Immigration Reform

Floor Speech

Mr. REID. Mr. President, today Senators will have an opportunity to debate the bipartisan immigration bill reported by the Chair's committee last month. As I have already done once today, I again commend the chairman of that committee Senator Leahy for leading a thorough and transparent process in the committee.

I thank Senator Sessions for working with us yesterday to move forward on this measure as quickly as possible. As I have said before, Senator Sessions and I--once in a while--disagree on substance, but we have always had a friendly relationship, which I appreciate.

I applaud the efforts of the Gang of 8--four Democrats and four Republicans--to set aside partisanship to address a critical issue facing our Nation. The system is broken and needs to be fixed.

It is gratifying to see the momentum behind this package of commonsense reforms, which will make our country safer and help 11 million undocumented immigrants get right with the law.

I had a number of meetings over the last few days with pollsters who have taken a look at this legislation, and they all acknowledge that the vast majority of American people want us to move forward. Democrats, Independents, and Republicans recognize the system is broken and needs to be fixed. They all agree on a pathway to citizenship.

I have been committed to a process that is as open as possible for amendments. I don't want to say totally because sometimes with the procedures we have here--as with the farm bill--people throw a monkey wrench into things, and we are not able to do things as we would wish to do them.

We will wrap up work on this legislation before the July 4 recess. I hope Senators will take advantage of today's time for debate. I look forward to a thorough and thoughtful discussion of the deliberation in the days ahead.

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