A resolution calling on the President to take immediate steps to help improve the security situation in Darfur, Sudan, with an emphasis on civilian protection.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Leahy, ranking member on the Judiciary Committee.

I have received just this afternoon in my office some disturbing news in the form of correspondence from the Congressional Budget Office. It suggests a number of areas where the amendment we are talking about here today, No. 3424, the immigration so-called compromise, violates our budget and the rules of the Senate.

Let me read from the correspondence we have received. This is something, as you know, Mr. President, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, that we never discussed at all. It is not a matter we spent any time at all discussing as we moved forward with legislation which ultimately cleared that committee and came to the floor--legislation which I thought was not good legislation and which I opposed, and so did the Senator from Texas, who just relinquished the Chair. We didn't discuss the financial impact of the legislation before us.

One of the things our rules of the Senate require is that if a bill is on the floor that is in violation of a budget we have adopted, it is subject to a budget point of order. I am not going to make that budget point of order now because I am sure someone here would want to move to waive that budget point of order, but I am giving the heads up to those who are supporting this bill that it is a budget buster.

We have not yet begun to figure out how much this legislation will cost. I will be quoting from the Congressional Budget Office, which is the authoritative department to determine these matters. They have given us a preliminary report.

Let me read from the correspondence they have given and which I have just received.

CBO has estimated the cost of some--but not all--of the

provisions of the proposed Hagel-Martinez amendment to the

immigration bill. The version we are working with is labeled

O:/MDM/MDM06671 and was provided to us this morning.

One reason they got this this morning was that this so-called compromise which was hatched yesterday was not even printed until 10 o'clock last night.

We have been talking about these problems for weeks and we produced the bill that came out of committee--I don't know what name to put on it; the Specter-Kennedy-McCain amendment, the bill that came out of committee--and it was crushed on the floor of the Senate, with 60 people refusing to move to a final up-or-down vote on it, 60 to 39.

We have now the compromise desperately put together by people--well meaning, no doubt, but none of whom bring any particular experience, knowledge to the problem facing us. And I assure you, if in the 5 days of markup in Judiciary Committee we didn't discuss the actual cost of this program, I am sure, as they worked feverishly into the night last night, they didn't consider it either. They had no idea. But this was a political discussion about how to put a bill together that politically might pass around here regardless of the details of it.

Frankly, we are going to have to deal with the specifics of illegal immigration. It is too important to treat it at a superficial level.

There are bills which, when we come up to a recess, the leader has to push, and you always try to do those things, and people make compromises, and they pass. But this is not a normal bill at all. The American people care about it, and we owe them some things.

I don't think there are any Senators here who haven't been back to their States and made some commitments and stated some principles that they thought are critical to a good immigration bill, and I want them to be aware of what we are talking about.

The bill number which the Congressional Budget Office referenced is the pending amendment, No. 3424, to the Frist motion to commit.

Let me continue now with what we received from the Congressional Budget Office:

The figures in this e-mail do NOT include costs associated

with the conditional nonimmigrant provisions, which we are

still working on. They also do NOT include revenue losses and

outlays for the Earned Income Tax Credit, which we will be

getting from the Joint Tax Committee and which results

largely from the conditional non-immigrant provisions. Those

revenue losses and Earned Income Tax Credit outlays may be

significant.

I will talk about the average salary of most of the workers who are here illegally today and those workers who will be regularized, placed on permanent resident status, given a green card, and placed on a pathway to citizenship. As you look at those salaries, you will see that they fall in the classic earned income tax credit range.

I have had occasion for some time to wrestle with the earned income tax credit. A lot of people oppose it entirely. You file your tax return, and if you don't owe any taxes and you have a lower income, you get a tax rebate from the Government. You don't pay taxes; they give you an average rebate. I submit that salaries for these workers are going to be pretty close to the average recipient of the earned income tax credit benefit. The average recipient gets $2,400 a year by way of a tax credit. Persons who are working here illegally today are not currently getting the earned income tax credit, but if we regularize them and make them permanent residents, they will. That will cost us a lot of money.

The Congressional Budget Office is saying they haven't considered those numbers yet in the cost of this bill, but they are real and significant, as I say they, indeed, are.

They go on to say this:

With those important caveats, estimated outlays are about

$2 billion for the first 5 years--2007-2011--and $12 billion

for the first 10 years--2007-2016. The final figures will be

bigger than those. Most of those costs are for Medicaid and

Food Stamp programs.

They say those are not the final figures. The final figures will be bigger. It didn't include the earned income tax credit.

They go on to say this:

Outlays in the succeeding 10 years will be greater. The

bill would impose mandates on State and local governments

with costs that would exceed the threshold established in the

Unfunded Mandates Reform Act in at least 1 of the first 5

years after they would take effect.

I ask unanimous consent that this message from the Congressional Budget Office be printed in the Record so that my colleagues can begin to look at it and begin to understand that we have a budget problem with this bill, among other things.

Mr. President, the Senate Judiciary Committee, under the 2006 budget resolution, has only $6 million remaining. We are talking about a minimum of $2 billion in costs, according to the Congressional Budget Office, under the first 5 years of this immigration bill which is before us today, but the Judiciary Committee, under our budget resolution, has only $6 million remaining in its direct spending allocation for the next 5 years.

CBO's preliminary estimate, according to the Congressional Budget Office letter I just read, is that amendment No. 3224 will spend at least $2 billion during that period and likely much more over that period and the next 5 years. This far exceeds the $6 million--it might sound large to you, but in the scheme of things we discuss today, it is a paltry sum--allocated to the committee under the budget.

On this basis, we need to review what we should do as a Senate. I think it is appropriate and the right thing that the Senate confront the question and make a decision as to whether we should waive that point of order and go forward with this legislation or not waive it, in which case the bill would be subject to failure.

I note that the Budget Committee has responsibilities in this, and every aspect of that has not been completed to date, and it may be premature to move to make such a motion at this time. I am sharing this with everyone so they can be prepared to think through the consequences of this cost, which has not been discussed whatsoever. In fact, if you listen to some of the proponents of the legislation before us, if we just pass this bill, it is going to make us all rich, everybody is going to do better, for the first time people are going to pay taxes, the economy is going to improve, and the average guy is going to be fine. The reality is, that did not happen in 1986 and it is not going to happen this time because many of these benefits are such that they are not available to people here illegally. Under this law they will become legal.

We are going to see a rise in costs to our Government beyond that which is permitted by the budget we all voted on, we all agreed to, and we all said we need to stand by. I should not say ``all,'' but enough voted to pass the budget. The budget is a very significant and important document. Many of us take very seriously this cap we agreed to place on spending and agreed not to pass legislation that would break those caps, even if we like the underlying amendment or bill that would spend money. That violates the budget. On many occasions I have felt it my duty to vote ``no'' because I agreed to a budget number. This Congress and this Senate has agreed to budget caps. The very significant factor is that today we now know the Hagel-Martinez amendment violates that Budget Act. I am sure the committee bill also did, but it would appear this may be further along.

We have seen amnesty before in our country, in 1986, and the record is clear that American taxpayers did pay the cost of the fiscal deficit created by the 3 million beneficiaries under the 1986 amnesty. Of course, the original estimates were that 1 million, 1.5 million people would qualify for amnesty in 1986. Now they are estimating 12 million. But, in fact, 3 million showed up in 1986 and claimed the benefits of amnesty, many using documents that were dubious.

A 1997 study conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies estimated that the 3 million newly legalized aliens in the 1986 amnesty had generated a net fiscal deficit of $24 billion in the short decade that passed since their arrival. The 3 million cost the Government $24 billion. That is a very large sum of money.

Incidentally, when Congress passed the 1986 amnesty bill, it estimated only 1 million illegal aliens would qualify for that amnesty law and draw upon the Treasury. That is how the numbers were out of sync.

There is no doubt about it, American taxpayers will pay if this legislation passes. If this, what I consider to be fairly described as amnesty, passes, the American taxpayers will pay the cost of this amnesty and it will be a drain on our programs that are designed to provide health care and assistance to American citizens and those who came here lawfully to achieve legal permanent status.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center report from last year, the average family income in 2003 for unauthorized migrants in the country for less than 10 years was $25,700, while those who had been in the country a decade or more earned $29,000.

Given that the average family income for illegal immigrants is just above the 2006 Federal poverty line of $20,000, it is not surprising that many of these families will likely rely on social service programs to meet their basic needs. That is what we know will occur.

Though the exact cost of this new amnesty is impossible to absolutely determine, certainly CBO is providing a low figure that they can verify as of this date. We can learn a lot by looking at existing studies that give us a glimpse at the cost of illegal immigration to our social program. For example, the Center for Immigration Studies estimated that in 2001, 31 percent of illegal households used at least one of four major welfare programs: Medicaid, SSI, TANF, which is temporary assistance for needy families, which is a basic welfare program, or food stamps. That is a very large number. It is not improbable considering the other numbers about the average income, knowing that there are so many below the poverty line.

The Urban Institute estimates in 2000, 47,000 families in the United States headed by one or two illegal aliens received TANF, the temporary assistance for needy families, on behalf of their children--47,000 is a pretty dramatic number.

Further, if each of these families received greater than $1,000 a year, the amount spent for a TANF household by illegal aliens could easily reach tens of millions of dollars.

I see others who wish to speak and I will follow up on this later. I am saying we have to deal with the reality. Unfortunately, we have not spent a lot of time thinking through the full consequences of our actions. We have not had economists, we have not had experts, we have not had Government officials, we have not had professors and scientists discuss with us the impact of this legislation and how we can pass legislation that would best help those who come here, and how we can do so in a way that does not adversely impact the Treasury of the United States.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, at 10:30 this morning, the proponents of what I would have to say is amnesty in the bill that came out of the committee, the Kennedy-McCain-Specter bill, or whatever name you want to give it, that bill was crushed in this body with 39 votes for and 60 votes against. It was pulled and removed from the docket and sent back to Committee. Then we had a group get together yesterday in an effort to develop what they call a compromise. They could see that there was a vote coming, and they thought they could put something together, and I don't blame them. It has been referred to as the Hagel compromise. But we have looked at the bill, and I have to tell my colleagues, if you voted against the Kennedy bill this morning, you need not support the Hagel compromise because it is fundamentally the same thing. I am going to talk about it and explain how it is essentially the same bill.

I wish it weren't the same thing. I wish it was something we could support. I would like to support good legislation. We have an opportunity--a real opportunity--to fix the problem with security and immigration in our country. Our Nation is at risk. Our borders are not under control. However, we have the capacity to do it. It is not that hard. I have said it before, and I have explained how we can do it.

T.J. Bonner, the head of the National Border Patrol Council said: It is real simple. You simply fix up the border. You remove the magnet of a job by having real workplace enforcement and, all of a sudden, things can go in the right direction.

This bill does none of that. It rewards bad behavior, it would encourage illegal behavior in the future, and we should not pass it. It is against what so many of us promised that we would

vote for and we don't have a lot of time. That bill was hatched yesterday after a few Senators met somewhere and thought they could waltz in and just fix it. They expected all of us to line up and vote for it. I don't believe people are going to line up and vote for it.

