A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 152 North 5th Street in Laramie, Wyoming, as the "Gale W. McGee Post Office".

Mr. President, we have this matter before us. We are going to do our very best to work through it. To remind everyone about this legislation: This bill was taken up. We spent considerable days on the Senate floor. Prior to doing that, of course, we had a debate last year that encompassed much of what we have talked about this year. In addition to that, though, during the time we pulled the bill from the floor--this bill was pending here--of course, we brought that back with the amendments that had passed.

In addition to that, with the concurrence of the President--because the No. 1 complaint that folks on the other side had initially was there was nothing that was going to take care of the border--$4.4 billion is now in this matter that is now before the Senate, $4.4 billion to strengthen the border. It does do that. Not only do we spend the money, but we spend it well in this bill. There will be 370 miles of fencing that will be paid for--will not be just talked about--300 miles of vehicle barriers that work extremely well, probably better than the fences. It will now be possible to hire 20,000 new Border Patrol agents. The are 105 ground-based radar and camera towers. There will be a facility with detention beds for people who violate these immigration laws. There will be a place to put them.

It toughens employer sanctions by creating a mandatory employer verification system. It doubles criminal and civil penalties against employers who hire unauthorized workers. Employers can be fined up to $5,000 per worker for the first offense, up to $75,000 per worker for subsequent offenses, or they can serve jail time.

Also, as it relates to employer sanctions, it strengthens document integrity by requiring tamper-resistant biometric immigration documents.

And, yes, as the Republican Secretary of Commerce has said, and other administration officials have said, this is not amnesty. In fact, what Secretary Gutierrez has said is that if we do not do something, there is silent amnesty. We are going to move past that.

If someone wants to be on a pathway to legalization, they have a job, they pay taxes, they stay out of trouble, they learn English, they pay penalties and fines. They go to the back of the line, not to the front of the line.

This legislation, very importantly, includes AgJOBS and ends the exploitation of migrant farmworkers and provides them legal status.

The DREAM Act, which a number of individuals worked very hard on--but no one harder than my colleague, the senior Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin--the DREAM Act is to legalize immigrant children brought by their parents to this country through no fault of their own and to allow them to go to college or join the military.

So this is a nice piece of legislation. It is a step in the right direction. We have had 36 hearings since 9/11, 6 days of committee action, 59 committee amendments, 21 days of Senate debate, 92 Senate floor amendments. We have been pretty thorough with this issue.

Mr. President, I yield to my friend for a question, and I would, of course, regain the floor when he completes his question.

Mr. President, the Senator is absolutely right. He has been on the Judiciary Committee for decades in the Senate. He has been chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration for decades. He has watched what has gone on. We all recognize what happened in 1986 was not good. It is my understanding the senior Senator from Massachusetts voted against that legislation.

This legislation will correct that. This legislation will put 4.4 billion real dollars--not authorized--in direct funding. We got a signoff from the President to do this. If we did nothing else, zero-- for those people who have concerns about this legislation--if we did nothing else other than do this to secure our border, they should vote for this legislation. But there is much more in it. I have given a brief review of the good things in this legislation. It is a good piece of legislation to correct the problem we have.

Mr. President, I would be happy to yield to the Senator from Massachusetts for a question.

Mr. President, the people who are talking about the negativity of this legislation I do not think understand how good it is. I have talked about the $4.4 billion. But to think about that: $55 billion to go toward making our country safer--not our borders--our country safer, and it is not paid for by the taxpayers. It will be paid for by the people who are seeking to change their status.

I think it is a tremendous improvement, a step forward. I think it is so important that the American people not hear all this ``some of us have not been on the floor talking about this piece of legislation a lot.'' It seems the voices we hear are people who are talking about the process being unfair, that they have not had a right to be heard. Some people complain, ``I thought the Senate was different than this.''

Mr. President, for my friends, some of whom are complaining who served in the House of Representatives, this is a fair process. People in the Senate have a right to speak. We have rules that after so much time, when 60 Senators say you talked enough, debate comes to an end. That is where we are in this matter. We are at a point where tomorrow morning cloture will be invoked on this bill. It would be so important that we do that. It would make our country a better country. We need to do this; otherwise, our borders remain porous, with no end in sight.

Mr. President, what is now before the Senate?

I thank the Chair.

I will be happy to in a minute.

Division III is an amendment offered by the senior Senator from the State of Missouri. If anyone wishes to speak on that, what I would like to do is ask--not like to do; I am going to do--I ask unanimous consent that there be an hour of time, for debate only, on this amendment; that following that time being used--it would be divided equally between the two managers--following that time being used, I would have the right to the floor.

Mr. President, I withdraw my unanimous consent request. I appreciate the suggestion of my friend from Missouri. I think it is a constructive one. I, therefore, ask unanimous consent that on the Bond amendment there be 20 minutes equally divided, that this conversation during this 20 minutes be for debate only, that the time be controlled by Senator Specter--I am sure he will give his time to Senator Bond-- and Senator Kennedy on our side; and that following the using up of that 20 minutes, I obtain the floor.

Mr. President, it is my understanding I have the floor; is that right?

Mr. President, I would be happy to yield to my friend for a question.

Mr. President, in response to my friend's question, first of all, at least for the next 18 months, President Bush is our President. His Cabinet officers--two of whom have been heavily involved in this legislation, Secretary Chertoff and Secretary Gutierrez--have confirmed that this money--anything the President has power over through his administration--this money will go to border security, the things I have outlined earlier this afternoon: fencing, vehicle barriers, 20,000 Border Patrol agents, 105 ground-based radar and camera towers, detention beds--and a lot of detention beds, specifically 31,000.

