Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, there is first a matter of fairness when it comes to offering suggestions to amend legislation that is on the Senate floor. Under the ordinary practices and procedures of the Senate, the majority and the minority have an opportunity to offer amendments to modify the underlying bill. On a subject as important and as fundamental to who we are as a country and to our country's future as immigration reform, there have been nine amendments voted on in this bill in the last 2 weeks--nine amendments.

To listen to my colleagues in the majority who are happy with the underlying bill because they wrote it, they act as if we have had a fulsome opportunity to offer amendments. We have been willing to have votes as long as we get votes on our amendments. It is not just the majority that has the opportunity to modify the underlying legislation and to debate it, the minority has rights too. Our side wants a right to choose our own amendments, not to have the majority leader choose which of our amendments he is going to deign to allow debate and votes on. That is not democracy. That is not the Senate. That is a dictatorship.

We will not allow the majority to tell us which of our amendments will be allowed to be considered. We can have votes on any amendments the other side wants a vote on. We are ready, and we have been all along. It is not true to say that the minority has been blocking amendments to this bill. That makes no sense whatsoever. The majority wrote the bill.

The minority has all the incentives to offer amendments. Why in the world would we block our own amendments, but for the fact that the majority leader wants to choose which of those amendments he will somehow allow us to offer. It makes no sense whatsoever. I have heard some suggest that this is a minor vote we are going to have at 5:30, that there are just modifications to the underlying bill.

This is the amendment we will vote on. It was released late Friday evening, and we have been poring over line by detail ever since. This is not a minor matter; this is a serious amendment. The Schumer-Corker-Hoeven amendment makes enormous changes in the underlying bill. I wish to talk about some of those changes.

Back when this underlying bill was proffered, the framework for it was proffered by the so-called Gang of 8, Senator Durbin, the distinguished minority whip from Illinois, said in 2013 a pathway to citizenship needs to be ``contingent upon securing the border.'' That was the bipartisan framework for comprehensive immigration reform in January 2013.

Six months later we find a different story. He says: ``We have de-linked a pathway to citizenship and border enforcement.'' He was quoted in the National Journal on June 11, 2013. He has not suggested since that time that it was taken out of context or a misquote.

What it demonstrates is how far we have come from what was promised 6 months ago and is now being delivered. I believe the American people are enormously generous and compassionate. There are circumstances under which the majority of Americans would say we believe people who have entered our country without complying with our immigration laws or who have entered legally and overstayed, the so-called visa overstays, we believe they should get a second chance--but not by demanding a pathway to citizenship and delinking it from border security and other important measures that will make sure we don't repeat the mistakes of 1996.

When Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty for 3 million people, the American people were told this will never happen again because we are going to enforce the law this time. It didn't happen, and the American people were justifiably skeptical as to whether it will happen again, particularly when this sort of sleight of hand takes place where we are told in January the pathway to citizenship is ``contingent upon securing the border,'' only to find out 6 months later it has been delinked.

If Congress can't keep a 6-month-old promise, it is never going to be able to keep any of the promises contained in this amendment.

For starters, this underlying bill relies upon the same sort of budgetary gimmicks that were used to pass the Affordable Care Act, now known colloquially as ObamaCare. We have been told in the underlying bill that it reduces the Federal deficit by $197 billion over 10 years. I have even heard some of my Republican colleagues cite that as if this is somehow free money: Hey, we can spend this money because the underlying bill reduces the Federal deficit by $197 billion.

The Congressional Budget Office has pointed out that the only way we can view that as free money--which is an oxymoron if there ever was one--is by double counting the $211 billion in off-budget revenue that will be needed to fund Social Security for the newly legalized immigrants. In other words, this is money they are going to pay into Social Security that they are going to eventually take out. To act like you can use it to pay their Social Security benefits and at the same time use it to fund this bill is double counting.

That is a budget gimmick. That is the same sort of gimmickry that has gotten us $17 trillion in debt, and it is perpetuated under this bill.

If we were to use real-world accounting, the same sort of accounting every family, every small business in America has to use, they can't double count the money. They have to use real hard numbers. If we use the same sort of accounting that families and small businesses across America have to use day in and day out, we will find that the underlying bill actually increases the budget deficit by more than $14 billion over the next decade. This is spending more money we don't have, adding to our annual deficit, adding to our national debt, putting us further and further in the hole when it comes to our fiscal condition.

One of the other problems is that even since the Congressional Budget Office looked at the underlying bill, we don't yet have an official cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office for this bill that basically rewrote the entire underlying bill. We still don't have an official budget estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, and we don't know when that is likely to come. Yet we are going to be required by the majority leader, because he is the one who sets the schedule here by virtue of his being the majority leader, we are going to be required to vote on a cloture motion at 5:30 this evening, in about an hour--before we even know from the official scorekeeper for the Congress and the Federal Government exactly how much this costs, what the assumptions are, and whether we are still going to be looking at double counting the revenue that is coming in and looking to that to pay for the costs of this bill at the same time we are going to have to pay it out in benefits--double counting. We don't know if that continues under this bill, but I dare guess that it will.