They produced this compromise and introduced it, and we didn't get a copy until 10 o'clock last night. This compromise that we got late last night is 525 pages long. What is in it? Ninety-five percent of what is in it, I have to tell you, is just what you voted against and rejected this morning. We rejected it because it was not a good piece of legislation. It did not do what we promised the American people we were going to do as individual Senators. If you look at the expressions of Senators as a group, time and again they say things that they believe are legitimate principles. These bills do not reflect those principles.

The President has said he is against an automatic path to citizenship, and he is against amnesty, both of which are in this bill. The President needs to read it. When you go out and campaign and tell people what you are going to do, you need to honor that commitment.

Let me tell you some of the things that are in this Hagel compromise. It triples--triples--the number of employment-based green cards available each year. This is not a committee that met yesterday. This is a group of people, ad hoc Senators got together and huddled. The Senator in the chair there, he has been in a huddle, Quarterback George Allen. They got in a huddle, and with very little time and effort to study the issues, they came up with this legislation. Ninety-five percent of it was what was in the bill we rejected just this morning. What does it do? One of the most significant things that we have given very little thought to is it triples the number of employment-based green cards available each year. It triples the number.

Currently, there are 140,000 available. Currently, spouses and children, if they come in, they count against the 140,000 cap. Under the Kennedy bill that we voted down this morning they jumped that number to 400,000, and spouses and children didn't count against the cap. This bill raises it to 450,000 annually, and spouses and children--we estimate about 540,000 more, family members--can come with them, and they do not count against the cap. That is pushing a million a year. That is a huge change.

I, personally, am of the view that if we can make our system lawful and have it work correctly, we can and will want to increase the number. But triple the number, and then increase that number again, by allowing spouses and children to come and not count against the cap? That is a sixfold increase. Without any hearings? Without any economists? Without listening to the labor unions? Without listening to business people tell us how many people we really need? Without any professors or scientists who understand the impact this kind of huge numbers would have? They propose we accept this compromise, and it goes beyond the Kennedy proposal that was rejected this morning.

It changes the amnesty process for the current number of people. These 450,000 plus family members are, for the most part people who live outside the country. They apply and can come in. So the total number who come in with a green card--which means you are a permanent resident citizen and you are on an automatic path to citizenship--this is supposed to be for those people.

The message is we want a guest worker program. That is what they said. We want a guest worker program. What does that sound like, if you are an American citizen trying to evaluate what your legislators are doing up here? I hope those American people who are watching are following this closely because these are not guest workers.

Somebody said let's not call it guest workers anymore, let's call it temporary workers. But they are not temporary workers either. They get a green card. They come in under this new H-2C program, and they are able then, on the petition of an employer, to get a green card within 1 year. If they don't have an employer petition for them, they can self- petition, which is not the rule now. Now these are supposed to be based on employment that is needed.

President Bush says a company that needs workers certifies they need you. Now you can self-certify and within 5 years you can be placed on an automatic path to citizenship. They never have to return home. That is all I am saying. Anybody who says this is a temporary worker program or guest worker program is not correct the way this language is in the bill.

These numbers do not include all that is in the bill. The AgJOBS bill came up on the floor a little over a year ago and was debated and blocked. Senator Saxby Chambliss, who chairs the Agriculture Committee, and a number of us raised objections to that bill. We blocked it. It did not go forward. It did not pass.

They blithely added the whole AgJOBS bill to the committee bill and it has now been made part of this compromise. There are 1.5 million who can come in under the AgJOBS bill.

People say we need the talented people. We still have limits on talented people who come into the country with high education levels, but there is virtually no limit on the number of unskilled workers who come into our country. That is not good public policy, I submit. That is probably not what you said when you have been out campaigning and talking to your constituents around the country.

Under the current law, before new legislation passes, the United States issues 1.1 million green cards a year. That is what we do today, and 140,000 of those green cards are available to aliens who are sponsored by employers. That is the working group. Under the Hagel- Martinez compromise bill, the United States would now issue between 2.2 million and 2.5 million green cards each year, 450,000 of which will be employment-based green cards during the years 2007 and 2016. That is triple the number of employment-based green cards we currently issue on an annual basis, triple the number we currently issue. Although the number would be curtailed after a few years, it is still 150,000 more than currently issued. After 2016, the number of green cards for employer-sponsored aliens would go back to double the current level, at 290,000.

They have also increased the employment-based green card cap--that is the total limit, over and above the 450,000 that would now be available each year under the compromise--by exempting spouses and children from counting against the cap. Spouses and children count against the cap today. So we triple the number, and we don't count spouses and children. Because an average of 1.2 family members accompany employment-based green card holders, we estimate that about 540,000 family members will also get employment-based green cards without counting against this cap. That is contrary to what we do today. It is contrary to our policy. This is a huge change is all I am saying.

Maybe after thorough debate we might want to go that far. I doubt it. I think we want to increase the number of legal workers who come to our country but surge these numbers this much without any discussion whatsoever? This means next year we could have 990,000--that is almost a million--employment-based green cards issued: 550,000 for the workers, 540,000 for the family members. That is equal to the total number of green cards we handed out this year for all categories, including employment-based, family-based, asylum, refugees, cancellation of removal, and so forth.

Using the estimate from our population chart, based on the CRS data and the Pew Hispanic data, the way the new amnesty categories would work is as follows. This is what is in the compromise.

If you are here for 5 or more years--and that includes 8.85 million of the 11.5 to 12 million people who are estimated to be here, or 75 percent of those who are estimated to be here today--what happens to you? You are treated just like you were under the Kennedy bill that was rejected this morning. You get to stay, work, apply for a green card from inside the United States.

Again, what does green card mean? It means you are a permanent resident, eligible for all the social welfare benefits that belong to American citizens, No. 1. No. 2, it puts you on a guaranteed path to citizenship. This is your

reward for violating the law by coming in illegally.

Under this bill, 75 percent of them, 8.85 million would get to stay and apply for green cards from inside the United States, just like the rejected bill earlier today provided for. And in addition, spouses and children would get those green cards as well. And they, spouses and children, would get green cards even if they are not in the United States.

So if the person came here to work temporarily, planned to go back to his family, didn't have a plan to stay here permanently and intended to go back to his country of origin, make a little extra money to help out the family, now we have encouraged them to go ahead and bring their family here. That would be a large number. That will impact more than the 1.1 million who are covered by the bill, according to the estimates.

They do not count against any family or employment caps or green cards. We do currently have a limit. We are supposed to have a limit on the total number who can come in as permanent workers on the path to citizenship so none of these would count against the caps, out of the 11 to 12 million.

So 75 percent of the 11.5 million are like that. What about those in the compromise? They say we are going to be a little different than the Kennedy bill for those 1.4 million people who have been here from 2 to 5 years. What happens to those that have only been here illegally for 2 to 5 years? You get to stay legally, and you are able to continue to work in the United States while you apply for a work visa if, within 3 years, at any time during that 3 years, you go across the border through a consular office and pick up a nonimmigrant visa that you can apply for from the United States. Although the Department of Homeland Security Secretary may waive the departure requirement. So you can go across the border, go to the office, pick up the thing and come right back the same day.

Spouses and children get the same status. If they came here illegally, they get the same green card status, but they don't have to go across the border to pick it up, they can get it right here at home. If they apply for the H-2C, a new work visa created under title IV, the employer can sponsor them for a green card the day they come back into the United States.

The employer can petition that day to get them a green card. Once you get that green card, you are a legal, permanent resident, entitled to the welfare and governmental benefits of our country.

What about those who are here for less than 2 years? That is not directly addressed in this compromise bill that we now have before us that is supposed to solve all of our problems. Unfortunately, it doesn't solve them.

The compromise sponsors will tell you that the people who have been here less than 2 years--that is about 1.2 to 1.7 million--will have to leave immediately or be deported.

First, let me ask how many people are being apprehended and deported today? Who is going to apprehend and deport these people who are here illegally in the last year?

I raise that as a practical question.

But under the bill language, you can qualify for the new H-2C worker program, even if you are unlawfully present in the United States.

My legal counsel is a smart reader of the law.

This is the way the bill explains it. It doesn't say that plainly. It says:

In determining the alien's admissibility as an H-2C

nonimmigrant. . . . paragraphs (5), (6)(A), (7), (9)(B) and

(9)(C) of section 212(a) may be waived for conduct that

occurred before the effective date.

What does all that mean?

If you do not have time to put aside the statute, the compromise bill, and go back and read the underlying statute, you don't know what it means, but if you do that, as my counsel did, you will see that is a pretty sneaky maneuver. As I noted, under the new H-2C program, 400,000 per year can get green cards as workers, and these people will qualify for that because those code sections refer to aliens who came here illegally and those who have been ordered removed but have come illegally will go back into the United States.

The last bunch, the 1.2 million that have been here less than 2 years, they are not going to leave this country.

First of all, nobody is going to come and get them. They are going to apply under the new visa program, the H-2C worker program that has these huge numbers that we have triple the numbers for. And it specifically says in the statute that they will qualify, even if they came here illegally or have been apprehended here illegally or removed--and removed from the United States--and they have come back illegally, they still get to qualify and stay here.

We don't need to vote for a bill such as that.

By the way, in reading the bill carefully, my fine staff discovered-- it is kind of hard to do all this when you get a bill last night at 10 p.m. which is 325 pages--that those here illegally, whom I just mentioned, in the last 2 years or have been removed and come back illegally, they do not even count against the cap. Why would we want to do that?

I say to you that whoever drafted the bill--I don't really say this to the sponsors because the sponsors of the compromise who met for a few hours and put this thing together didn't realize who all had worked on it. I guess it is the forces who believe that no illegal alien should be left behind. So everybody who is here illegally gets to stay in the country, and they don't even count against the cap for the green card.

I don't think we ought to welcome back into this country someone who has been apprehended, deported and removed from the country and they come back again illegally. They ought not to be allowed to stay, period, much less be given a permanent status and much less be put on a path to citizenship, which this compromise legislation will do.

We think somebody had to have intended this. Somebody who was involved in the writing of this knew what they were doing and definitely wanted to include everybody to make sure that they could say publicly: Well, if it is 5 years, you know you can stay, but if is less than 5 years, you could be removed. None will be removed unless they are convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors.

They basically said you wouldn't be eligible for citizenship if you came here after January of 2004. That is not true. The bill covers everybody. That is part of the compromise legislation and still part of it. It is part of the Kennedy bill that we roundly rejected this morning, and it is part of the compromise that is before us now.

Let me take a few minutes to run over some of the provisions in that 95 percent of the Kennedy bill that was rejected this morning that remains in the Hagel compromise.

Here are some of the difficulties with it.

Let us take loophole No. 1: Absconders and some individuals with felonies or 3 misdemeanors are not barred from getting amnesty.

An absconder is somebody who was apprehended by Border Patrol people, detained, they did not have time to take him or her out of the country, they were busy, they did not have jail space, detention space for them, so they release them on bail. That is what they do all over the country because we don't take this seriously, and they don't show up when they are supposed to be deported. Surprise. They abscond.

Absconders and some individuals with felonies or three misdemeanors are not barred from getting amnesty.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, different crimes make aliens ``inadmissible,'' ``deportable,'' or ``ineligible'' for specific benefits.

As written, the Specter substitute--it is included in this bill--only requires an alien to show they are not ``inadmissible'' to qualify for the amnesty contained in the bill. However, some felonies make an alien ``inadmissible,'' but some do not.

