Mr. President, there is an order of speaking locked in. I believe I am entitled to speak in about 5 minutes. Is it appropriate for me to begin at this point? I thank the Chair. I rise to address the…
Mr. President, there is an order of speaking locked in. I believe I am entitled to speak in about 5 minutes. Is it appropriate for me to begin at this point?
I thank the Chair.
I rise to address the starting point of any discussion of comprehensive immigration reform, which is security at the border, and then move on to the other significant security aspects of this issue. I believe we need comprehensive immigration reform, which essentially boils down to four things: security at the border; security in the interior of the country, including at the workplace; a temporary worker program to accommodate our employment needs; and a way to deal with the people who are here illegally today. All of those issues need to be addressed. Ideally they should be addressed at the same time, but almost everyone agrees that the starting point is security at the border. What I wish to do today is to describe some of the reasons why it is so important for us to focus on that and then to discuss the underlying legislation which significantly deals with that problem.
As a result of including provisions of the majority leader's bill and provisions of the Cornyn-Kyl legislation in the Judiciary Committee's base bill with respect to border security, we have a good start on getting a handle on border security. It is only a start, and it takes years to build out the fencing, to build up the Border Patrol, to add the new aircraft, the UAVs, to install the sensors and cameras, to build the detention space and all the other things that have to be done in a mosaic to gain control of the border. This bill offers a good next step in that regard.
I thank the chairman of the Budget Committee, Judd Gregg, who as chairman of the subcommittee on Appropriations has ensured over the last several months that there is additional funding available for more Border Patrol agents, more infrastructure at the border and the like. We have actually already started on this problem, but this legislation takes the next step in a significant way.
There are a lot of things going on on the border right now that I don't think Americans who are not from a border State would appreciate. I wish to start by talking about those.
While it is true that part of the issue before us is the millions of people who have crossed our borders illegally to come here to work, that is only part of the story. Today the border is a violent, crime- prone environmental disaster with people in jeopardy and even our military suffering as a result of illegal immigration. Let me explain.
Because we have added more Border Patrol, we are beginning to contest territory that the smugglers used to call their own. They are fighting back. The U.S. Attorney from Arizona testified before my Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee about a month ago that assaults at the border were up 108 percent over last year. Those assaults include not just rock throwing, which bashes people's heads in, but also assaults with weapons, including automatic weapons. I will get later the number of people who have been killed as a result of these assaults. I don't have that with me. But we have had people die in the line of duty trying to protect our borders from this increased violence.
Now criminals are coming into our country by horrendous numbers. Last year something like 150,000 criminals entered the country. These are not petty criminals. These are murderers and rapists and child molesters and drug dealers of the worst kind. Now about 10 percent--in fact, somewhere even between 10 and 15 percent--of the people apprehended at the border have significant criminal records.
Think about this for a moment: If the usual rule of thumb is that at least three people are able to cross the border and do so successfully for every one who is apprehended, think of the number of violent, vile criminals who are entering our country because we have failed to secure the border. This is a serious problem for the United States. It is estimated now that in some places over half of the population of prisons is illegal immigrants.
In addition to the crime that is occurring at the border and the criminals coming across the border, it is also true that the people who are illegally coming to the United States for a better life are prey to the coyotes and other criminal elements. They are raped, robbed, beaten, held hostage for ransom. They represent value that can be collected from their relatives back home. They are mistreated in the most horrible way. Many die because of the way they are being transported or not transported. We are all aware of the increasing number of deaths, most of which occur in my State and which were a record number last year.
There is also huge environmental degradation. To look at the Arizona desert from the air is to want to cry. Thousands of paths where thousands--indeed, millions--of illegal immigrants have trod crisscross the border. It was pristine, but it takes centuries for this very fragile ecosystem to revive after it has been trampled. Vehicles coming across by the hundreds, sometimes left behind because they get stuck in the sand or ran out of gas, but the trails can be seen all over. Tons and tons of trash left behind, fires started, vegetation trampled. It is an ecological disaster.
I mentioned the military. Because the Barry Goldwater Gunnery Range is located on the border with Mexico and is one of the largest areas for our pilots to train regardless of the service, that area is of great value to the United States for our defense preparedness. Two years ago--I don't have the numbers from last year--there were something like 400 to 500 missions that had to be aborted because pilots had their planes gassed up, ready to go, with the bombs ready, or maybe had even taken off, but when they got close to the range, the radio call came back that there are illegal immigrants in the area. Turn back. Don't drop your bombs. This is an area where strafing and bombing occurs on a regular basis. The Marine Corps is responsible for the western half of this gunnery range. They go out on a weekly basis and try to clear the area of illegal immigrants. But frequently, after they have cleared the area and radioed that it is OK for the mission to come in, they find there is somebody there and they have to abort. There were hundreds of flying hours that were lost 2 years ago and I am sure last year as a result of this phenomenon. Military training is being sacrificed.
