Immigration

Floor Speech

IMMIGRATION -- (Senate - June 28, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I opposed S. 1639, the immigration reform bill, and the motion to invoke cloture on this flawed piece of legislation.

Our immigration system is complicated. Our borders remain open. We cannot have immigration reform without strengthening the security of our borders. This unsound bill circumvented our Senate process and attempted to buy off support by throwing in carrots for Senators in exchange for their support.

The American people understand what is going on here in the Senate debate and they understand what cloture means. They are flooding our offices in Washington, DC, and our offices in our home States with calls and e-mails so much so that our phone system cannot keep up. The people of Wyoming have made it clear to me that they do not support this legislation. They want something to be done to address our borders, but do not support the blanket amnesty of this bill.

The current situation of an open border and an overly complex hiring process encourages illegal immigration and the hiring of illegal workers. Once we improve these situations, we can determine what steps may be necessary for addressing the illegal immigrant population.

We should not, however, even be considering amnesty. Amnesty encourages illegal immigration. In 1986, 7 million immigrants were granted amnesty. Today we are facing an illegal population of over 12 million. The 1986 amnesty did not stop illegal immigration. We should not repeat this policy without ensuring that we are not making the same mistake.

This is a complicated issue that will directly impact businesses across the United States. Improvements are needed in employer verification processes, but those improvements cannot be made in legislation forced through the Senate by vote trading. People who break laws should be held accountable for their actions. This means better enforcement of our current laws, both on the border and by employers. Employers must be given the tools to verify legal workers and be held accountable when they knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

We in the U.S. Senate still have the opportunity to do some good. We can go back to our committee process and draft legislation that could help our Border Patrol do their jobs. We can put together an employee verification system that actually works and does not run small businesses out of business through fines. There could be a lot of solutions for securing our border and making sure that people who are hired are legal immigrants. We can improve the way that temporary seasonal worker visas and agricultural worker visas are processed.

Rewarding bad behavior only encourages more bad behavior. We will not encourage more bad legislative behavior by going forward with this legislation.

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