Absconders--aliens with final orders of removal who are currently watched by ICE immigration officers--should not be eligible for amnesty. They remain eligible for this amnesty. The Kyl-Cornyn amendment that was blocked by the other side so we couldn't get a vote on it, was designed to fix this loophole. It would keep aliens with felony convictions or three misdemeanors from being eligible for the new amnesty program. Surely, we agree on that. If we had a vote on it, I am sure it would pass.

But the leader on the other side has managed to block us from getting a vote.

Loophole No. 2: Aliens specifically barred from receiving immigration benefits for life because they filed a frivolous asylum application will also be able to receive amnesty. Under INA, section 208(d)(6), if the Attorney General determines that an alien knowingly filed a frivolous asylum application, the alien will be permanently ineligible for any benefits under the INA. This bill changes that. On page 333, it says: ``Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary shall adjust . . . '' an alien who meets the requirement of INN 245B. There is no provision that states that the alien is eligible for amnesty if they file a frivolous asylum application. It, therefore, gives benefits to aliens previously barred from all immigration benefits.

Loophole No. 3: All aliens who are subject to a final order of removal--for some reason you are brought up and the court has ordered you removed from the country--who failed to leave pursuant to a voluntary departure agreement, they entered into those agreements and oftentimes people promise to leave and never leave--or who are subject to the reinstatement of a final order of removal because they illegally reentered after being ordered removed from the United States are also eligible for amnesty.

I call on my colleagues to look at the bill. On page 353, line 3, the bill clearly states that any alien with a final order of removal can apply for amnesty. This means that the aliens who have already received their day in court have had their case fully litigated, and they have been ordered removed and have failed to depart will now be rewarded for not following the law and leaving like they were ordered to do. They will qualify for this amnesty.

This will include many of the 37,000 Chinese nationals that China has refused to take back. I understand maybe they have agreed to take them back in the last day or so, but they have been pretty recalcitrant on it. I will be surprised if they are all approved for repatriation.

But do you see how important this could be.

Loophole No. 4: Aliens who illegally entered the country multiple times are also eligible for amnesty. Page 334, line 8 requires continuous physical presence and states than an alien must not have departed from the United States before April 5, 2006, except for brief, casual or innocent departures. Every time the alien reenters the United States illegally, they are committing a criminal offense. But this bill rewards those aliens with amnesty also.

Loophole No. 5: This bill allows aliens who have persecuted anyone on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion get amnesty. It fails to make persecutors ineligible for amnesty.

I would have thought that was an oversight until I noticed on page 363, line 22, that the bill makes those heinous acts bar aliens here between 2 and 5 years from amnesty but not those who have been here longer. The same bar left out for the 8.8 million who have been here for more than 5 years. This will be interpreted as an intentional decision of Congress when we pass this bill.

That is not inadvertent. I don't know why they did that.

Loophole No. 6: There is no continuous presence or continuous work requirement for amnesty. To be eligible to adjust from illegal to legal statutes under the bill, the alien must simply have been ``physically present in the United States on April 5, 2001,'' and have been ``employed continuously in the United States'' for 3 of the 5 years ``since that date.''

The bill does not say ``employed continuously in the United States since that date,'' as some have said. It does not require that employment be full time. Which means that it will be interpreted by any fair court following the law to mean that the alien will be eligible for amnesty if they have been employed in the United States either full time, part time, seasonally, or self-employed.

The bill also allows the time of employment be shortened if the alien has attendance in a school. The employment requirement under the language, as written, is as broad as possible. Essentially, any alien who worked in the United States for 3 out of 5 years any time prior to April 5, 2006, will fulfill the eligibility requirements.

Loophole No. 7: The bill tells the Department of Homeland Security to accept ``just and reasonable inferences'' from day labor centers as evidence of an alien meeting the bill's work requirements.

Day labor centers--I am not sure how reliable those can be to make major decisions. Some of these are openly and notoriously promoting illegal workers.

Under the bill, an alien can ``conclusively establish'' that he was employed in the United States, and it can be either full time, part time, seasonally, or self-employed by presenting documents from Social Security, the Internal Revenue Service or an employer related to employment. The alien meets ``the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the alien has satisfied the requirements'' if the alien can demonstrate ``such employment as a matter of just reasonable inference.''

If you can just have a reasonable inference that you have worked, get a document from a day labor center, you meet the work requirements. Everybody will meet it. No illegal alien will be left behind.

The bill then states:

. . . it is the intent of Congress that the [work]

requirement . . . be interpreted and implemented in a manner

that recognizes and takes into account the difficulties

encountered by aliens in obtaining evidence of employment due

to the undocumented status of the alien.

The invitation is there to abuse the system. The invitation for fraud is clear.

Congress is telling the Department of Homeland Security to accept pretty much anything as proof of work, and if they don't take it, they will be sued and they will win in court because the bill we have written says anything goes as valid proof of work.

Loophole 8: The bill benefits only those who broke the law, not those who followed it and got work visas to come to the United States. That is a plain fact. If you were here legally on or before April 5, 2001, you will not get the benefit of this amnesty. This amnesty benefits you only if you came here illegally.

Loophole 9: The essential worker permanent immigration program for nonagriculture low-skilled workers leaves no illegal alien out. It is not limited to people outside the United States who want to come here to work in the future but includes illegal aliens currently present in the United States who do not qualify for the amnesty program in title VI, including aliens here for less than 2 years. Under the bill language, you can qualify for this new program to work as a low-skilled permanent immigrant even if you are unlawfully present in the United States.

The bill specifically states:

In determining the alien's admissibility as an H-2C . . .

The program is specifically intended to apply to absconders. There are 400,000 absconders out there now that we are trying to apprehend and trying to deport. They have been ordered deported yet they absconded; illegal aliens who were in removal proceedings and signed a voluntary departure agreement but never left, many of them did that, and illegal aliens already removed from the United States but who have come back.

Loophole No. 10: The annual numerical cap on this program is a completely artificial cap. If the 400,000 cap per year is reached, what happens then? The cap immediately adjusts itself to make more room under the cap. I kid you not. If the cap is reached, an additional 80,000 visas can be given out that year and the cap will go up automatically the next year as much as 20 percent. Even if the cap stays at 400,000 per year, we will have a minimum of 2.4 million low- skilled permanent--not part-time--immigrants in the first 6 years, the length of the H-2C visa if the individual did not file for a green card.

I see the Democratic leader. I have been going over some of the things in the bill that I think the American people and maybe our colleagues are not aware of. It is a breathtaking piece of legislation. It is something that jeopardizes our ability to be successful in the Senate in passing good legislation. The compromise will not deal with the problems I mentioned today. I am very disappointed.

I urge my colleagues, if you said you would not vote for amnesty, you should not vote for this compromise. If you voted against the Kennedy- Specter-McCain committee bill that came out today--and the vote was 60- 39 against it--you should not vote for this bill. It is essentially the same thing.

Mr. President, I agree with much of what Senator Craig said--particularly about the ineffectiveness at the border. Let's be real frank and honest about the bill we have today. The reason we are in trouble today, the reason we are not going to be able to pass this legislation is that the bill is a failure. It is a colossal failure. It is a dead horse. It has been lying out in the sun, and people have been having to look at it, and they are now able to smell it. A few amendments and a compromise is not going to revive this. It doesn't do what we want it to do. It has a huge surge in immigration.

The compromise is 95 percent of what was in the bill we just rejected this morning by a 60-vote margin--95 percent of it. And the others were supposed to make some big difference, but part of the changes in the bill increase the number of people who would come into the country, and there is not any restraint on the legislation. So the underlying bill that came out of committee was bad from the beginning.

Let me tell you what happened. We debated the bill. We spent 5 days in markup, and 4 of those days basically were on border control issues. We debated individual words. Then, all of a sudden, on the last day, when the majority leader said we had to have the bill out, about noon we got around to the amnesty for the 11 million people and what we were going to do about future immigration policies. And without any amendments--maybe no more than one or two--they were adopted in toto, without any real discussion, no expert testimony, no full understanding of the comprehensiveness of it. We just rushed it through. We passed this bill last Monday at about 6 or 7 o'clock at night. It hit the floor on Tuesday or Wednesday. The bill was not even printed until Wednesday night. We were devoting Wednesday all day to the bill, and it had not even been printed.

I ask my colleagues this: Should you not know how much the bill costs? Is anybody here prepared to stand up and say what this bill would cost, the compromise bill, if we pass it? How much will it cost? Does anybody know?

I made inquiry today and got back a letter from CBO that said it is clearly in violation of the Budget Act. Now, they said that was just a part of the cost; it was much more than that. They were still trying to run the numbers.

So within minutes, I got this e-mail from the Congressional Budget Office. It has a score on it. It says that CBO and Joint Tax estimate that direct spending outlays under this bill would total about $8 billion for the first 5

years. That is clearly in violation of the Budget Act.

What about revenues? Joint Tax and CBO--our two agencies we depend on to tell us what the cost and impact of the legislation will be-- estimate that the legislation would result in an on-budget revenue loss of $5 billion from 2007 to 2011 and $2 billion over the 2007-to-2016 period, largely because of lower tax payments by businesses.

Here is discretionary spending. Assuming the appropriation of a necessary sum, CBO estimates that outlays for those purposes would total at least $16 billion from 2007 to 2011 and more than $30 billion over 2007 to 2016. And they are in a governmental mandate. The bill would impose mandates on State and local governments with costs that would exceed the threshold established by the Unfunded Mandates Act and at least 1 of the first 5 years after they take effect, totaling $29 billion over 5 years.

Well, why am I saying that? First of all, that is a lot of money. We have Social Security in trouble, Medicaid in trouble, and we are going to add $29 billion more to our costs?

What is really troubling is that it is symptomatic of the lack of thought and serious evaluation that went into writing this bill to begin with. It is not a good piece of legislation. It has good intentions. It desires to do the right thing. Unfortunately, as I have studied it, having been on the Judiciary Committee, I have come to believe it cannot be amended. And we are going to have three amendments that are going to somehow fix this bill? It fundamentally needs to be reviewed. I really think so.

I will repeat that I am optimistic about our ability to make this work. I am optimistic that, with just a commitment of will and some resources, we can create secure borders and increase the number of people who come into our country legally. We can deal humanely and fairly with the 11 million to 12 million--or maybe even 20 million-- illegals who are here. We don't have to give them every single benefit we give to those who follow the law, but we can allow most to stay and work and live here, if that is what they have been doing and if that is possible. We can work out all those things. We can deal with those issues in an effective way. But this legislation doesn't do it, and it is too late to fix it.

We need to have some real hearings, get the best minds in America to tell us about this problem, and work out legislation that is not amnesty, that doesn't cost $27 billion, that creates a lawful system on our borders so people can enter and exit easily with biometric identifiers if they are lawful and those who try to come in unlawfully get apprehended. That can be done. This bill doesn't do it. The compromise legislation doesn't do it. It needs to be voted down.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I began this debate by praising the bipartisanship of the Judiciary Committee for reporting a comprehensive and realistic immigration bill to the Senate. I have said from the outset that Democratic Senators could not pass a good immigration bill on our own. With fewer than 50 Democratic Senators, we will need the support of Republican Senators if the Senate is to make progress on this important matter today.