The same thing is occurring on the proving ground, the Yuma proving ground, which is a pathway for illegal immigration. The point is, there are a lot of reasons to control our border beyond dealing with the problem of illegal immigrants. That is a huge problem. With at least half of the illegal immigrants coming through my State on an annual basis, it represents particularly a huge problem for my State. But I haven't mentioned one of the key elements, and that has to do with securing our borders as a sovereign country, particularly in a time where there is a potential terrorist threat. It is not hard to transport contraband material across our border. The drug war is going on full blast on our borders. Methamphetamine is not made or manufactured so much in at least our State, and I understand other States now, because it is easier to bring it across the border where it is manufactured by the ton in Mexico and then brought over in backpacks, one backpack of value anywhere from a quarter to a half million dollars.
These kinds of things are coming across the border every day. If they can come across, then so can a backpack full of material for a radiological weapon, for example, or a biological weapon, and so can a terrorist. We now have 165,000 other-than-Mexican illegal immigrants apprehended. Remember the rule of thumb that for every one you apprehend, perhaps at least three more are not apprehended. These are people from countries other than Mexico. So when they are apprehended, they can't be returned to Mexico as we do with Mexican citizens. They have to be processed and put on an airplane back to their country of origin. I was told by the Director of Homeland Security that there are over 39,000 Chinese citizens in the United States, having come here illegally, who need to be returned but that only a few hundred are being returned every year. In other words, the problem is getting bigger and bigger every year.
There are not enough detention spaces for all of these people. As a result, they are released on their own recognizance. Do they show up when they are asked to? No, of course not. These other-than-Mexican illegal immigrants are caught and released, allowed to meld into our society. A large number of them are criminals. Many of them come from so-called countries of interest, meaning countries from which terrorists come. Yet we can't hold them and return them because we don't have the detention space to hold them and their countries won't take them back quickly, if at all. Some countries won't even take them back.
The Department of Homeland Security has announced a plan to end catch and release, but that is only possible when we have the detention beds to put them in, pending their departure. There is money in this bill for that purpose, but not enough. The point is, it will take years.
I hope I am beginning to create some picture of the magnitude of this problem beyond just the problem of illegal immigrants wishing to come here for a better life. This issue is frequently portrayed as nothing but that. It is far more than that, far more complicated, far more dangerous, far more destructive. We have to get control of our borders. If we don't, we are not a sovereign nation, we don't have control over our own destiny, and there are threats to our existence far beyond whatever problems illegal immigrants who want to work here may create.
There is another aspect of enforcement that has received far too little attention. We talked about enforcement at the border but also enforcement in the interior. Illegal immigrants know if they get a few miles north of the border, they are home free. Border Patrol doesn't even operate 60 miles north of the border for the most part. As a result, there is no or very little enforcement in the interior of the country. There may be the occasional border checkpoint, but they are usually much closer to the border, the occasional Border Patrol officer in an airport to try to discourage illegal immigrants from transporting themselves by airline, which they have done for years, but very little enforcement.
There is essentially no enforcement of the law against hiring illegal immigrants, a law that was written several years ago which has essentially never been enforced. The reason is because, A, it is not enforceable and, B, we don't have the will to enforce it. Employers are told they are supposed to check documents. The documents are all easily forged. Everybody knows that. The employer has a good idea when he is hiring the individual that that individual is an illegal immigrant, probably can't speak English and clearly comes from another country. And yet the employer can't do anything about it because the driver's license or passport or Social Security card looks like the one you and I have. The counterfeiters are very good at this.
So everybody pretends the law can be enforced when they know it can't. The Government doesn't do anything about it, the employers don't do anything about it. America sees that and Americans say: What happens to a country that isn't enforcing its laws and apparently doesn't have the will to do so? And, importantly, why should we believe that you in the Senate can create a workable, comprehensive immigration program with temporary workers and a way to deal with the illegal immigrants who are here today? Why should we believe you will be able to do that and enforce it when you haven't enforced the ones that are on the books today?
We are all familiar with the 1986 amnesty, 3 million people, but then we were going to enforce the law so it would never occur again. In 1996, once again, we provided for enforcement at the workplace, as I described it. It didn't happen. It is kind of like Lucy and the football. After about three times, Charlie Brown ought to start getting the idea that when he goes up to kick the football, Lucy is going to pull it away from him. That is the way the American people look at us. They ask: When are you going to assure us this will be done?
I dare say neither the administration, the previous administration or the current one, or the Congress has given the American people much to peg confidence on.
The administrations have not asked for enough money. The Congress has added money to the situation but has still not added enough. Our law enforcement doesn't seem to be willing to go after the employers who are clearly violating the law. Indeed, it would be hard because, in a sense, they are being precluded from asking questions about the documents that are given to them.