Some of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle previously expressed real consternation at double counting back when ObamaCare was passed and back during the 2009 stimulus package. Some of them issued press releases saying: You can't spend the same money twice. Yet today here we go again. This is another reason I am so concerned about where we find ourselves: being jammed into voting on this piece of legislation without an official score of the Congressional Budget Office, before, I daresay, every Member has had a chance to read it and understand it, and when it relies on double counting and other gimmicks that have gotten us $17 trillion in debt.

I also worry that my colleagues who support this particular amendment, while I stipulate to their good intentions, their approach is one based solely on throwing more money at the problem without having any plan, strategy, or any real mechanism for ensuring that money is spent sensibly, and it accomplishes the stated goal.

Last week some of my colleagues gave me a hard time because I offered an amendment which would raise the number of the Border Patrol agents by 5,000. They said: We can't afford it. The underlying bill has zero new Border Patrol.

My amendment offered 5,000 additional boots on the ground. They said: We can't afford it. That is a ridiculous suggestion.

Imagine my surprise when this amendment that was filed so recently calls for 20,000 Border Patrol agents. This is a fourfold increase, even though experts across the political spectrum have said that doubling the size of the Border Patrol in and of itself, while it may provide some political figleaf for voting for this bill, does not and will not solve the problem.

I wish to know, for example, where that number came from. How did my colleagues turn on a dime from saying we needed zero additional Border Patrol, to saying 5,000 was a ridiculous suggestion, and are now saying 20,000 is exactly right? What expert, at what hearing was the testimony offered to support that sort of expense and that sort of approach?

Don't just take my word for it. There was a story in the Arizona Republic, dated June 22, quoting a number of experts on immigration and border security. Doris Meissner, who used to be the head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the predecessor to the Department of Homeland Security, called the approach in this amendment ``detached from the reality on the ground.'' She said it is ``detached from the reality on the ground'' and said it would make more sense to invest in creating ``a modern 21st century border, which includes enforcement but also trade and travel and facilitating crossing and reducing waiting time.''

This makes more sense to me because part of the underlying premise for the bill was to create a legal way for people to come, work, immigrate to the United States, and then allow law enforcement focus on the criminality, the drug traffickers, the human traffickers, and other people engaged in illegal conduct.

Ms. Meissner appears to be saying that makes a lot of sense when it comes to ``a modern 21st century border.''

Other experts have said and quoted in the same article in the Arizona Republic, June 20, Adam Isacson: ``There may be some room for more agents, but not for 20,000.''

John Whitley said: ``We should look at what we are trying to achieve--at the outputs instead of the inputs.''

In other words, what this approach does is say we are going to look at all the equipment we can buy, the technology we can deploy, the boots on the ground, but we are going to turn a blind eye to the outputs or the goals that we are presumably trying to achieve. Mr. Whitley agreed with that. He said:

We should look at what we are trying to achieve--at the outputs instead of the inputs. Otherwise, seven years from now we'll be sitting around saying we don't know which bits work and which bits are wasteful.

I know some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--Senator Leahy, for example, who is managing the bill for the majority, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said it looks like a laundry list for defense contractors. I think I am paraphrasing correctly. Then he said: If that is what it is going to take to get them to vote for the bill, then I am for it. I am going to support it.

Once again, the underlying bill puts symbolism over substance, and they are hoping the American people will not notice. As I have said repeatedly, the so-called border security triggers in the underlying bill are sheer fantasy and wishful thinking because they are activated by promises of more money and more promises than they are on actual results.

I am afraid the underlying Schumer-Hoeven-Corker amendment does nothing to change that.

Here is a comparison of the approach under the underlying Gang of 8 proposal, the Corker-Hoeven-Schumer amendment, and an amendment I offered last week which was tabled. We have the question, Is operational control of the border required? Under the Gang of 8 bill? No. This amendment? There is no requirement.

Under the amendment I offered last week, an individual would not be able to transition from probationary status to legal permanent residency until that happened. That is not to punish anybody, but what it does is it realigns all the incentives for everybody involved in this discussion, whether Democratic or Republican or Independent, whether conservative or liberal or whatever. It would have realigned all the incentives to make sure we would have hit this target of operational control of the border.

Is 100 percent situational awareness required? Not under the Gang of 8 bill. Not under this amendment. There would have been under my amendment of last week.

A biometric exit trigger. There is none under the Gang of 8 bill and none under this amendment.

Here is perhaps one of the best and most obvious reasons why people don't trust promises of future performance when it comes to Congress--because 17 years ago Bill Clinton signed into law a requirement for a biometric entry-exit system. Now, ``biometric'' is a big word. It could mean just fingerprints or an iris scan or facial recognition, but it is something you can't cheat on because it depends on a bodily characteristic that is immutable and cannot be changed, such as fingerprints.

So it was 17 years ago when President Clinton signed the law which Congress passed, a biometric entry-exit requirement, and it still hasn't been implemented. And while people think that mainly illegal immigration is caused by people entering the country across our borders, such as the 1,200-mile Texas-Mexico border, the fact is that 40 percent of illegal immigration occurs because people come in legally and overstay their visa, and they simply melt into the great American landscape. Unless they commit a crime or otherwise come in contact with law enforcement, we never find them again.