With all the dramatic stagecraft of the last few days and the protestations from the other side of the aisle it may seem surprising, but the truth is that by invoking cloture on this bill, we move to consideration of germane amendments. If the Kyl amendment is germane and pending, it would be in line for a vote. So much for all the bluster and false claims of Democratic obstruction we have heard. If Republicans want to move forward on this debate, and get one step closer to a vote on tough but fair immigration reform, they should support cloture. For the past few days, I have offered, and our leadership has offered, to take up a number of bipartisan amendments for debate and votes that would have easily won the support of the Senate. It

was Senator Kyl who objected to that progress.

Late last night, the Republican leader came to the floor to file a motion that would require the Senate to send the immigration bill back to the committee. He immediately acted to ``fill the tree,'' a parliamentary procedure that means that none of us could offer amendments, and he filed an immediate cloture motion.

So before any of us even saw the amendment, the Republican leader made sure to prevent any Senator in this body from offering an amendment of his or her own. It is somewhat ironic, after all of the posturing by Republicans over the past 2 days about the right of Senators to offer amendments and be heard, that the Republican Party has returned full force to its standard practice of shutting out those who might disagree. That is too bad, especially on a matter this important. We began with a high level of demonstrated bipartisanship. Senator Specter and I worked together to get a bill out that had a two- thirds majority of the Judiciary Committee, Republicans and Democrats, voting for it.

The majority leader had set March 27 as the deadline for Judiciary Committee action, and we met his deadline. I always understood that the majority leader had committed to turn to the committee bill if we were able to meet his deadline. That is what I heard the Judiciary Committee chairman reiterate as we concluded our markup and heard him say, again, as the Senate debate began. The Democratic leader noted that we had agreed to proceed based on the assurances he had received that ``the foundation of the Senate's upcoming debate on immigration policy will be the bipartisan Committee bill.''

The majority leader had often spoken of allowing two full weeks for Senate debate of this important matter. Regrettably, what the majority leader said and what happened are not the same. The Senate did not complete work on the lobbying reform bill on schedule and that cut into time for this debate. When the majority leader decided to begin the debate with a day of discussion of the Frist bill, we lost more time. We were left then with 1 week, not 2. We have lost time that could have been spent debating and adopting amendments when some Republicans withheld consent from utilizing our usual procedures over the last days. When the false and partisan charges of obstruction came from the other side, the Democratic leader filed a petition for cloture that I hope will bring successful action on a comprehensive, realistic and fair immigration bill.

So I regret that now, when we have a bill with strong bipartisan support, some would try to make this into a partisan fight. I fear that they have succeeded in making a partisan fight over a bill that began as a bipartisan bill. I urge all Senators, Republicans, Democrats and the Senate's Independent, to vote for cloture on the bipartisan committee bill and bring this debate to a successful conclusion so that we can have a bill passed by the Senate by the end of this week.

This is an historic vote. It asks us whether the Senate is committed to forging real immigration reform. I urge all Senators to vote for reform by supporting this cloture motion on what is a bipartisan bill that balances tough enforcement with human dignity.

Now, the Republican manager of the bill was right to take on the smear campaign against the committee bill from opponents who falsely labeled it amnesty. The committee bill is not an amnesty bill. President Reagan signed an amnesty bill in 1986. This is not. This is a tough bill with a realistic way to strengthen our security and border enforcement, while bringing people out of the shadows to earn citizenship--not immediate citizenship; it still takes 11 years. They have to pay fines, work, pay taxes, they have to learn English, and then they have to swear allegiance to the United States. That is a long way from amnesty.

As the New York Times noted in an editorial, responding to those who falsely smeared this as an amnesty bill, painting the word ``deer'' on a cow and taking it into the woods does not make the cow into a deer. This is something every deer hunter in Vermont knows.

It is most ironic to hear those in the Republican Congress talk about amnesty and lack of responsibility. Their record over the last 6 years is a failure to require responsibility and accountability, or to serve as a check and balance. They are experts in amnesty, so they should know this bill is not amnesty.

I was glad to hear the Republican leader begin to change his tune over this week and acknowledge that providing hard-working neighbors with a path to citizenship is not amnesty. I have not had an opportunity to see, let alone review, the Republican instructions in the motion filed late last night. I am advised that they now have a proposal to establish a path for citizenship for some of the undocumented. I guess other Republicans will falsely label that effort as ``amnesty for some.''

Tragically, however, the opponents of tough and smart comprehensive immigration reform will not stop with smearing the bill. Some who have opposed it have used ethnic slurs with respect to outstanding Members of the Senate. I spoke about this yesterday, when I praised Senator Salazar. His family's is a distinguished record that should not need my defense. I deplore the all-too-typical tactics of McCarthyism and division to which our opponents have resorted, again. This is an issue that goes to the heart and soul and conscience of the Senate. When people who disagree with Members of this body resort to ethnic or religious slurs, we all ought to stand up and condemn it. I did so on the floor of the Senate yesterday.

I recall the wisdom of Senator Ralph Flanders, the first one to have the courage to stand up to Joseph McCarthy. We are now facing in this country a religious and ethnic McCarthyism. I wish one Republican would stand up--just one--and say they agree that we should not have such religious and ethnic slurs on Members of the Senate just because of disagreement with a position they have taken on the bill. Regrettably, no one did. It is beneath the dignity and honor of this great body and beneath the dignity and honor of any Member of the body. I, again, thank Senator Salazar, Senator Menendez, Senator Obama, and Senator Martinez for their support of the committee bill and their participation in this debate.

The Specter-Leahy-Hagel substitute amendment that mirrors the Judiciary Committee bill confronts the challenging problem of how to fix our broken immigration system head on. It is strong on enforcement--stronger than the majority leader's bill. In some ways it is stronger than the bill passed by the House. It includes provisions added by Senator Feinstein to make tunneling under our borders a federal crime and increases the number of enforcement agents. It is tough on employer enforcement and tough on traffickers. But it is also comprehensive and balanced. I have called it enforcement ``plus'' because it confronts the problem of the millions of undocumented who live in the shadows. It values work and respects human dignity. It includes guest worker provisions supported by business and labor and a fair path to earned citizenship over 11 years through fines, the payment of taxes, hard work and learning English that has the support of religious and leading Hispanic organizations. It includes the AgJOBS bill and the DREAM Act, the Frist amendment, the Bingaman enforcement amendment, and the Alexander citizenship amendment.

Wisely, we have rejected the controversial provisions that would have exposed those who provide humanitarian relief, medical care, shelter, counseling and other basic services to the undocumented to possible prosecution under felony alien smuggling provisions of the criminal law. And we have rejected the proposal to criminalize mere presence in an undocumented status in the United States, which would trap people in a permanent underclass. Those provisions of the bill supported by congressional Republicans have understandably sparked nationwide protests because they are viewed as anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant and are inconsistent with American values.

Our work on immigration reform has been called a defining moment in our history. The Senate, in its best moments, has been able to rise to the occasion and act as the conscience to the

Nation, in the best true interests of our Nation.

I hope that the Senate's work on immigration reform will be in keeping with the best the Senate can offer the Nation. I hope that our work will be something that would make not only my immigrant grandparents proud--and I stand only one generation from my immigrant grandparents--but a product that will make our children and grandchildren proud as they look back on this debate. Now is the time and this is the moment for the Senate to come together to do its part and reject the calls to partisanship.

Now is the time to move forward with the bipartisan committee bill as our framework so that we can bring millions of people out of the shadows and end the permanent underclass status of so many who have contributed so much. By voting for cloture, we will take a giant step toward better protecting our security and borders and allowing the American dream to become a reality for our hard-working neighbors. History will judge. The time is now.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that the time be equally divided.

Madam President, I began this debate by praising the bipartisanship of the Judiciary Committee for reporting a comprehensive and realistic immigration bill to the Senate. I have said from the outset that Democratic Senators could not pass a good immigration bill on our own. With fewer than 50 Democratic Senators, we will need the support of Republican Senators if the Senate is to make progress on this important matter today.

With all the dramatic stagecraft of the last few days, and the protestations from the other side of the aisle, it may seem surprising, but the truth is that by invoking cloture on this bill we move to consideration of germane amendments. If the Kyl amendment is germane and pending, it would be in line for a vote. So much for all the bluster and false claims of Democratic obstruction we have heard. If Republicans want to move forward on this debate and get one step closer to a vote on tough but fair immigration reform, they should support cloture. For the past few days, I have offered and our leadership has offered to take up a number of bipartisan amendments for debate and votes that would have easily won the support of the Senate. It was Senator Kyl who objected to that progress.

Late last night, the Republican leader came to the floor to file a motion that would require the Senate to send the immigration bill back to the committee. He immediately acted to ``fill the tree'' with a series of amendments and filed an immediate cloture motion. So before any of us even saw the amendment, the Republican leader made sure to stop every other Senator from offering any amendment. How ironic, after all the posturing by Republicans over the last 2 days about the rights of Senators to offer amendments and be heard, the majority party has returned full force to its standard practices. That is too bad, especially on a matter this important and on which we began with such a high level of demonstrated bipartisanship.

The majority leader had set March 27 as the deadline for Judiciary Committee action, and we met his deadline. I always understood that the majority leader had committed to turn to the committee bill if we were able to meet his deadline. That is what I heard the Judiciary Chairman reiterate as we concluded our markup and heard him say, again, as the Senate debate began. The Democratic leader noted that we had agreed to proceed based on the assurances he had received that ``the foundation of the Senate's upcoming debate on immigration policy will be the bipartisan committee bill.''

The majority leader had often spoken of allowing 2 full weeks for Senate debate of this important matter. Regrettably, what the majority leader said and what happened are not the same. The Senate did not complete work on the lobbying reform bill on schedule and cut into time for this debate. When the majority leader decided to begin the debate with a day of discussion of the Frist bill, we lost more time. We were left then with 1 week, not 2. We have lost time that could have been spent debating and adopting amendments when some Republicans withheld consent from utilizing our usual procedures over the last days. When the false and partisan charges of obstruction came from the other side, the Democratic leader filed a petition for cloture that I hope will bring successful action on a comprehensive, realistic, and fair immigration bill.

I regret that over the last 3 days some tried to make this into a partisan fight. I fear they have succeeded. I urge all Senators, Republicans and Democrats, and the Senate's Independent, to vote for cloture on the bipartisan committee bill, to bring this debate to a head and a successful conclusion, in the time and on the terms set by the majority leader. If we are to pass a bipartisan bill by the end of this week, we will need to join together to support cloture on the bipartisan committee bill, proceed to work our way through the remaining amendments and pass the bill.

This is a historic vote on whether the Senate is committed to making real immigration reform. I urge all Senators to vote for reform by supporting this cloture motion on the bipartisan bill that balances tough enforcement with human dignity.

The Republican manager of the bill was right to take on the smear campaign against the committee bill from opponents who falsely labeled it amnesty. The committee bill on which cloture is being sought is not an amnesty bill but a tough bill with a realistic way to strengthen our security and border enforcement while bringing people out of the shadows to have them earn citizenship over the course of 11 years through fines and work and paying taxes and learning English and swearing allegiance to the United States. As The New York Times noted in a recent editorial, painting the word ``deer'' on a cow and taking it into the woods does not make the cow into a deer.