This all points the way toward the second and equally critical part of the legislation we are going to have to deal with. If we don't enforce the law in the interior, this whole exercise is a fraud, it is a deceit, it will not work, and the American people will react very negatively, I predict.
Now, it is relatively simple to make this work if we have the willpower to do it. You have to have a verification system that is pegged to a valid database, electronically verified and audited. The Social Security system has numbers that are assigned to everybody, but it is full of bad numbers today. It needs to be cleaned up. I believe we will have an amendment that will provide for the cleaning up of the database, for its maintenance in a proper way, and for an employer verification system that depends upon a Social Security number being typed in electronically and sent back to the headquarters in Washington, or wherever it is, verifying whether the number is valid.
That is half of the situation. OK. The number you have just been given is a valid Social Security number, it doesn't appear to be being used by somebody else, it has been validly issued by somebody with the name of John Doe, and the person standing in front of you claims to be John Doe. How do you know it is John Doe? I can go to an employer and rattle off a number and put it into the system, and he says: That is a valid number; what is your name again? I happen to know the number because I saw the card or asked my neighbor his name, or whatever the situation. Well, you have to have a way of tying the person in front of you to the number. This will also have that kind of system. They are working right now on exactly what kind of number to attach to that to make that work. Eventually, the REAL ID Act, which is based upon good documents, will connect the individual standing before you to the number, and therefore you will be able to validate identity in that way.
This is somewhat costly. It will take some period of time to put into place. Once it is put into place, it can operate efficiently. Employers will be mandated to use it. But it will be easy to use. So we should not be asking employers to be the cops here. It is an impossible job for them. If the Government has determined in advance who is legally employable and who is not, then the employer doesn't have to worry about it. All he or she has to worry about is when the number electronically comes back and it says ``valid,'' you are home free. If it says ``invalid number,'' don't hire the person or you will be in big trouble.
This legislation will provide a way to clear up any problems, so if for some reason the number doesn't compute, and you say: That is really me and that is my number, you can straighten that out. The bottom line is that if we don't have a valid verification of employment, whether the individual is verified as a citizen, a temporary worker, a green card holder, or whatever the status is, if you are validly able to get employed, great. If you are not, then you won't be employed. Unless we have that kind of system, this entire thing breaks down.
In the legislation Senator Cornyn and I developed, this is a critical component, and it answers one of the questions that is frequently asked: How do you know people will eventually come out of the shadows and participate in a temporary worker program--or seek a green card, in any event--that they will eventually leave the United States in an illegal status and will come back in a legal status? The answer is: With a good validation of employment, verification of employment eligibility system, nobody is going to be able to get a job illegally.
So within a couple of years, it is not going to be possible to be in the United States, if you want to work, and be illegal. You are going to have to get legal and come in on a temporary worker status, if that is what you want to do. That is part of the answer as to what will cause people to comply with the law. They are not going to be able to get a job if they don't.
It is theoretically possible that an individual could go live with somebody else and remain in the shadows; that possibility could exist. Although, as the documents become better, it is going to become harder to do anything, in terms of purchasing or bank transactions or driver's licenses and the like, if you don't have valid documentation for your status in the United States.
These are the two key things which we refer to when we talk about enforcement of the law: securing the border and securing the interior, including the workplace. These two factors must be a part of any legislation we pass. The House focused only on the first part of that, primarily. There are others who think we should do that first and wait until we do the rest of the bill. I don't believe that is a good idea. We need to try to do all of these things together. But I support the idea that until these systems are locked in, until the American people can see that we have been serious about it, that a year or two has gone by and we have funded them and the administration is enforcing them, some of the rights that attach under various bills should not finally attach. In other words, let's make sure we are doing these things before future rights to citizenship or something like that come into play.
What do Americans think about this issue of illegal immigration, and what would they support in terms of what I have been talking about? This is according to a variety of surveys.
Time magazine, earlier this year, said 63 percent believe illegal immigration is an extremely or very serious problem. Another one says they see immigration first as a security problem, then an economic issue, and finally a civil rights/humanitarian issue. Again, the Time poll says they believe that illegal immigrants, overall, hurt the economy, 64 to 26 percent.
In a Quinnipiac poll, in February, they opposed allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses, 72 to 25 percent.
In a New Models poll, 58 percent to 37 percent say they would like to see military troops be used for border security.
The American people want serious action. I believe that illustrates how concerned they are that we have not been able to control the borders so far.
They favor a proposal to build a 2,000-mile security fence by a 51- to-37 percent margin. That is a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll.
I don't think it is realistic to put a fence along the entire border. What you need is troops on the ground and fences. You can put up a fence, but if nobody checks it for 3 or 4 days, they can cut a hole in it and come through. You have to have boots on the ground to control the territory, as we have seen in Iraq. We are talking about controlling our own territory. Fences are a key part of that, but so are people--Border Patrol agents who can continually patrol and make sure the fence is doing its job.
