Immigration

IMMIGRATION -- (Senate - December 13, 2005)

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the majority leader has said that after the first of the year we would turn our attention to immigration, and well we should. Some estimates show that 10 to 20 million people living in the United States may be here illegally. Whatever one may think about immigration, one has to start with the idea that our Nation is based on a few principles, and one of the most important of those principles is the rule of law.

This is a problem we need to address and the American people have a right to demand we address. The buck stops here. This is not something Governors can deal with or school districts can deal with. It stops here.

Not long ago in Nashville I gave a speech in which I attempted to say I believe there are three parts to a comprehensive solution to immigration, the kind of comprehensive solution President Bush has talked about. Part No. 1 is border security. I had no more said the words ``border security'' than the whole room rose and began to applaud; they were not interested in the rest of the story. I would like to say a word today about the rest of the story, what our immigration debate needs to include in addition to border security.

Let me turn to a lesson we are learning from across the ocean, from Great Britain and France. Last month, the British Government instituted a citizenship test that immigrants to Britain must pass before becoming British citizens. When he announced a number of related measures regarding British citizenship last August, Prime Minister Tony Blair said:

People who want to be British citizens should share our values and our way of life.

These new rules were spurred by the terrorist attack in London last July in which four young men, three of whom were British-born children of Pakistani immigrants and the fourth who was a Jamaican immigrant, bombed the London subway system. In addition to taking new security precautions, the British Government recognized the need to ensure that immigrants to their country, and especially those who become citizens, integrate into British society and demonstrate loyalty to their newly adopted homeland.

France is similarly facing a period of self-examination on integrating immigrants and the children of immigrants following the 2-week violent civil unrest that spread across many of France's poor suburbs last month. That violence resulted in 126 policemen being injured, 9,000 cars burned, and $250 million in damages, according to the French Government.

Like their British neighbors across the English Channel, the French are trying to figure out how to integrate this dissatisfied population--the children of Muslim immigrants--into French society. According to the French Ambassador:

[T]hese teenagers feel alienated and discriminated against both socially and economically. They don't want to assert their differences. They want to be considered 100-percent French.

We should learn a lesson from our friends across the ocean. As we in the Senate begin to debate our immigration policy next month in the Senate, we would be wise to consider their quandary. Too often discussions on immigration reform begin and end with securing our borders. Securing our borders is step No. 1, but there are two additional, essential steps to any comprehensive solution to our immigration problems.

Step No. 2, once we have secured our borders, is to create a lawful status for those whom we welcome to work here and those we welcome to study here. We should remember who we are. This is a nation of immigrants. President Franklin D. Roosevelt began one of his addresses, ``My fellow immigrants.'' Once we secure the borders, once we deal with the rule of law problem, we need then to remember step No. 2, which is that we have millions of people whom we welcome to work here in all aspects of our society. They need a legal status that respects our rule of law. We welcome the 572,000 foreign students who come here to study. We hope many of them stay here. They are helping to create a higher standard of living for us. If they go home they become ambassadors for American values. Recently, Dr. Steven Chu, an American who was the cowinner of the 1997 Nobel prize in physics, pointed out to me that 60 percent of Americans who have won the Nobel Prize in physics are immigrants or the children of immigrants.

That is a second point--a lawful status for workers, and a lawful status for students and researchers, whom we want to come here. We want them here because their being here helps raise our standard of living.

The third part that is essential to comprehensive immigration reform is an examination of how we help new immigrants to this country become American.

In short, we need to have a discussion about fulfilling the promise to the national motto that is right above the head of the Presiding Officer: E pluribus unum; from many, one. How do we do that? We do that by reminding ourselves that while we have all of this magnificent diversity in this country, that is not our greatest accomplishment. Our greater accomplishment is that we have turned that magnificent diversity into one nation; that while we are proud of where we came from, we are prouder of where we are. We are united by principles, not race. We are united by a common language, English, and by our history of constantly struggling to reach high ideals which our Founders set for us as a nation.

We welcome new immigrants to join in that struggle toward becoming Americans. We have an advantage, therefore, over our European friends. We have been doing this through our whole history. We are unique in our world in our attitude toward welcoming others. We are different because under our Constitution, becoming an American can have nothing to do with ancestry. America is an idea, not a race.

One can see that in the various naturalization ceremonies which occur in courthouses all around this country, as new citizens raise their hands and take an oath that George Washington first administered to his officers at Valley Forge when he declared that he had no allegiance or obedience to King George III, and he renounced, refused, and abjured any allegiance or obedience to him, and swore he would support, maintain, and defend the United States. That is what George Washington and his officers said. That is the standard for every American citizen who comes to this country.

Once we secure our borders, once we establish a lawful status for workers and for students we welcome here, then we should set about helping prospective citizens become American.

Senator Cornyn and I have introduced a bill that we hope will be included as part of comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Our bill, the Strengthening American Citizenship Act, would do the following: provide $500 grants for English courses; allow prospective citizens who become fluent in English to apply for citizenship 1 year early; provides for grants to organizations for courses in American history and civics, and authorize the creation of a foundation to assist in those efforts; codify the oath of allegiance that George Washington gave to his officers and took himself, and which is substantially administered to every new citizen today; direct the Department of Homeland Security to carry out a strategy to highlight the moving ceremonies in which immigrants become American citizens; and establish an award to recognize the contributions of new citizens to our great Nation.

Real immigration reform must encompass all three important steps: First, securing our borders. Second, a legal status for guest workers and guest students. Third, I hope I have reminded us of the importance today of remembering that motto we see when we are here in the Senate chamber that indispensable to immigration reform is helping prospective citizens become American.

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