It is most ironic to hear those in the majority of the Republican Congress talk about amnesty and lack of accountability. Their record over the last 6 years is a failure to require responsibility and accountability or to serve as a check or balance. They are experts in amnesty and should know that this bill is not amnesty.

I was glad to hear the Republican leader begin to change his tune this weekend and to acknowledge that providing hardworking neighbors with a path to citizenship is not amnesty. I have not had an opportunity to see, let alone review, the Republican instructions in the motion filed late last

night. I am advised that they would establish a path to citizenship for a segment of the undocumented. I guess other Republicans will falsely label that effort as ``amnesty for some.''

Tragically, however, the opponents of tough and smart comprehensive immigration reform do not stop with smearing the bill. They have also used ethnic slurs with respect to outstanding Members of this Senate. I spoke yesterday to praise Senator Salazar. His family has a distinguished record that should not need my defense. I deplore the all-too-typical tactics of McCarthyism and division to which our opponents have resorted, again. I wish someone on the other side of the aisle had shown the wisdom of Ralph Flanders and joined with me in criticism of such tactics. Regrettably, no one did. I, again, thank Senator Salazar, Senator Menendez, Senator Obama, and Senator Martinez for their support of the committee bill and their participation in this debate.

The Specter-Leahy-Hagel substitute amendment that mirrors the Judiciary Committee bill confronts the challenging problem of how to fix our broken immigration system head on. It is strong on enforcement--stronger than the majority leader's bill. In some ways it is stronger than the bill passed by the House. It includes provisions added by Senator Feinstein to make tunneling under our borders a Federal crime and increases the number of enforcement agents. It is tough on employer enforcement and tough on traffickers. But it is also comprehensive and balanced. I have called it enforcement ``plus'' because it confronts the problem of the millions of undocumented who live in the shadows. It values work and respects human dignity. It includes guest worker provisions supported by business and labor and a fair path to earned citizenship over 11 years through fines, the payment of taxes, hard work, and learning English that has the support of religious and leading Hispanic organizations. It includes the Ag JOBS bill and the DREAM Act, the Frist amendment, the Bingaman enforcement amendment, and the Alexander citizenship amendment.

Wisely, we have rejected the controversial provisions that would have exposed those who provide humanitarian relief, medical care, shelter, counseling, and other basic services to the undocumented to possible prosecution under felony alien smuggling provisions of the criminal law. And we have rejected the proposal to criminalize mere presence in an undocumented status in the United States, which would trap people in a permanent underclass. Those provisions of the bills supported by congressional Republicans have understandably sparked nationwide protests being viewed as anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant and are inconsistent with American values.

Our work on immigration reform has accurately been called a defining moment in our history. The Senate, in its best moments, has been able to rise to the occasion and act as the conscience of the Nation, in the best true interests of our Nation. I hope that the Senate's work on immigration reform will be in keeping with the best the Senate can offer the Nation. I hope that our work will be something that would make my immigrant grandparents proud, and a product that will make our children and grandchildren proud as they look back on this debate.

Now is the time and this is the moment for the Senate to come together to do its part and to reject the calls to partisanship. Now is the time to move forward with the committee bill as our framework so that we can bring millions of people out of the shadows and end the permanent underclass status of so many who have contributed so much. By voting for cloture we will take a giant step toward better protecting our security and borders and allowing the American dream to become a reality for our hard-working neighbors. History will judge, and the time is now.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business.

Mr. President, I will not speak for long. I do this because I wish to speak about the severe humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan.

It has been almost 2 years since the Congress, in a bipartisan effort of both the House and Senate, declared the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, to be genocide. That is a word not passed around easily in these halls.

Then, about a year and a half ago, the administration publicly reached the same conclusion. I know there was debate within the administration whether they would use that word. I commend President Bush for reaching the same conclusion.

What worries me, here is a case where the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the President of the United States, all came together to call the atrocities in Darfur, in our day and our age, genocide. But since those declarations, the United States and other nations have failed to devise an effective strategy to bring peace to the desperate people of that remote, war-ravaged region. The human cost of this failure has been unimaginable. It is staggering.

Earlier this month, President Bush celebrated International Women's Day. There is no cause for celebration for the women of Darfur, thousands of whom have been the victims of rape and other acts of sexual violence inflicted by Government security forces and the militias they support. They use rape as a method of terror.

There have been systematic massacres, rape, torture and the burning of hundreds of villages, homes--often with the families inside. Darfur has been pillaged and the lives of its people destroyed.

The Government of Sudan has repeatedly attempted to disguise its role in the violence so it has been impossible to ascertain an accurate death toll, but somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 people have died of murder or starvation.

Many thousands more have ended up in squalid refugee camps after their homes have been reduced to ashes by the Government-sponsored jinjaweit militias.

At the same time this is happening, we see Sudan's President, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, squander $4.5 million, in this desperately poor country, to purchase a 118-foot, 172-ton Presidential yacht so he can entertain foreign dignitaries and create a perverse facade of Sudanese progress and sophistication.

This is progress and sophistication, or a reflection of the ego of a leader? Is it progress and sophistication, that children have been murdered and members of the family murdered in front of other members of the family?

Then, to make this even worse, the President of Sudan, in order to transport it by land from Port Sudan to Khartoum, required severing 132 electric lines, plunging neighborhood after neighborhood into temporary darkness.

It is difficult to conceive of the level of greed, arrogance, and twisted logic that would cause the leader of a desperately impoverished country to waste millions of dollars on a ridiculously ostentatious yacht to cruise the Nile River while thousands of the Sudanese children he is supposed to be protecting have fallen victim to the jinjaweit's brutality.

Tens of thousands more are at serious risk of death by starvation, malnutrition, disease, and mayhem. Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland, recently stated that Darfur has returned to ``the abyss'' of early 2004 when the region was ``the killing fields of this world.''

The scale of atrocities occurring in Darfur is appalling. For too long the international community has been doing too little, hoping against reality that somehow the situation would improve.

Instead, in recent weeks we have seen the violence spread across the border into Chad. The Government of Sudan is actively exporting the Darfur crisis to its neighbor by providing arms to the jinjaweit and allowing them to attack Chadian refugees and villagers, seizing their livestock and killing anyone who resists.

As a result, 200,000 of the residents of Chad have been forced from their homes. They have become displaced people in their own country.

Earlier this month, the Senate, and rightly so, unanimously passed S. Res. 383. It calls on our President to take immediate steps to help improve security in Darfur. The resolution proposed a no-fly zone over Darfur and the deployment of NATO troops to support the African Union forces currently on the ground.

The African Union has done its best, but with only 7,000 troops, inadequate resources, and a weak mandate to patrol this vast area, it has been unable to prevent the militias from continuing to attack civilians with impunity.

I strongly support a role for NATO to bolster the African Union's mission, until the U.N. peacekeeping mission can be fully deployed, which could take a year or more.

Only a few nations have the trained troops to contribute and their numbers are stretched thin among many of the U.N. missions around the world. But NATO troops on the ground could reinforce the African Union force with their superior command and control and intelligence- gathering capabilities.

Until recently, the Bush administration refused to support additional troops. However, in the last several weeks, President Bush has shown a renewed interest in Darfur. On March 9, in a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified the administration is committed to the deployment of a larger peacekeeping force, and I agree with her on that.

Despite the encouraging rhetoric, the administration continues to underfund the African Union mission. The $161 million requested in the Fiscal Year 2006 supplemental request for peacekeeping in Darfur will only cover the U.S. share to sustain the current number of troops.

It will not do anything to pay for the additional troops that President Bush has finally acknowledged that we need. With people dying needlessly every week, the President must address the Darfur crisis more urgently.

Earlier this week, I was pleased to cosponsor an amendment, which was accepted, to the FY 2006 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill to add $50 million in peacekeeping funds for Darfur.

The funds in the supplemental bill for peacekeeping in Darfur were barely adequate to support the current African Union mission through the rest of

this fiscal year. The additional $50 million will go to training and equipping the African Union force that has done its best despite scarce training and too little heavy equipment.

There is no question the Government of Sudan bears a great deal of responsibility for the crimes against humanity that have occurred and continue to occur within its borders, and now in eastern Chad.

It has sponsored brutal militias, hampered the African Union peacekeepers, and impeded the work of the international relief organization.

Most recently, it has opposed reconstituting the African Union force as a U.N. force, presumably fearing that the United Nations could pose a challenge to its own ability to act with impunity in a part of the world that is often beyond the spotlight of public scrutiny.

But we in this country, the richest, most powerful Nation on Earth, a country blessed with so many advantages, have done too little to stop the genocide in Sudan. Many more lives could have been saved if we and other nations had shown stronger leadership.

This is not just an economic or military issue; this is a moral issue. With all the blessings this country receives, we have a moral responsibility to stop genocide.

In our history, we have known what has happened when we have moved too slowly when we had a chance to stop genocide. We either moved too slowly or we did not move at all when genocide occurred.

Let us match the rhetoric with resources to support the number of troops needed to do the job. Let us set an example by our own leadership to the rest of the world that we will put an end to the violence. This is something on which I believe all Americans-- Republicans and Democrats--would agree. It is something that, if we believe in a higher calling, we will do.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, this is a historic moment in the Senate. These who are witnessing this debate may think it is just another debate on another bill, but it is not. This is a debate that has been in the brewing--at least in the making, I should say--for decades. Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts has been speaking out about meaningful immigration reform for decades. It has eluded us. There are times when we have done temporary things of some value, but we have never come to grips with the fact that the immigration laws in America have broken down. We are in virtual chaos. Borders are out of control, employers are hiring people without adequate enforcement, and there are 11 million or 12 million amongst us who are in undocumented or illegal status, uncertain of their future.

This is controversial. We have to come to grips with it. But it is rare in the history of the Senate that we consider a bill that touches so many hearts and changes so many lives in America as this immigration reform. We are literally going to define America's future with this bill. We are going to make it clear whether we are going to hold to the values that have made us a great and diverse nation.

There are people amongst us, some you may see and not know--people you sit next to in church; families who bring their children to school with your children; the worker at the daycare center where you leave your precious kids every morning; the practical nurse who is working at a nursing home caring for your aging parent; the people who cooked your breakfast this morning at the restaurant, who cleared the table; those who will straighten your room after you leave the hotel--many of them you may not know, but look closely. Many of them will be directly affected by what we do in this Senate Chamber. What we do will change their lives. What we do will give them a chance to come out of the shadows, to emerge from the fear of detection, to finally have a chance to be part of America. We don't make it easy for them. It is a long, hard process to move from where they are today to legal status tomorrow, but at least we are addressing it and doing it in an honest fashion.

This morning's vote on cloture is on a bill which I think is the best approach. That is why I will vote for cloture. Some will disagree. But we know, even as I stand here, there is another agreement underway. It is promising. It embodies the basic principles of the bill that emerged from the Senate Judiciary Committee. That bill included the Kennedy- McCain substitute, an approach which offers a pathway to legalization for the millions who are here in America.

I salute Senator Specter who spoke before me. He was one of the four Republicans who stood with eight Democrats to bring that bill out. It was not a popular position on his side of the table. The majority of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee oppose this bill. When it came to the floor, the leaders on the Republican side of the Senate condemned the bill. Yet today we find ourselves in a much different place.