Again, from the Quinnipiac University poll in February of this year, they support requiring proof of legal residency to obtain Government benefits by an 84 percent to 14 percent margin.
There are other polls. Let me cite a couple. There is a Gallup poll of March 27, just recently, where 80 percent of the public wants the Federal Government to get tougher on illegal immigration; 62 percent oppose making it easier for illegals to become citizens; 72 percent don't even want illegals to be permitted to have driver's licenses.
A Time Magazine poll found that 75 percent favor ``major penalties'' on employers of illegal immigrants.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll: 59 percent oppose a guest worker proposal.
I might say, there are different numbers on that. I think part of that depends upon how you ask the question. Nonetheless, there is an extreme amount of cynicism there.
An IQ Research poll done on March 10 found that 92 percent are saying securing the U.S. border should be a top priority of the White House and the Congress.
So the American people are pretty clear on this issue. They want us to act, and they want us to act to enforce the law.
We are going to be talking about a lot of other things here soon.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for another 2 minutes.
Mr. President, we will have more to say about a lot of other aspects of the pending legislation and what we need to do. I wanted to take this time at least to lay the groundwork for the discussion of why it is important to enforce the law.
The final point I will say is this: We are, it is often said, a nation of immigrants but a nation of laws. What do we mean by that? We mean that when we go to an intersection and the light is green, what do we know? We know we can drive on through because the people who have the red light will obey the law. We do that with everything in our society. We have contracts with each other that are very loose because we have a rule of law that if anything goes wrong, we have a way of resolving that legally. Everything we do, we do because of trust with each other based upon the rule of law. That is the way it works in our society. When everybody obeys the law, we can get along great. Once people disobey the law, bad things happen. You need more and more laws and enforcement, and you get into a situation like we are with illegal immigration. That is why we have to get back to the rule of law. People in America have to have confidence in their Government, in the businesses, in their fellow citizens, and they will if they know everybody is operating within the rule of law.
What happens if they begin to see that nobody appears to be adhering to the law? Remember what Mayor Rudy Giuliani proved in New York City: When little things begin to happen that are violations of law, soon it is bigger and more and more, and pretty soon you have a lawless society. If people understand that even the smallest things have to be within the rule of law, then you have a much better society.
We have to get back to the rule of law with respect to our employment practices, the internal operation in our country, and the security of our borders for all the reasons I have indicated.
I look forward to discussing some of the other significant issues relative to this entire issue. I hope we can agree that border security and enforcement of the law at the workplace are critical elements of any legislation we adopt.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, pending somebody else wishing to speak, I can quote for the record about 3 statistics I think are meaningful with respect to this debate.
I did not give a precise number on the number of illegal immigrants who died last year while crossing the United States-Mexican border. According to the most recent Border Patrol statistics, the number who died in 2005 was 473. That is the highest number since the Border Patrol began tracking such deaths since 1999.
Another statistic is that last year, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 1.2 million illegal immigrants, which is roughly 1 person every 30 seconds. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the estimate is that there are about 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States today, and about 56 percent of them are Mexican citizens.
Another statistic: The busiest U.S. Border Patrol station right now is the Yuma Border Patrol station. Last year, 138,460 immigrants were caught coming through that station.
I see my colleague from California. The Senator from California was very concerned about the lawlessness right near San Diego and the environmental degradation, crime on both sides of the border, and illegal immigration through there, as well as drug smuggling. As a result, as we all know, a fence was constructed in that area.
It is interesting, the fence clearly helped to prevent crossings. Right where the fence is, I am told, nobody has crossed illegally, and in that sector, the number of people apprehended declined from a peak in 1986 of 629,650--just in that one area, which is phenomenal to me; that is astounding--from almost 630,000 just in the San Diego sector, it is now down last year to 126,000 illegal immigrants were caught near San Diego. That is still a lot of people. We can see the fencing in that area has clearly had a significant impact.
There are other statistics, but if the Senator from California is ready, I will withhold.
Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk.
I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with and that this be designated the Kyl-Cornyn amendment.
Mr. President, Senator Cornyn and I introduced this amendment, which is very simple in its terms but we think very important. The essence of it is to say that criminals should not participate in the temporary worker program and path to citizenship program that is allowed for under the bill that passed out of the Judiciary Committee.
It seems rather elemental that whatever program we have for immigrants to this country, that they be people who have worked hard and played by the rules, as some people characterize it, that they be hard-working people who, other than perhaps coming into the country illegally, have been law-abiding citizens. That seems fairly elemental.
As a matter of fact, in the 1986 law that many have described as amnesty and few think worked very well, there was a specific prohibition of that law applying to people who had been convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors. That is the exact term that our amendment provides for. If you have been convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors, you are not eligible to participate in this program.
In addition, if you have been ordered by a judge to depart the United States and you have violated that court order, you would not be permitted to participate in this program. Those are the two key points.
