Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act

Floor Speech

COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT -- (Senate - June 28, 2007)

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Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alabama for yielding me time.

I just wish to say I appreciate the efforts of all involved in what has happened over the last month. I really do. I have voted three times against cloture and will vote for a fourth time today against cloture. But at the same time, I really have tried to play a constructive role in voting on each amendment based on the merits of that amendment.

This bill is about a lot of things. Certainly, people have put a lot of effort into it--based on compassion, based on trying to solve a problem. It also, no doubt, has some more sinister components. I hate to say it: cheap labor, party politics, who is going to gain the majority. So there are a lot of different things at play here. I think we all understand that. But I really do appreciate the efforts of all involved.

Today, this is going to get down to four or five Senators. I encourage them to vote against cloture, for this reason: I think this bill is not good for America because I believe America has lost faith in our Government's ability to do the things it says it will do. We have had intelligence gaffs. We have had evolving reasons as to why we are involved in military conflicts. We have seen what has happened at the local, State, and Federal level on things such as Katrina. We have ministers who want to go on mission trips today but who cannot get passports renewed. This is about competence. It is about credibility. I think Americans feel they are losing their country. They are not losing it to people who speak differently or talk differently or are from different backgrounds; they are losing it to a government that has seemed to not have the competence or the ability to carry out what it says it will do.

I believe this bill is going to fail. What I would urge people to do is not what they have said today--and that is, to let it pass--but to move, meaning to pass into another time, but approaching it on a more modest basis, where we do the things we say we will do and build a foundation that will cause the American people to actually have faith in this Government.

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