I give special credit to my leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. In the beginning of this week he said, We are going to stand fast for the values and principles of this bipartisan bill. He has taken a lot of heat on the floor of the Senate and outside, resisting amendments that would cripple and destroy this process and derail our efforts to finally have comprehensive immigration reform. Were it not for Senator Harry Reid on the Democratic side of this aisle standing fast, I don't know that we could have reached the point we have reached today. But we have reached it, and it tells me that we finally have come together in a bipartisan fashion to deal with an issue that affects so many millions across this country.

It is not over. Even if the cloture vote, as we call it in the Senate, passes tomorrow on the compromise, this can still be derailed. There are still Senators, primarily on the other side of the aisle, determined to derail this agreement. They will offer crippling, devastating amendments. We need to stand fast on a bipartisan basis to resist those amendments. Those who pledge their fealty to this bill can prove it with their votes. Don't say you are for it today and vote for a devastating amendment tomorrow.

Secondly, what we decide here will go to a conference with the House. The House approach is so different and it is so wrong. The House Republican immigration bill by Chairman Sensenbrenner does not reflect American values. To say that 12 million amongst us will be branded as felons under the Federal law, to say that Good Samaritans, nurses and teachers and volunteers and people of faith, will be charged as criminals under the Federal law is unthinkable and unacceptable and is not consistent with American values. We will walk into a conference with that point of view among the House Republicans. If we do not hold fast to our belief that we need a bill that is fair, a bill that is honest and tough, a bill that is consistent with American values, we will come back with a terrible outcome.

We need a commitment from the Republican majority in the Senate that we will not even consider a conference report that moves in the direction of the Sensenbrenner bill in the House. That is unacceptable. It is unacceptable for us to criminalize millions of people.

With that commitment, and if we stand true to the values of McCain- Kennedy and the bill produced by the Senate Judiciary Committee, we will finally bring our neighbors and those who live amongst us out of the shadows.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Rockefeller) is necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, today is the day before the departure of Capitol Hill Chief of Police Terry Gainer, a man who has served us so well.

I have known Terry Gainer for almost 20 years. He served as superintendent of the Illinois State Police and left that position to become one of the leading officers in the District of Columbia Police Force. He was then asked to become chief of the Capitol Police Force. I knew that the people making that decision had made a very fine choice. Chief Gainer proved me right.

Terry Gainer grew up in Illinois, served his country in Vietnam, returned from that war a decorated veteran. His service did not end when he left the military. Prior to his position with the Illinois State Police, he spent 16 years with the Chicago Police Department. With his extensive experience at the highest levels of police work, his reputation for professionalism and his tireless commitment

to the security of our Nation's most honored building and those who visit and work within it, Terry Gainer brought the Capitol Police Force to a new level of professionalism.

In the words of one of their officers, Chief Gainer transformed the Capitol Police Force from an inside operation, where the officers were often viewed many times as security guards, to a well-known, highly visible, professional law enforcement team. That change took place at a critical moment in our Nation's history. The threat of terrorism became very real and the vulnerability of the building in which I speak became very obvious. Today, the well-trained group of men and women protecting our security today in this hallowed building are among the finest in the Nation, and we are extremely fortunate to have them.

As a Member of the Senate whose life was made safer because of Chief Terry Gainer's leadership, I am indebted to him for his singular service to Congress and to our country. The Gainer legacy on Capitol Hill is written in a police force proud of its mission and committed to serve and protect. Chief Gainer deserves the gratitude of the Capitol family for his fine service. He will be missed.

(The remarks of Mr. Durbin pertaining to the introduction of S. 2573 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Scooter Libby

Mr. President, the last item I would like to speak to is one that is now in the news for the last several hours. It has been noted that in the court papers filed by Lewis Scooter Libby before the Federal court that he has made some amazing disclosures. You will remember that Mr. Libby was Vice President Cheney's chief of staff who was indicted recently over the Valeri Plame incident. The Valeri Plame incident involved a situation where someone told Robert Novak, a columnist, about the identity of a woman who was working undercover to protect the United States. That disclosure was made through White House sources which Mr. Novak attributed them to and has been investigated since by Patrick Fitzgerald, who is a special prosecutor on this case and the U.S. attorney for the northern district of Illinois.

As a result of his investigation to date, Mr. Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, has been indicted. Now today there are disclosures that in his court papers he has made some statements which are troubling. Before his indictment, according to CNN.com, Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Vice President Cheney told him to pass on the information and that it was President Bush who authorized the disclosure.

According to the documents, the authorization led to a July 8, 2003, conversation between Mr. Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller. There was no indication in this court filing that either President Bush or Vice President Cheney authorized Mr. Libby to disclose Valeri Plame's CIA identity, but the disclosure in documents filed Wednesday means that the President of the United States and the Vice President put Lewis Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The authorization came as the Bush administration faced mounting criticism about its failure to find weapons of mass destruction, the main reason the President gave for the invasion of Iraq.

Mr. Libby's participation in a critical conversation with New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, occurred only after the Vice President advised the defendant, Mr. Libby, that the President of the United States specifically had authorized Mr. Libby to disclose certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate. That is what is in the court records. That is what was disclosed today.

At the time the National Intelligence Estimate was prepared, I was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I recall it very well because as we were preparing for the invasion of Iraq, one of the senior staff people on the committee came to me and said: Senator, something is unusual here. We never make an important decision, let alone an invasion of a country, without what is known as a National Intelligence Estimate. We bring together all the intelligence agencies of our Federal Government, ask them to compare notes, and reach a conclusion as to what we are likely to find if we move forward. It has not been done.

This was in September. The vote on authorizing the invasion of Iraq was weeks away, and we still hadn't brought together the best minds of our intelligence community to determine what we were likely to find once there. So I wrote a letter to George Tenet, head of the Central Intelligence Agency, requesting this National Intelligence Estimate, as well as Senator Robert Graham, who joined me, as chairman of the committee, in making the same request. Within a few weeks, the National Intelligence Estimate was prepared and given to us.

There has been a lot of review of that estimate ever since. Some people say it was a shoddy job. It was slapped together. It had footnotes that didn't make sense. It was the basis of our intelligence for going to war. But the one thing I can tell you is, the minute it was handed to me in the Intelligence Committee, I was told: This is top secret. This is classified. You disclose this at your own peril. You will be subject to criminal prosecution if you do. It is one of the burdens of serving on that committee. You are reminded of that constantly, that no matter what information you absorb, you cannot speak to that information when you leave that closed room.

Now we learn that according to Mr. Libby, now under indictment, he was authorized by not only Vice President Cheney but President Bush to disclose information in the National Intelligence Estimate to the press. The allegations that are contained here suggest that information was being disclosed in order to overcome criticism that the American people had been misled about weapons of mass destruction.

I have to tell you, as a member of that committee, we looked at the preparation of this intelligence leading up to the war, and we were disappointed. Our intelligence agencies did not do the professional job we expected of them. I can't explain to you exactly why. Some of it has to do with lack of technology, lack of sharing information. Some of it, they were just plain wrong.

Their guess and best estimate as to what we would find in Iraq was plain wrong. Despite all of the hyperbole about weapons of mass destruction, still today, not a single weapon has been found. Despite all of the suggestions that somehow Saddam Hussein was part of the tragedy and disaster of 9/11, absolutely no connection has been established. Despite all of the threats of mushroom clouds from Condoleezza Rice and others, it turns out there was no evidence of nuclear weapons in Iraq.

That information was wrong. The American people were told that we have to go to war, we have to risk the lives of American servicemen because of a threat that didn't exist. Where are we today? We are still there, and 130,000 American soldiers, as I stand here safely, are risking their lives for America in Iraq. As of this morning, 2,346 American soldiers have died in service to their country. We stand in awe of their patriotism and courage, but we have to ask some hard questions.

The hard questions go to this point: How and when will this war end? When will the Iraqis reach the point where they accept responsibility for their own country? We can no longer afford to be misled about the threat to the United States and what lies ahead in Iraq. The people I spoke to on my recent trip to southern Illinois got it right. One of them said: Why aren't we going to the Iraqi Government and saying that over 3 years ago we sent in our soldiers to depose your dictator, a man whom no one respected; we deposed him so that you could take control of your own country. We put American lives on the line so you could hold free elections. We gave you a chance to start your own government. When are the Iraqis going to stand up for themselves, their own country, and their own defense? How many years have we been promised that we are so close to the day when the Iraqi Army will be able to take the place of the U.S. Army? I will believe it when the first American soldier comes home and is replaced by an Iraqi soldier ready to stand and die for Iraq, as our soldiers do every single day.

Sadly, we don't know when that day might come. The President comes before the American people several weeks ago and what does he say? ``Be patient.'' Be patient as more American soldiers are endangered and lose their lives. Be patient as we face a situation with no end in sight. It is hard to counsel patience. When asked directly when will the American soldiers be coming home, what did the President say? That will be up to the next President--the next President.

The Iraq war has lasted almost as long as World War II. If we have to wait 2\1/2\ more years for American soldiers to come home, it will be one of the longest conflicts in our history. Is this what we bargained for when we invaded Iraq? We know now that the so-called coalition of the willing involved a lot of countries, but primarily it involved American lives. It is American soldiers who are standing and fighting in vastly greater numbers than any other country that is involved.

Let me tell you that the families who wait at home anxiously want to know the same answer to the question I pose: When, Mr. President, is this war going to end? When are we going to turn over the responsibility to the Iraqis?

When will we replace American soldiers with Iraqis who will stand and fight for Iraq? This last week I was in Illinois and visiting with friends of mine who work in railroad unions. I talked about this issue, and a fellow followed me out of the room and said: My son is headed over there next week. He started crying. This strong fellow who worked for the railroad all his life was a father whose heart was broken knowing his son was going into this danger. How many families have had to watch that happen and waited anxiously and expectantly at home for the letters and e-mails and phone calls? How many, sadly, have received the tragic news that they were one of the 2,346 families who lost someone they loved very much in that country?

Mr. President, as I read the allegations in the newspapers from Mr. Libby, former Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney, they were disclosing secret, classified information from a national intelligence estimate to the press in the hopes of bolstering the President's popularity. It is a grave disappointment. We can do nothing less than to investigate this. We need to find out if this did occur. If it did occur, the President and Vice President must be held accountable-- accountable for misleading the American people and for disclosure of classified information for political purposes. That is as serious as it gets in this democracy.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, let me salute those on the floor who have been so instrumental in bringing us to this point.

I look over and see Senator Martinez, who has worked very hard to find a bipartisan compromise which I now support. I thank him for that leadership.

I say the same of Senator McCain and Senator Graham and so many others who have gathered here today. They are people of good will who generally want to pass a bill, as I do. The same can be said for many on our side of the aisle who have spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to find this common ground.

But let's be very blunt about where we are at the moment. It is 8:15 on Thursday night. Tomorrow is the last day of the session before a 2- week recess.