There is one other element to it, and that is having to do with prior convictions of crimes and posing a threat to the United States. If the Department of Homeland Security Secretary determines that you have been convicted by final judgment of a serious crime and you constitute a danger to the United States or that there are reasonable grounds to believe you have committed a serious crime outside of the United States before you arrived or that you are a danger to the security of the United States, then you would not be able to participate in this program either.
Now, as I said, this seems rather straightforward. Why would we allow criminals to become citizens of the United States? Why, indeed? Why was this provision left out of the underlying bill? Whatever the reasons, it shouldn't have been. This amendment fixes that.
Why is it important? For one reason, we have an awful lot of criminals that have either come into the United States or people who have illegally entered the United States and then committed serious crimes, serious enough that they have had to be imprisoned in U.S. prisons. In fact, one of the exercises we go through every year around here is to try to get Federal funding under SCAAP, which is called the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, SCAAP funding, to reimburse States and local governments for housing illegal-immigrant prisoners.
In the past, we felt that since it is the responsibility of the Federal Government to control the border and that has not been done, that when one of these people commits a crime and is convicted of that crime and imprisoned, the Federal Government ought to at least pay part of the expenses. It has usually been in the neighborhood of a fourth to a third of the expenses.
Part of what Senator Cornyn and I propose is that we would increase the amount of Federal support for the State and local governments for housing these criminal illegal immigrants.
How big is the problem? Of the 1.5 million State and Federal prisoners in 2004, over 91,000 were foreign nationals. Think about that: 91,000 criminals in prison were foreign nationals. About 57,000 in State prisons, about 34,000 in Federal prison.
The SCAAP funding gives us some idea of the number of these people. As I said, it has paid roughly about a third of the expenses when we spend about $600 million a year; unfortunately, last year we only funded $305 million. Even if it were funded at $700 million, it would represent about a third of State costs. That gives some idea of the magnitude of expense associated with the housing of these illegal immigrants.
With regard to the provision that deals with the so-called absconders, people who went before a judge and the judge said, for whatever reason, you must depart the United States, you are under court order to leave, but they don't, they just meld back into society, the Bureau of Immigration Customs Enforcement estimates that there are more than 400,000 such absconders and 80,000 fugitive criminal aliens with outstanding final orders of removal who are hiding in the United States. These are people who have committed serious crimes. There is no way that these people should be allowed to get on this path to citizenship or participate in this worker program.
The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement estimated earlier this month that the number of fugitive aliens in the United States is about 465,000. Fugitives are foreign nationals who have been ordered removed by a Federal immigration judge but failed to comply with the order.
From March 1 through September 30, 2003, which is when ICE began tracking fugitive apprehensions, there were 3,409 fugitives with final orders of removal who were apprehended. In the same period, 2004, they apprehended 7,239 fugitives with final orders of removal, which was an increase of 112 percent over that period in 2003.
The point is that there are more and more criminal aliens coming to the United States or people committing crimes while they are here or people who are being given orders to depart and who are not doing so.
I noted before that between 10 and 15 percent of the apprehensions of illegal immigrants today are people who have criminal records. And they are serious criminal records. We are talking about murder, homicide, kidnapping, drug offenses, rape, assaults, and the like. These are serious criminals.
In Arizona, my own State--the most recent figures are about a year old--almost one in six inmates is a Mexican citizen. I don't mean to suggest by this that Mexican citizens are somehow more prone to be committing crimes. I don't have the statistics for foreign nationals of other countries. But the bottom line is, from only one foreign country, we have almost one in six inmates in Arizona prisons of this one foreign country. If you add the others, the number, obviously, will be larger.
In March of 2005, Phoenix jails housed 1,200 criminal aliens who by law should have been deported. And even when deportation is ordered, according to a FOXNews report, about 60 percent of those orders are ignored. So you still have a huge number of people who are unaccounted for.
In Los Angeles, in that same period, 95 percent of all outstanding homicide warrants and 60 percent of outstanding felony warrants were for illegal aliens. This is according to a FOXNews report. Let me repeat that statistic. If you want to know why we have offered this amendment, in L.A., a year ago, 95 percent of all outstanding homicide warrants and 60 percent of outstanding felony warrants were for illegal aliens. That is an astounding figure.
So while it is true many people come to this country to work and provide a better living for their families and the only crimes they have committed are coming into the country illegally and using fraudulent documents for employment and other purposes, it is also true a large amount of crime is associated with this phenomenon of illegal immigration.
One of the first things we should do when we talk about enforcement of the law is to ensure we are not adding those criminals to the group of people who would be authorized to participate in what is going to be a very humane program of temporary worker, and for some a pathway to citizenship.
Let me cite two other statistics, and then I would like to yield to my colleague from Texas.
