Securing America's Borders Act

SECURING AMERICA'S BORDERS ACT

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I was on the floor last Friday describing what I believed to be a remarkable resemblance between the provisions that deal with the 12 million individuals who are currently in the United States in violation of our immigration laws and the amnesty that was granted in 1986 which was supposed to be the amnesty to end all amnesties. In other words, if we would just agree that the 3 million or so people who entered our country without legal authorization would be given amnesty, we would then have worksite verification and sanctions against employers who hired people in violation of the law, and this problem would go away.

As I pointed out then, the amnesty that was granted in 1986--everyone now acknowledges it was an amnesty. And the second thing I think everyone will nearly universally acknowledge is that amnesty was a complete and total failure. I, for one--and I believe there are others in this body--want to make sure we don't make the same mistake twice, and when we ask the American people to have confidence in us, in what we are trying to do to solve a very real problem, they don't take the attitude ``fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.'' They don't want to believe, nor should they be asked to believe, that we are engaged in a sleight of hand or a trick.

So I believe it is very important that our colleagues focus not only on the amnesty of 1986, but to compare it with the proposal in the committee product which bears remarkable resemblance.

One of the areas where it does not resemble the 1986 amnesty is that the 1986 amnesty would bar felons and people who have committed at least three misdemeanors. As Senator Kyl and I pointed out by way of our amendment, we seek to add that requirement back in so that felons and people who committed at least three misdemeanors would not be given an amnesty under the committee proposal.

But in this bill--this enormously complex and important bill--details matter. Another example is I reviewed the committee bill over the weekend, and I have some concern that the bill text does not reflect how the bill is actually being described by its proponents.

For example, section 602 of the bill states that illegal aliens must comply with the employment requirements. Yet there are no specific requirements for them to meet. Future temporary workers must be continuously employed, but no such requirement exists for illegal aliens. The alien could potentially be employed for one day and still end up qualifying for a green card and then put on a path to citizenship.

I urge my colleagues to look very carefully at this bill and to study it because here we found at least two examples of where the bill does not meet the description offered by its proponents; and, No. 2, that those who say that what this bill does for those who are currently here in violation of our immigration laws is not an amnesty, we find that it bears remarkable resemblance to what everyone acknowledged to be an amnesty in 1986 and what everyone pretty much universally acknowledges was a complete and total failure.

Illegal immigration has had a dramatic effect on many aspects of our society. It affects our schools, hospitals, and prisons. Dr. Donald Huddle, a Rice University economics professor, published a systematic analysis of those costs as of 1996 and concluded the estimated net cost to the American taxpayer was about $20 billion each year.

The population in our country that has stayed here in violation of our immigration laws has doubled since that study was done. So the financial impact picked up not by the Federal Government but by local school districts and local hospital districts and State and other local governments may be as high as $40 billion to $50 billion.

Last week, we heard a lot of debate about whether immigration reform needs to address the 12 million aliens already here who have come here or stayed here in violation of our laws and to create a new visa category that would allow future workers to enter our country legally.

As I said then, and I will say again now, I support comprehensive immigration reform and I believe our national security requires us to know who is in our country and what their intentions are once here. But I fear that a critical distinction in the debate is being glossed over, and that is whether work visas should be truly temporary or whether we should allow all migrant workers to remain here permanently.

First, let me say that there is obviously an important role for permanent immigrants, and I support legal immigration. I noted, as so many others have, that we are a nation of immigrants, and we are the better for it. I support, for example, moderate increases in legal permanent immigration, but I don't support a so-called temporary worker program which is neither temporary nor is it a worker program, but it is rather an alternative path to legal permanent residency and citizenship.

More than 23 million immigrants have been issued green cards since 1973, an average of about three-quarters of a million new green card holders each year. But there is also a role for temporary workers in addition to those people who want to immigrate here permanently. I feel strongly that we ought to distinguish between legal immigration, illegal immigration, and we ought to distinguish between people who want to come here temporarily and work but not give up their identity or their citizenship with their country of origin and those who want to be Americans.

For those who are permanently going to be immigrating to the United States, I sincerely want all of them to become Americans, and I joined in cosponsoring the amendment with the Senator from Tennessee to help them do that, so they can be assimilated, they can learn English, they can gain access to the kind of education that will allow them to become not only legal immigrants, but to become permanently assimilated into our society and productive citizens. I think we owe that to them and we owe that to ourselves.

But there is also a role for those who want to come here for a time and work and then return to their country of origin, people who have no intention of giving up their ties with their country or their culture or their family but who want to come and work for a time and then return with the savings and skills they acquired working in the United States.

We have heard a lot of discussion about that from sectors in the economy saying they depend on the workers who come from other countries but that they could work with a temporary worker program to satisfy those needs.