Clearly, if we don't reach some agreement as to how we are going to deal with this bill when we return after the Easter recess, it really is a troubling situation. I hope it is not a situation that would jeopardize the bill. We are trying to come up with a reasonable number of amendments. Yesterday, we

calculated there were 228 amendments filed to the pending bill. It is physically impossible to deal with that number of amendments. We know that. As the whip on this side, I have faced 100 or more amendments and had to try to talk Members out of them. At this point, we are trying to reach a reasonable number.

We have been given a list of potential amendments on the Republican side. I will tell you that almost without exception, they are authored by Senators who have expressly stated on the floor they want to defeat this bill. So at some point, we have to acknowledge the obvious. Senators should have the opportunity, I suppose, to express themselves, but if the purpose of the amendments is just to drag this out once we return to the point where it never passes, we have done a great disservice.

It was not that long ago that we gathered on the floor of the third floor of this Capitol in the press room congratulating ourselves on what we had achieved on a bipartisan basis. Supposedly there was a bipartisan will to move forward. We need the same thing now. And we need to acknowledge that every Senator who wants to offer every amendment cannot be allowed to do so, if we are ever going to complete action on the bill. Both sides have to be reasonable in the amount of amendments that will be offered or nothing will happen.

The final point the Democratic leader, Senator Reid, made, is equally important. We want the conference committee to be a working committee that understands the bill. The clearest way to achieve that is to have the Senate Judiciary Committee, with 10 Republicans and 8 Democrats, represent our interests, if the bill ever passes in the Senate. We think it is going to be an arduous process facing a House where the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has passed a bill far different than the one we are considering in the Senate today. I don't think that is an unreasonable request by the Senator from Nevada. It reflects a two-vote plurality for the Republicans, as is usually the case, and brings the people to this conference committee who have worked on this bill the longest and the hardest. That is what we put on the table.

I sincerely hope that before we adjourn this evening we can announce an agreement to move forward. If we don't, I fear that tomorrow there will be a race for the airports without this resolved, and we will wait for 2 weeks in the hopes that when we return we will have the same spirit of bipartisan cooperation. We may and we may not. We shouldn't miss this chance, this historic opportunity to seize this moment and to pass comprehensive immigration reform which starts with enforcement of our borders, enforcement against employers who are misusing those who are undocumented, and a legal pathway so that those who have lived in the shadows and in fear for so long finally have a chance to prove themselves, in a long and difficult process, that they are in a position to be legal participants as part of our great democracy.

Tonight may be the test as to whether we can achieve that. I hope before we close down the session tonight, it is with the good news that we have reached a bipartisan agreement; otherwise, I am very concerned about the fate of this legislation.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise to speak in opposition to closing off debate on the underlying bill. We have heard at great length how the opportunity to file and argue and have votes on amendments has been effectively denied by the Democratic leader. It would be a travesty and, indeed, it would be a farce for the Senate to close off debate before we have even had that debate on the substance of this bill.

Why it is that the Democratic leader and others who might vote to close off debate would want to deny the Senate an opportunity to exclude felons from the scope of the amnesty provided by this bill is beyond me. Why it is that there could be those who would want to deny American workers the protection of a fluctuating cap on temporary work permits such that American citizens would not be put out of work because those who have come to the country in violation of our immigration laws and would be given a guaranteed path to American citizenship is beyond me. Why it is we would want to deny countries such as Mexico and the Central American countries the opportunity to develop their own economies and to provide opportunities for their own citizens so that fewer and fewer of them would have to engage in part of the mass exodus from those countries to the United States, leaving those countries hollowed out and unable to economically sustain themselves and create opportunities for their own citizens, is beyond me.

I understand there are those, on both sides of the aisle, who happen to like the Judiciary Committee bill that is the subject of this cloture motion. While there are portions of the bill I like very much, particularly those which have to do with border security, we know that the bill as yet still does not have a worksite verification provision, to my knowledge. My understanding is, because of jurisdictional conflicts, the Judiciary Committee could not complete work on that portion of the bill, and that is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Finance Committee. We are still waiting for that title III to this bill to come to the floor and be offered as an amendment and be made part of this legislation. Without a worksite verification requirement, this bill will not work, notwithstanding how much we do at our borders, which is very important.

This bill will not work unless we make sure that only people who come forward and submit themselves to background checks and we know are not criminals or terrorists and we know in fact they are qualified and eligible workers--unless we have a system

in place to make sure of that, this will not work and we will not have done everything we can and should do to make sure this bill will work.

Indeed, in 1986, as part of the amnesty that was signed in that year, the quid pro quo for the amnesty of some 3 million people was an effective worksite verification program and employer sanctions for those employers who cheat and hire people on the black market of human labor.

We know, because the Federal Government failed to provide that effective Federal Government worksite verification program, that now we are dealing with approximately 12 million people who have come here in violation of our immigration laws, and we are confronted with the monumental challenge of how to address those 12 million in a way that both respects our legacy as a nation that believes in the rule of law while we continue to celebrate our heritage as a nation that believes we are indeed a nation of immigrants and better for it.

This is not the Senate working according to its finest traditions. The only way the Senate works is if each Senator has an opportunity to debate and to argue and to offer amendments. We understand not all of the amendments will be accepted. I am happy--maybe not happy, but I am willing to accept the fact that there may be amendments I will offer that will not be successful. But that is the way the committee process worked under Chairman Specter in the Judiciary Committee. Each of us had a chance to have our say, to offer amendments, and to have a vote. That is the way democracy works. But the idea that we will somehow try to jam this bill through here without Senators having a chance to debate and vote on amendments is a farce. I hope my colleagues will not support it and that they will vote against cloture so we may offer those amendments and have the kind of debate and process that represents the finest traditions of the Senate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, as we all know, there has been an announcement of a resolution or a settlement among a group of Senators relating to the border security and immigration reform bill that is pending before the Senate, although I would note that the entire Senate has yet to sign off on that agreement. I, for one, want to talk for a few minutes about my concerns regarding the proposal.

Last night we were told at approximately 10 o'clock that this agreement was struck with a group of Senators. It consists of 525 pages and I dare say not many people have read it yet. But my review of the agreement causes me some serious concerns about whether it represents something that reflects good policy or something that would warrant my support.

First, I believe there is a grave risk that the proposal would represent a repetition of the mistake of 1986 when the Congress passed major immigration legislation. My colleagues will recall that it was that year Ronald Reagan signed a bill that was acknowledged to be now, in retrospect, two different things. The first is it was an amnesty for 3 million people who entered our country in violation of our immigration laws. The second thing we have come to realize in retrospect is it was a complete and total failure when it came to securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws.

Some have speculated it was the Federal Government's failure to provide employers a means to verify the eligibility of prospective employees that they could work legally in the country, and certainly the failure on the Federal Government's part is a large part of what is to blame. The corollary of that is the lack of employer sanctions for hiring an illegal workforce. In the past year, we have seen only three sanctions filed against employers for hiring illegal aliens to work in the United States.

Some have said the reason that bill failed is because it didn't have any provision for a legal workforce. I am somewhat sympathetic to that argument because I do support comprehensive immigration legislation, but starting first with border security. We know our inability to control our borders is not only resulting in massive waves of illegal immigration, but we also know it is a national security risk because anyone who has the money to pay a human smuggler or has their wits about them enough to make it over here on their own could literally walk or swim or drive across our border because it is wholly unprotected between the authorized ports of entry. We know our Border Patrol is sorely undermanned with only about 11,000 Border Patrol agents for a 2,000-mile southern border, and contrast that with 39,000 police officers in the city of New York alone.

So we can see the Border Patrol has been vastly out manned and outnumbered when it comes to the number of people coming across. There were 1.1 million illegal aliens apprehended last year alone.

The problem with the 1986 amnesty is that it led to additional illegal immigration, and we now have approximately 12 million undocumented immigrants--people who have come to this country in violation of our immigration laws. And we have come to learn that our booming economy is a vast magnet for people who want a better life. While we can all understand that on a very basic human level, we also know the U.S. Government and the people of this country cannot accept anyone and everyone who wants to come into this country in violation of our immigration laws. Thus, we have a right, as every sovereign nation has, to regulate the flow of people across our borders in our Nation's best interests.

I worry that the legislation that is now pending before this body, the so-called Hagel-Martinez compromise, would actually result in a further magnet for illegal immigration because it, in part, rewards people for coming into the country in violation of our immigration laws.

It causes me great concerns in other respects as well. For example, the proposal would not be closed to felons and serial criminal offenders. Nor would it be closed to people who had their day in court but failed to comply with the deportation order, showing tremendous disrespect not only for our laws but for the safety and welfare of the American people.

We also know the current bill that is pending before us prevents information sharing by the Department of Homeland Security to root out fraud, which is another problem with the 1986 amnesty because people were able to generate fraudulent documents to qualify for that amnesty. We know that false documents are a tremendous vulnerability of the American people to terrorists and criminals and others who want to come across our borders, and this bill does not do enough to allow us to protect ourselves by investigating and prosecuting that kind of fraud, by sharing information, and that is why we need some amendments to be argued and voted on by the Senate to fix the serious gaps in this bill.

But perhaps one of the gravest concerns I have is this proposed compromise does not protect American workers. Indeed, under this bill, up to 12 million people will be able to get green cards. In other words, they will gain the status of a legal permanent resident and a path to American citizenship. This is without regard to whether our economy is in a boom status as it is now, with about 4.8 percent unemployment, or whether our economy is in a recession, where Americans are more likely to be out of work and competing with these 12 million new green card holders for employment. So I believe we need a provision in this bill that provides for a true temporary worker program that can reflect the ups and downs of the economy.

Under this bill there will be a massive one-way migration of people from countries in Central America and Mexico and South America into the United States, and no incentives for their return and for maintaining their ties to their family and their culture and their country in a way that ultimately benefits their country as well. No country on Earth can sustain an economic body blow of a permanent migration of its work force out of that country. But this proposal this creates a temporary worker category that is not temporary, but is instead an alternative path to citizenship. So even though there are some who have talked about a guest worker program or a temporary worker program, this is neither. This is an alternative path to citizenship for 12 million people, permanent status in the United States, regardless of whether our economy is good or our economy is bad. And when it is bad, these individuals will prove stiff competition indeed for America and people born in these United States, or legal immigrants.

There is also no provision in this bill--and this is another concern I have for the American worker--that there be a willing employer and a willing employee. In other words, under this bill individuals can come into the country and self petition for green cards or legal permanent residency. Thus, here again, another important protection for the American worker is totally ignored under this bill.

Another grave concern I have, and this goes back to 1986, is there is absolutely no provision made for employer verification of the eligibility of prospective employees. As some have said, this is deja vu all over again because the Judiciary Committee, as you know, Mr. President, and as the distinguished ranking member knows, did not have jurisdiction over that provision of the bill, so it had to be drafted by the Finance Committee. Yet there is absolutely no amendment pending. I don't know of any plans--maybe there are plans that I am just unaware of--that would provide employers the means to verify that individuals are indeed eligible to work in the United States and discourage, if not eliminate, the use of fraudulent documents to claim that authority to work in the United States. Without that, without border security, without interior enforcement, and without employer verification and sanctions for those who do not play by the rules, this bill provides another invitation to massive illegal immigration and constitutes a reward to those who have come into our country in violation of our laws.

