Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (Senate - July 26, 2007)

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Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Graham amendment to the Homeland Security appropriations bill. This is an issue which has been with us for years now, an issue of border security which we simply, as a group of policymakers, have not addressed in the right way. That became pretty obvious during our debate on the immigration bill several weeks ago. All of us heard from our constituents back home that while overall immigration reform may be needed in due course, what we need to do immediately is to take action to make sure our borders are, in fact, actually secure. That is the first step in real immigration reform.

Senator Isakson and I sent a letter to the administration imploring them to take action on this issue. We have asked the administration to send an emergency supplemental to the Senate and the House requesting that certain measures to secure our borders be enacted and adequately funded.

What Senator Graham has done with this amendment is a step in the right direction toward ensuring that our borders--particularly our border to the south--are made secure.

I am a little bit disappointed we cannot go any further because what Senator Isakson and I have asked the administration to do in its supplemental request to this body would be to include the creation of a biometric identification card so all of those folks who cross the border in a legal way would have that identification card and any employer who sought to hire any of those individuals would know that they are here legally. If you hired them otherwise, it would be at your own peril.

There are some technical reasons why Senator Graham could not add that provision in here. It is going to require more money, No. 1, plus some other issues regarding the rules of this body. So I am hopeful that there are some additional measures we will take up after we, hopefully, adopt this amendment overwhelmingly, get this bill into conference, out of conference, and on the desk of the President.

So I applaud my colleague from South Carolina, as well as Senator Pryor, who I know has worked very hard on this particular measure. This amendment does many of the things Senator Isakson and I have asked for, and we are very hopeful this will get to the desk of the President immediately. This will answer one of those questions a lot of us heard during the immigration debate from our constituents; that is, why don't you enforce the laws that are on the books today? Well, here is the answer: We do not have the money to do it. This will give us the money to do some of those things.

So I urge all of my colleagues to look very favorably on this amendment. Let's take the first right step to secure the borders. Then we can come back and deal with the overall remaining immigration issues that are outstanding.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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