There are some who criticize saying that a true temporary worker program is futile and unworkable. They argue that temporary workers will never leave and so we must allow all of them to remain here permanently.

I strongly reject what I would interpret as an open borders argument. First, I think it is ridiculous for anyone to argue that the United States neither has the ability nor the will to enforce its immigration laws. Should we not put any limit on how long a visitor can stay in the United States, how long a student can remain in the United States? That argument is a disservice to the hundreds of millions of tourists, executives, workers, and students who do comply with our immigration laws.

The United States admits 500 million visitors a year, and only a fraction of a percentage makes the affirmative decision to violate our laws and to stay here.

I also believe that effective worksite enforcement will allow workers to work during the term of their visa but then to return once their visa expires. The 1986 amnesty promised that illegal workers would not be able to find work, but here we are today with 5 percent of our workforce using false documents. I will, therefore, not support any reform proposal unless I am confident that illegal workers will not be able to find employment in the United States but for legal channels.

If we actually believe we cannot enforce the law, if temporary doesn't mean temporary, if there is no distinction between legal and illegal, we are essentially raising a white flag and saying we will not enforce our own laws. I cannot imagine this great institution taking that position either affirmatively, expressly, or tacitly.

I also reject the argument that a true temporary worker visa is inconsistent with the natural migration patterns of workers. The American Lawyers Association states that before 1986, the average length of stay in the United States was only 1.7 years. Since 1986, the amnesty that was created in that year, the length of stay has increased to 3.5 years, up from 1.7

The bottom line is most workers do not want to stay for 6 years, much less permanently.

Douglas Massey, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that the 1986 amnesty:

Succeeded in transforming a seasonal flow of temporary workers into a more permanent population of settled legal immigrants.

He wrote that, prior to 1986:

Most immigrants sought to work abroad temporarily in order to mitigate and manage risks and acquire capital for a specific goal or purpose. By sending one family member abroad for a limited period of foreign labor, households could diversify their sources of income and accumulate savings from the United States earnings. In both cases, the fundamental objective was to return to their country of origin--in this case, he says: ``Mexico.''

He argues--and I agree--that the 1986 amnesty actually resulted in a decrease in circular migration.

The committee amendment on the floor would do exactly the same thing. It would destroy the incentive for circular migration and the benefits that would accrue--not just to the United States but to the country of origin, to whence the immigrant would return with the savings and skills they have acquired here.

In a survey by the Pew Hispanic Center of Mexicans Abroad, they support the argument that migrant workers would participate in a true temporary worker program. Indeed, 71 percent of those surveyed, which were 5,000 applicants for the matriculator consular card in the United States, 71 percent said they would participate in a temporary worker program, even if they knew that at the end of the period of their visas, they would have to return to their country of origin.

Finally, our country is enjoying a strong period of economic growth. The economy created almost a quarter of a million jobs in February and has created 2.1 million jobs over the past 12 months--almost 5 million new jobs since August 2003. The unemployment rate is 4.8 percent, lower than the average of the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s. We may not always enjoy a strong economy, and a true temporary worker program allows our visa policy to adapt to the peaks and valleys of our economic needs.

I supported Senator Kyl's amendment in the committee that would limit the number of temporary worker visas if unemployment reaches certain levels. But that amendment means nothing if all workers are on green cards or on a path to legal permanent residency or citizenship.

Everyone, it seems, describes their proposal as a guest worker or temporary worker program. But not all temporary worker programs--or at least those sold under the guise of a temporary worker program--are, in fact, temporary. It is important, both to our economy and to American native-born workers who compete with this new workforce, that we modulate and moderate the flow of workers into our country at a time when our economy can sustain them and not take jobs away from people who are born here or who are legal immigrants. It is also critical that we recognize the importance of the restoration of these circular migration patterns which, in fact, benefit countries such as Mexico and in Central America because they are literally being hollowed out: People permanently leaving those countries, making it difficult for them to generate jobs and grow their economy, so that people can stay home if they wish and not have to leave their family and their culture and their country in order to come to the United States to sustain themselves and their families.

My point is our colleagues and those in the news media and the American people listening should listen carefully to not only what people call their different sort of worker programs or visas but actually how they function, and insist that if colleagues are going to call a guest worker program a temporary worker program, that it is, in fact, temporary; and that if it is a guest program, that it not be someone who is going to permanently move in with us. Guests, in fact, ultimately are supposed to return and not stay.

I realize time is short for this portion of the debate, but I did want to make those points. I know there are other colleagues on the floor who wish to speak, and I will return and make additional comments on other aspects of this bill at a later time.

I yield the floor.

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