In September of 2004, of the 400,000-plus illegal immigrants who were ordered to be deported, 80,000 had criminal records. Now we do not know their whereabouts, including the countries from which they came. The point here is that many were from countries that we call countries of interest; that is to say, countries where terrorists come from. We know there are tens of thousands of illegal immigrants today who are apprehended coming from those countries and probably three times as many who are not apprehended. So in addition to people who have committed crimes in the United States, there is a significant possibility some of these people pose the kind of threat this amendment would go to as well.
Considering this group of so-called other than Mexicans, people who cannot simply be repatriated to Mexico who have to be sent to their home country, this number has increased dramatically. In 2000, the number was only 28,598, although that is a lot of people. In 2004, it was 65,000. In the first 8 months of 2005, that number grew to over 100,000. And we are told that the end result from last year, if my recollection serves me correctly, was about 165,000.
So the bottom line is that, No. 1, there are illegal immigrants who are criminals coming into this country. There are people who are illegal immigrants who, once they get here, are committing serious crimes. There are people who clearly could be suspected of being a danger to the United States. And finally, there are close to half a million people who have been ordered by a judge to leave the country for one reason or another under our laws that constitutes a serious enough offense that they are required to leave--who are absconders; they have decided to ignore the court order--and have not done so.
These are not the kind of people we want to become U.S. citizens. These are not the kind of people we want caring for our lawns or caring for our children or doing any of the other work that has been discussed here earlier today.
The bottom line is, there are plenty of people who can do those jobs. We do not want to be adding to the problems of crime in this country by accepting on an equal footing, with the other kinds of folks whom we are happy to have here working with us on a temporary basis, known criminals, people who should not be in this country under any circumstances, certainly not under the generous provisions of the bill before us. I hope when we have a chance to vote our colleagues will agree that, whatever else, criminals should not be participating in this program.
Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a couple questions.
First, does our amendment criminalize anything that isn't already criminalized?
So nothing in our amendment makes any new kind of conduct a crime. It simply deals with people who have already committed crimes?
Mr. President, I think that is a very important point. I know there are many people who were concerned about the House bill. Much of the marching that was done last week was against the House bill on the grounds that it was creating new crimes and even felony crimes. Nothing in either the legislation that Senator Cornyn and I have introduced nor in this amendment creates any felony offense, nor does this amendment create any misdemeanor offense. It simply says people who have already committed crimes should not participate in this program or who have violated a court order of removal.
There are millions of people who have come to the United States illegally but who otherwise, other than perhaps using false documents, have worked hard and abided by the rules. It is not in their interest to violate our laws. Yet when the subject is discussed, it is easy to roll all of the people up in one group and suggest that good and decent people are no better than people who have committed crimes, and they ought to all be treated the same. And some people have even said they ought to all be made criminals and thrown out of the country.
While we may not like the fact that we have permitted people to come into this country illegally, I believe it does a great injustice to people to assume they are all alike and to bunch them up into the same group. We need to extract out of this group of people who all of us intend to try to treat in the most humane and responsible way we can, however, the ultimate framework of a guest worker program or other programs are developed, we need to separate that group of people from those who have committed crimes, people whom we don't want to be here. That is the purpose of our amendment. We have decided it is important for us to distinguish between the people who do not deserve to be automatically eliminated from consideration for whatever program is going to be adopted here, those people who have actually committed crimes and whom we would not want to bring into the country if we had a choice in the initial instance, in other words, people who would be admittable in the country, certainly people who would be deportable for having committed these kinds of crimes. So clearly if they should not be admitted into the country or they should have been deported for committing certain kinds of crimes, it wouldn't make any sense to allow them then to participate in a guest worker program or to put them on the path to citizenship.
That is the essence of our amendment. Of all of the things we disagree about--we understand there are many--we think it is important to distinguish between that group of people who otherwise have been law-abiding people and the group of people who have committed crimes. And ironically, most often the crimes these people are in jail for are committed against other immigrants, frequently illegal immigrants. They rape them. They rob them. They beat them up. They hold them for ransom. In all of the big cities in the Southwest, the largest number of crimes are committed by illegal immigrants against primarily illegal immigrants. So to help those who are otherwise innocent from being further preyed upon, we need to remove from this country, not allow them to participate in the program, to remove those people who would continue to prey upon the innocent. That is what our amendment would do.
I hope when it comes time to vote, our colleagues will recognize that whatever other disagreements there are, these are the people who should not be allowed to participate in the program.
We are all ears.
Mr. President, there is one more thing I wanted to say this evening about the amendment Senator Cornyn and I offered, an amendment which provides that criminals cannot participate in the program that we adopt here--whatever that program is--in terms of being temporary workers or being put on the path of citizenship, or however this body ultimately defines what happens to immigrants who have come here illegally, or so-called future flow workers. I think almost everybody can agree it shouldn't apply to criminals, or to people who have violated a court order to depart the country.
