiative that provides financial and technical assistance to agricultural producers to implement agricultural water enhancement activities on agricultural land to conserve surface and ground water and improve water quality,'' according to the USDA. AWEP assists farmers with the use of upland water storage ponds, irrigation system improvements, water quality improvement, and other similar efforts. It is a good program. According to ALFA--the association representing Alabama's farmers: Since 2009, the AWEP Initiative has made available over $3.5 million to benefit the local economy. In Alabama, 102 farmers have improved efficiency in their irrigation operations which resulted in savings of about 875 million gallons of water per year. However, USDA currently limits access to AWEP to farms that have been irrigated previously a requirement that prevents most Alabama farmers from being eligible for this useful program. Farmers are often required to show past irrigation records, irrigation water management plan documentation, or a map showing farm acres with irrigation history. This prior history requirement prevents some worthwhile agricultural water enhancement projects from being eligible for AWEP assistance, particularly in States where irrigation has not been significantly used. According to data in the 2007 USDA Agriculture Census, many farm acres throughout the country do not have a history of agricultural irrigation. This is especially true in my State. According to ALFA, ``only about 5% of Alabama's farms have irrigated cropland,'' and this prior history requirement ``has prevented the program from being more widely utilized'' in Alabama. My amendment No. 945, which was accepted, as modified, by unanimous agreement in the Senate yesterday, eliminates this unwarranted restriction and will help ensure that more farmers are eligible for USDA irrigation assistance programs. I thank the chairman and ranking member for their work in modifying my amendment to ensure that this clarification of law only applies ``in states where irrigation has not been used significantly for agricultural purposes, as determined by the Secretary.'' As a State with relatively little agricultural irrigation in present use, Alabama and other similarly-situated States are clearly covered by the relief provided by my amendment.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, we have gone 4 years without a budget, and the Democratic Senate did act this year and passed a budget. The House has also passed a budget, and it is a historic proposal. It balances in 10 years, it does not raise taxes, and it increases spending every year by as much as 3 percent. It is the right way to go for America, and it is the kind of budget we should be talking about. Chairman Murray has indicated we should go through regular order. But under regular order, what we should do is have the House budget at the desk right now. It is a responsible budget. Under regular order, the House budget should be brought to the floor under section 305(b) of the Congressional Budget Act. Then we can have full debate on that budget with 50 hours and the ability to offer amendments. I think this is what we should be doing. Instead, our Democratic colleagues and Senator Reid have offered consent requests that short-circuit the regular order. Their request would automatically bring the House budget off the calendar, replace it entirely with the Senate's own budget and assume it passes without a single minute of debate or without a single vote being taken. That is not the regular order. Madam President, first, I ask unanimous consent that after my remarks Senator Inhofe be recognized.