Here is the other problem in the underlying bill. Even if these requirements required results rather than promises of performance, unfortunately, under the underlying bill and now again in this amendment we are going to vote on at 5:30 today, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has the unilateral discretion and authority to waive all of those requirements. This is the same person who said the border is secure even though the General Accounting Office said in 2011 only 45 percent of the border was under operational control. She may well be the only person in America--the only person in America--who believes the border is under control because it demonstrably is not. Yet she is given the authority to waive these requirements in this amendment we will vote on at 5:30.

Then there is this: Under the underlying bill an individual can beat their spouse or their partner, they can drive drunk and threaten the lives and livelihoods of American citizens, and they can still qualify for RPI status and get on a pathway to citizenship. As a matter of fact, under this underlying bill they could actually have already been deported, having committed a misdemeanor, and still be eligible to reenter the country and become the beneficiary of RPI status and put eventually on a pathway to citizenship. That is a terrible mistake. I don't know anybody who believes we ought to be taking people who have shown such contempt for the rule of law and the health and safety and welfare of the American people and say: You know what, out of the generosity of our hearts, we are going to give you one of the greatest gifts anyone could ever get; that is, an opportunity to become an American citizen.

I would hope most of us in this Chamber would agree that immigrants with multiple drunk driving or domestic violence convictions should never be eligible for legalization, especially after they have already been deported. Yet the underlying bill, the so-called Gang of 8 bill, and the Schumer-Hoeven-Corker amendment will grant immediate legal status to criminals, including those already deported, as I said, and including people who have committed domestic violence, even with a deadly weapon. I still can't quite get my mind around that, but it is true.

Our standards when it comes to granting legal status to people who have come into our country in violation of our immigration laws and/or who have come in legally and overstayed should be crystal clear. We should differentiate between people who have made a mistake and are willing to pay for it--pay a fine, be put on probation, and successfully complete that probation--and people who have come in and shown such contempt for our laws and the rule of law as to have engaged in a history of drunk driving or domestic violence. They should be automatically disqualified from receiving probationary status. I find it remarkable that we are even debating this issue in the first place.

A few final points. We are going to be asked to vote on legislation that was crafted behind closed doors, with no chance for amendments. As a matter of fact, I believe that once the majority leader gets cloture on this amendment, we will have virtually no other opportunities to offer any additional amendments and get votes on those amendments after only having votes on nine amendments so far. That is an outrage. We are going to be asked to vote on legislation filled with special interest goodies, with earmarks and pet spending projects, and we still don't have an official cost estimate by the Congressional Budget Office. We are being asked to vote for legislation that will continue the three-decade pattern of broken promises on border security. In short, we are being asked to vote for more of the same.

I know my good friend from Tennessee Senator Corker has been one of the best new additions to the Senate. He has remarkable knowledge and experience and great enthusiasm.

He asked me: What more do you want than 20,000 Border Patrol agents and a commitment to spend all these billions of dollars on new equipment? What more could you possibly want?

My answer to that is this: I would like to know that the promises we are making in terms of border security, interior enforcement, and visa overstays are going to be kept; otherwise, all we will have is 11 million people granted probationary status, with the potential eventually to earn legal permanent residency and American citizenship. And those people who might be willing to consider that sort of arrangement if they had a guarantee that we would not be back here doing this same thing again in 5 or 10 years are going to have nothing but a bunch of broken promises to show for it.

For me, it is a very sad episode in a very important Senate debate that has huge ramifications for the future of our country. At the start of this debate, I had high hopes that the Gang of 8 was serious about keeping promises and delivering real bipartisan immigration reform that could pass the House of Representatives. But now I see it is just the same old beltway song and dance. What a shame. What a lost opportunity that is.

Now I believe all eyes and attention will turn to the House of Representatives, where I hope the House of Representatives will take a more careful, step-by-step approach in addressing our broken immigration system. My hope is that ultimately we will get to a conference committee that will fix the underlying approach and problems in this amendment and in this bill and will allow us to successfully address our broken immigration system that serves no one's best interests.

I am not one who believes ``no'' should be the final answer when it comes to our broken immigration system. I actually believe we need to fix it, and we need an immigration system that reflects our values and reflects the needs of our growing economy in a globally competitive environment, but this bill is not it.

There will be no way to enforce the promises that are so readily made today in the future. Notwithstanding the best intentions of the people who offer this amendment, many of us won't be here 10 years from now. No Congress can bind a future Congress. No President can bind a future President. And if we are depending for the next 3 1/2 years on Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and President Obama to enforce the mechanisms in this bill, I am afraid we are going to be sorely disappointed. And how can we possibly know what the next President and future Congresses will ultimately do? That is why it is so critical, if we are going to keep faith with the American people, to have a mechanism in this bill that will force all of us across the political spectrum to do everything we possibly can to make sure those promises are kept. And it is not in this amendment.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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