I made the point earlier, and I want to reiterate it, that it is important to separate out the group of people who have come here, albeit illegally, to do hard work and not otherwise violate our laws, except perhaps using fraudulent documents. Those people end up being the primary targets of other illegal immigrants who commit heinous crimes against them.
So one of the reasons for denying these criminals the right to participate in the same program is to get them away from the people who are most susceptible to being preyed upon.
We talked to chiefs of police, to sheriffs, to the Border Patrol, to other law enforcement officials, and they have different statistics, but by and large they all agree that predominantly the serious crime in their communities, particularly large communities, is immigrant on immigrant and it is mostly illegal immigrant. And the crimes that are committed would just break your heart.
There are stories like this. Immigrants pay a couple of thousand dollars, roughly $2,000 is the going price now, to a coyote to be smuggled into Arizona from Mexico. They may have had to pay different people along the way on the bus up to Altar, where they could then come across, or wherever. But the fee is probably in the neighborhood of $2,000.
Before they come across somebody comes and says it is now going to cost you an additional $500 or, I am sorry, we can't do it. So they have to somehow communicate to somebody else in their family or a friend to come up with some more money.
They then attach themselves to the coyote who brings them across the border. A lot of different things can happen. First of all, another group vies for that group of illegal immigrants because they are all worth money. We had a shootout on Interstate 10 between Tucson and Phoenix involving two vehicles with illegal immigrants in them with two different coyote gangs. They were having a shootout on the freeway, and people were killed and injured, over who was going to control the load of immigrants because that is value. You could hold the illegal immigrants here in a safe house and tell them that until they come up with another $1,000, let's say, they are going to be held hostage, basically, or the coyote or his friends will call the police or Border Patrol if they don't come up with the money.
Women are forced to commit improper acts. There are assaults, sexual assaults. There is a great deal of crime perpetrated on these illegal immigrants. If they have not been beaten or raped or robbed or held ransom for more money, then what happens is they are waiting in the safe house and the Phoenix Police Department shows up at the safe house because they have gotten a call of a disturbance in a house.
It wasn't a disturbance at all. It was the coyote calling the Phoenix police because he has another load coming in that night and he needs to get rid of these people. He has gotten all he can out of them. He sucked them dry. They don't have any more money. He has taken all they have. They don't dare go to the police. Now he has called the police and said there is a disturbance. They show up at the house and pick up these illegal immigrants. If they are from Mexico they are put on a bus back to Mexico.
That is what can happen to these people. These are the ones who do not die in the desert and who are not abused some other way. We cannot allow the criminal element here, people who have committed crimes, who are criminals, to continue to prey on these people. It is one of the reasons our amendment says that criminals cannot participate in this program.
There is another reason. Citizenship in this country is a tremendous privilege. Anyone who knows immigrants who have come here or who has participated in a swearing-in ceremony knows how much legal immigrants value this privilege. As I said before, my grandparents came here and they were so proud of their American citizenship. They felt so privileged to have been able to come here. It is not fair to them or for the millions who are waiting in some country, waiting to come here and who have to attest to their good character. They have abided by the laws. They have committed no crimes. To then see somebody else who has not only entered the country illegally but also in some other way has committed crimes or has refused to depart after a judge's order, to then be able to participate in a legal program allowing them to become a temporary worker or be on a path to citizenship--what kind of a signal does that send? It cheapens American citizenship. It cheapens legal permanent residency.
It is wrong to simply say that because we have a hard time with the amount of people who have come here illegally, we are not going to differentiate among them in any way, we are just going to take them all in and let them all get on this path to citizenship. That is wrong. I do not think the American people will allow us to permit that kind of individual to participate in this program.
That is what the underlying bill allows. There are a lot of things wrong with this underlying bill. This is just one of them. But I hope with each of these things that we point out, our colleagues will come to realize that there is an answer here somewhere, but it is not every provision of this bill. So, piece by piece, we will focus attention on this bill to try to determine where we can make changes so at the end of the day we have a good product--comprehensive immigration reform, enforcement, and an opportunity for people our society needs to work here on a temporary but legal basis.
If we can do that, we will have succeeded. But if we simply pass a bill that has a tremendous number of flaws in it, we will have failed. I hope we can correct this first flaw with the amendment that Senator Cornyn and I have offered to at least ensure that criminals can't participate in this program.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I would say to the Senator from Alabama, that is exactly the case. I would cite two parts of the testimony before our Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security.
We had the U.S. attorney for Arizona testify that just from last year, the number of assaults at the border has gone up 108 percent. It is not just on law enforcement officers, but a lot of the assaults are perpetrated against them. I intended to get the statistics on the number of homicides. But there are homicides and then there are an awful lot of other kinds of assaults. The border, in many places, is becoming a very violent place.
There is one good news element that was confirmed by the testimony that was taken in the committee. The reason for this increased violence, they said, was that the Border Patrol was actually improving its ability to control territory. Territory that previously had been the sole jurisdiction of the cartels and the coyotes was now being contested by law enforcement. So naturally they were fighting back.