My ultimate concern is we will have a vote on a motion to close off debate on this compromise tomorrow morning. There are a number of pending amendments that I intend to offer. Of course we know the Senate largely operates by unanimous consent. There is also a desire by Senators right before any recess to get on to their homes and their families and back to their States. But this is an extremely important bill, I would say, even more than most of the issues we consider here because it is a matter of national security. It is a matter of maintaining the confidence of the American people because, frankly, the American people believe we let them down in 1986. They believe the Senate is not serious about border security, is not serious about workplace enforcement, and the only way we are going to be able to demonstrate that we are serious is to have a full and fair debate, to allow amendments and votes on those amendments on the floor. So far, all we have been met with is obstructionism because we have been denied the opportunity to have an up-or-down vote on essential amendments that are necessary to improve this bill.

I know we will have a vote tomorrow morning. Unless there is some good-faith attempt to reach some accommodation to allow Senators to offer those amendments that would improve the bill in the respects I have pointed out, then I expect that we will have a long weekend, and perhaps beyond, so there will be an opportunity for us to have the kind of debate that is reflective of the world's greatest deliberative body and which discharges the responsibility we have to protect the American people, to secure our borders, to make sure we are absolutely serious about enforcing our laws, while at the same time we enact comprehensive border security and immigration reform.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. President, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, I chair a committee that has jurisdiction over international trade. We find ourselves being both a participant and an observer of Doha Round negotiations under the World Trade Organization. Those negotiations are in a very determinative state; success will be made, I believe, during the month of April or the Doha Round, for all practical purposes, would end--not in the minds of the WTO or in the minds of the 148 nations other than the United States but as a practical matter. If things are not done by the end of 2006 and the President's authority for trade promotion running out in July of 2007, there will not be time for us to get something done before trade promotion authority runs out.

I would like to have trade promotion authority for the President continued beyond July 2007. I would try to promote that, but we saw very close votes on CAFTA and other trade agreements; there is a protectionist trend in the Congress--maybe not in the Nation as a whole but at least in Congress--that might keep us from getting trade promotion authority reauthorized.

I comment in these few minutes on where we are on the Doha Round and what I expect to happen and leave the message, if it does not happen very soon, this round could be dead.

As we enter the final months of the WTO Doha negotiations, I am very concerned the bright promise of a world far less burdened with often crippling, market-distorting trade barriers may be slipping from our grasp. In particular, I am very troubled by the fact that nearly 5 years after WTO members adopted the Doha ministerial declaration that launched this round of global trade talks, some of our WTO negotiating partners still seem willing to forgo this very historic opportunity that Doha represents to open highly protected agricultural markets.

We now have less than 4 weeks to go to meet the WTO's new April 30 deadline to reach agreement on what is referred to as modalities or, another way

to put it, a roadmap for how we will achieve our specific market- opening objectives in the agricultural negotiations. This deadline, similar to most of the others, also appears to be elusive.

The Doha Round is a historic opportunity because global trade rounds are relatively rare events. We have had only nine of them since the creation of the global trading regime back in 1947, what we then called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT.

Agriculture, which was ignored for almost the first 40 years of GATT, was only first addressed at all during the last round, which was the eighth round, which was called the Uruguay Round because it started in Montevideo and finished and passed by Congress in 1993.

So here we are, 13 years later, trying to make some progress--but not making very much progress--toward what we would hope would be a 10th successful round since the regime started in 1947. Because many trade- distorting barriers were untouched or minimally reduced at the end of the Uruguay Round in 1993, much was left to be done, particularly in agriculture, but we are negotiating manufacturing, we are negotiating services, so a lot needs to be done.

In light of the lack of progress in the World Trade Organization, I briefly address a few points. First, as chairman of this Senate Committee on Finance, I reaffirm, as strongly as I can, the basic elements of the Trade Act of 2002, especially the legislation crafted by this committee that renewed the President's trade promotion authority in 2002, after it had lapsed for about 7 years.

The underlying premise of our trade promotion authority legislation, which gives Congress enhanced oversight authority over trade negotiations conducted under that act, is that the United States will pursue a very ambitious, very comprehensive trade negotiation, particularly in agriculture. This was the cornerstone of the Doha Round--ambitious, comprehensive negotiations and nothing less.

The reason I fought so hard for trade promotion authority is simple. The benefits from ending decades of trade-distorting practices in the global agricultural trade are overwhelming. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has estimated getting rid of market-disrupting agricultural protection could increase the value of U.S. agricultural exports by at least 19 percent. In addition, the Department of Agriculture study also concludes that agricultural liberalization would increase global economic welfare by $56 billion each year.

I know well how vital trade is to farming families anyplace in America, but I am particularly knowledgeable about my State of Iowa because I happen to be a family farmer, farming jointly with my son Robin. Our farmers and agricultural producers sold over $3.6 billion in agricultural exports in overseas markets last year. Although importers and consumers from all over the world seek out Iowa's agricultural products, this is also true of American agriculture generally.

Moreover, more than $3 trillion of economic activity in our $12 trillion economy is derived from trade. Think of that: More than 25 percent of our economy is based upon international trade. That is why an ambitious, comprehensive result in the Doha negotiations is the only kind of result that makes sense, both for my State of Iowa and the United States.

President Bush and Ambassador Portman have done a very good job--in fact, a remarkable job, in my view,--of pursuing an ambitious, comprehensive agricultural deal, especially in the difficult period prior to and during the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference last December.

Nevertheless, some World Trade Organization members, principally the European Union, now apparently want to stop short of that ambitious, comprehensive, result-seeking agreement that was previously reached in opening Doha Round, and they particularly want to shortchange the negotiations in the area of agricultural market access. That is why, when pressed by the United States and other World Trade Organization members, the European Union appears to be changing the subject away from ambitious market access to secondary issues such as food aid, on which we are now having protracted discussions.

I am not even sure our own negotiators should be participating in something as fringe as food aid as compared to the massive discussions and decisions that need to be made in trade-distorting export subsidies by the European Union or by, in the case of the United States, production-related subsidies that we do for American agriculture, not subsidies for agriculture generally but those which are trade distorted. We find our American negotiators getting all nervous about food aid as somehow being a major item. No. What it is is an effort on the part of the European Union to detract attention from the really big export subsidies and production-oriented subsidies.

Perhaps that is because of the intense political pressure European trade and agricultural officials think they face at home. It seems to me that the European Trade Minister wants to open up and do really good trade negotiations. It seems like there is a hangup by the European Agricultural Minister. And it seems to be really a hangup by French farmers. According to one account by former European Commission officials, European farm groups described one compromise agricultural agreement as a death warrant for European farmers. However, that was in 1992, connected with the Uruguay Round negotiations, and the agricultural agreement that drew so much protest in Europe was back then, not today, when that description was made. Ultimately, of course, Europe accepted the Uruguay agreement in 1993. Now the European Union is right back where they were 13 years ago, citing that same agreement as a model for the type of agreement they would like to see today, at least in terms of linear tariff reductions.

So we have seen this type of reaction from Europe before.

Today, once again, the European Union thinks that ambitious market access too politically painful to achieve or to even thoroughly negotiate, but they got over that hurdle in Uruguay. Why can't they get over that hurdle in Doha? So we are back at the European tactic. It appears that what they are really trying to do is a minimal deal somehow being seen as a good deal. Apparently, they think it is a good result if they can get something that is marginally better than the status quo, end negotiations, declare victory, and go home.

Other WTO Members such as Brazil appear reluctant to agree to an ambitious outcome in agricultural market access because they may believe that they can achieve their objectives through other means, such as litigation. You know about the cotton case. Brazil recently was successful in that case. So it may give them false hopes that they can achieve, through legal briefs in Geneva, what they do not appear to win at the negotiating table of the Doha Round.

I would like to say a word about both of those situations.

First, a minimal deal in the Doha agricultural negotiations is not something that can be considered a victory in any sense of the term, even in a political sense. What do I mean by a minimal deal? A deal that goes just beyond the 36-percent average tariff reduction of the Uruguay Round, a deal that leaves tariff peaks in place, or a deal that undermines market access by long lists of special exemptions.

I will not try, as chairman of the Finance Committee, to spin some minimalist deal into some sort of political victory. In fact, I will not even allow it to be brought up for consideration in the Finance Committee or, if I was overruled by my own committee, I would fight it on the floor, if it ever got that far.

So let me make that as clear as I can. A bad deal for agriculture in Doha negotiations is worse than no deal. That was my position at the start of these negotiations, and that is my position now. All those people spending all their time negotiating on food aid when they ought to be negotiating on export subsidies, when they ought to be negotiating on subsidies encouraging overproduction, that is not going to take my eye off the ball.

A minimalist outcome in the Doha negotiations, after years of effort and high-level political engagement, would send a terrible message that real reform in agriculture is too hard to achieve and may set us back for decades.

It would make meaningless a key element of the agricultural component of the Doha Ministerial Declaration where WTO member countries committed themselves to ``comprehensive negotiations aimed at substantial improvement in market access.'' That is what U.S. agriculture demands for giving up our subsidies connected to production. Farmers want their income from the marketplace, not from the Federal Treasury. But we cannot do that without market access, where there are 62 percent average tariffs around the world on agriculture compared to our 12 percent. If that happened, it would reward countries such as the European Union that have big farm spending, highly inefficient production----

I ask unanimous consent for 4 more minutes.

If we went this route, it would reward countries such as the European Union that have big farm spending, highly inefficient production, and use nontariff barriers to thwart trade. And even though this round is known as the Doha Development Round because it is supposed to help poor countries, a bad deal that keeps high trade barriers in place would tell developing countries that they can forget about seeing fair opportunity to export their products.

As for World Trade Organization members that see litigation in dispute settlement--as Brazil did in the cotton case--as a practical alternative to negotiations, I would remind those who are tempted to adopt this position that litigation, even under the new, improved WTO rules, is unpredictable, costly, time-consuming, and not the way to resolve unfair trade.

Moreover, litigation is not always the most effective way to open markets and eliminate trade barriers, especially over the long haul. Historically, we have also depended on negotiations and the everyday management of trade and commercial relations as much better ways to achieve and maintain open markets.

Make no mistake, we can and will defend our interests through dispute settlement when it is necessary to do so, and we have done so as the United States in the World Trade Organization quite successfully. But substituting litigation for negotiations or for management of our commercial relations is neither practical nor desirable, nor is it the way to bolster confidence in the World Trade Organization as an effective negotiating forum.

I began by saying that this round of trade negotiations is a historic opportunity. It can be historic in the sense that we achieve a result that truly benefits the global community by increasing global prosperity, and it can be historic in the sense that we miss a great opportunity to promote prosperity and open markets throughout the world.

Unfortunately, we have made enormous mistakes before when we missed important opportunities to fight for comprehensive global trade liberalization. In the early years of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, going as far back as 1947, it was the developed nations, particularly the United States, that created exceptions for agriculture, that exempted it from liberalization under the GATT regime. It has taken us decades to shift gears to try to bring agriculture under the discipline of global trade rules. That is why it is so important for us to continue to make real progress in this round of global trade talks.

Achieving real, meaningful results in these talks is something I am as strongly committed to now as ever before. It is also why I will continue to oppose any outcome in the WTO that, in my judgment, fails to accomplish these goals, even if it is a minimalist approach. Don't expect me to bring such an agreement before the Senate as chairman of the Finance Committee.

I yield the floor.