The bad news, of course, is they fight back with high-caliber weapons. They are organized. It is a very dangerous place. As a result, our officers are seeing assaults every day.
The other thing that this testimony confirmed was that it is not just nice people coming across the border, it is over 10 percent who are criminals. I mean, if you stop and think about it, if you have 600,000 people coming into the country illegally who are apprehended, so it is maybe three times that many who are coming in who are not apprehended, and over 10 percent of them are criminals, you are talking about tens of thousands of people who have decided that this is a good way to get into the United States, come in as an illegal immigrant. These are not the kind of people we want in our country.
When you look at the type of crimes that the people who have been apprehended have been accused of committing or have been convicted of committing, it is homicides, it has been rapes, serious assaults, drug crimes--serious crimes. So not only is the border becoming more violent, but the people coming into the United States are an increasingly criminal element, and they are continuing to commit crimes in our cities, in particular against other illegal immigrants. That is why we believe it is very important that at least one group that ought not to be able to participate in whatever program we adopt is this group of criminals. That is another reason our first effort should be to get control of the border.
Forget the problem of people coming here to work. If for no other reason, you want to keep the people from terrorist countries out, keep out the people smuggling methamphetamine into the country, and keep people with criminal records out of this country.
That is why many of us think the first thing we ought to do is get control of the border.
I went on a little long in answering the question.
I would say to the Senator from Alabama, this is what we have been briefed. The President was at the border. He was briefed likewise on this phenomenon. Sheriff Larry Dever from Cochise County, Sheriff Ralph Ogden from Yuma County, they both told me this. The chiefs of police in Tucson and Phoenix told me this, the Chief of the Border Patrol in both the Tucson and Yuma sector, all of them agree that methamphetamine is now the No. 1 drug coming across and, by the way, also underneath--in some of these tunnels. We need to make that a crime as well. It is not even a crime to dig a tunnel under the border. But we have an amendment that hopefully will cure that. But now a backpack of methamphetamine is said to be worth, by these law enforcement officials I identified to you, to be worth between a quarter of million and a half million dollars. You can take a poor, illegal immigrant, many of them in a group, and put this backpack on each of them and give them $10,000--more money than they have seen in a long time--and say: You scoot across the border and you'll be met by XYZ. That is a cheap way to get it across. They are not making it as much in Arizona, in fact, anymore. It is all coming across the border, as you pointed out.
Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Alabama, I have to summarize this answer because welling up in my chest is a big complaint about the Congress, about the Clinton administration, about the Bush administration. Let's be honest. Nobody has done their job completely here.
We authorized.
That is right. Senator Feinstein and I got an amendment passed in 1996 to double the number of Border Patrol agents. It passed the Judiciary Committee, passed the Congress. It is an authorization. Do you think that in 5 years we had double the Border Patrol agents? No.
We couldn't get the administration to ask for enough funding in the budget, and, of course, if it is not asked for, then Congress is loathe to appropriate. So it took us about, as I recall, 7 years or maybe 8 years to get the number of agents doubled. We have succeeded in doubling them and adding another 2,000 or 3,000 on top of that. But it took far longer than it should have.
We have authorized SCAAP--the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program--that reimburses the jails and prisons in your State, my State, and other States for the criminal aliens housed in those prisons. The program is authorized. This administration this year requested in the budget exactly how much money for this program? Zero, nothing; same as last year. Congress had to find the money. And we ended up appropriating about $300 million, which is less than half of what we should have. Had we done $700 million, we would have reimbursed the States about one-third of their expenses. We only did $305 million, as I recall.
Mr. President, the bottom line is that many things we have authorized--additional Border Patrol agents, additional equipment, additional aircraft, radar, UMVs, cameras--neither the President nor the Congress over the years has seen fit to provide. We have gotten a lot more in recent years than we have in the past. But the bottom line is merely because we authorize something doesn't necessarily mean it is going to be appropriated.
It is not just a matter of money. Sometimes it is a matter of enforcing laws that we have on the books--such as the employers who find it very difficult to differentiate fraudulent documents and, therefore, they end up hiring illegal immigrants. But we don't enforce that law. It is hard to blame the employer, but the Government isn't trying to enforce it, either. Simply authorizing something doesn't necessarily mean it will happen.
Mr. President, I say to the Senator, my perception is that having passed the law, one reason people referred to it as amnesty is because it was not enforced. There was a commitment to enforce it. I don't know the reasons why it wasn't enforced, but in many respects it was not.
The key thing we need to do here, since the American people are skeptical of our ability and our commitment to enforce the laws, in order to be able to adopt the guest worker program and deal with the people who are here illegally and have a work program, in the future we are going to have to demonstrate to them we have the ability and we will make the commitment to enforce whatever law we end up adopting.