One of the problems we have had at the border is that as our valiant Border Patrol agents grab these people coming across the border, they have no place

to put them. They will now have 31,500--a pretty good holding facility. It will alleviate many of the problems, many of the complaints that our own Border Patrol agents have.

So in response to my friend from Louisiana, the administration assured all of us this money will be used in a manner to make our border more secure.

Mr. President, does my friend have another question?

Mr. President, we are in the Senate. We have certain procedures and rules. I have tried to make things as family friendly as possible; that is, Senate family friendly. I say to my friend, during the early days of this legislation, amendments were offered by him and others, some of which got votes, some did not. That is the way the Senate operates. We are now in a process to work toward in the morning when we have a cloture vote.

I think the process is very fair. The people who are managing this legislation, directed by Senators Specter and Kennedy--two of the most senior Members of our Senate--have been as fair as possible for our getting where we are. There are amendments in this procedure we are going through by people who have never supported the bill and do not intend to support the bill. The amendments were arrived at in a way to try to improve this bill. Will all amendments improve the bill? I guess that is in the eye of the beholder.

I say to my friend, the procedure has been set here. I am sorry you are concerned about it. I, frankly, though, think we have been very fair. As a result of that, I would ask my friend if he has an objection to Senator Bond's suggestion, that we debate this amendment of his-- that is debate only--for 20 minutes equally divided.

Is this for debate only?

I would have the floor as soon as the minute is up; is that right?

So the record is very clear, Harry Reid, the majority leader, did not pick the Republican amendments. The Republican leadership picked those amendments. Senator McConnell and I worked the process so that we would be back on the floor. It wasn't done by me; it was done by us.

I would further say, these amendments, Republican amendments in this bill, were not picked by me; they were picked by the Republican leadership. I didn't stand over his shoulder. They chose what they decided to do.

So I ask my friend if he has an objection to my request.

Is all time expired?

Mr. President, I move to table the amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, my friends, Senators Vitter and DeMint and Sessions, have asked a number of questions during the day, and they are valid questions, but I feel it is appropriate to respond. The way I will respond now is with a letter I wrote in response to the letter they wrote to me a few days ago. This letter is dated June 25:

Dear Senators Cornyn, Vitter, Dole, Sessions and DeMint:

Thank you for writing to me earlier today about my effort to

bring the comprehensive immigration reform bill back to the

Senate floor.

As you know, the Senate was unable to complete action on

the immigration bill earlier this month because a handful of

Senators, including several of you, objected to my repeated

efforts to call up further amendments to the bill. Following

the unsuccessful cloture vote on June 7, a group of Senators,

including Minority Leader McConnell, Republican Conference

Chairman Kyl and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Specter,

came to see me with a request that I bring the immigration

bill back before the Senate under a procedure under which a

large number of additional amendments could become pending to

the bill.

The so-called ``clay pigeon'' procedure is unusual, and I

would not have considered employing it in this instance

without the full support of Senator McConnell. It seems to me

appropriate for the two leaders to work together to overcome

the tactics of a small number of Senators in order to allow

the full Senate to debate an important national issue like

immigration. The White House made clear that it also favors

such a procedure, since the immigration bill is one of the

President's top priorities.

I respectfully disagree with your assertion that I intend

to ``shut off the debate'' and that the procedure in question

will ``silence amendments instead of facilitate their

debate.'' On the contrary, I am working to facilitate debate

on more than twenty additional amendments to the bill. In

contrast, several of you objected when I tried to call up as

few as five amendments during the earlier debate. The

American people can see clearly who wants to debate

immigration reform and who wants to shut off that debate.

Moreover, your claim that the Senate will only debate

amendments which I ``hand select'' is plainly untrue. The

dozen or so Republican amendments that will become pending to

the bill have been selected by the Republican leadership, not

by me.

In sum, I appreciate the concerns expressed in your letter

but consider them misplaced. Senator McConnell and I have

worked together in good faith to ensure a full, open and

productive debate on a bill of overriding national importance

that is supported by many Republicans and endorsed by

President Bush.

I signed it, Senator Reid.

Mr. President, what is the matter now before this body?

What I would like to do, Mr. President--this is the Dodd amendment--I would like to ask, as I did with the prior amendments that have come up today, I ask unanimous consent for debate only; that we start with 1 hour, equally divided, to debate this amendment, and then following that, I would be recognized to do whatever I felt appropriate.

The Senator from Louisiana is not recognized. I have not given up the floor.

Mr. President, it is my understanding----

It is my understanding the Senator from Louisiana objected; is that true?

Mr. President, I would ask my friend to object, if he cares to, and then I would be happy to enter into a dialog with the distinguished Senator from Louisiana.

Mr. President, first of all, I would be happy at this time to yield to my friend from Louisiana for 2 minutes for the purpose of a question, and then I, of course, would have the floor following the termination of those 2 minutes.

I could not agree to that, Mr. President, so I would certainly object to that.

Now, we had in the last amendment that was laid down, I thought, a very sensible debate. People were able to offer their opinions as to the merits. In fact, it was a good debate. Senator Bond was advocating his position, and Senator Kennedy and others were advocating against that. My question to the Senate now is, Could we have the same procedure? I have suggested 1 hour equally divided, which would be for debate only, and following that period of time, I would be recognized.

I ask, Mr. President, unanimous consent that request be back before the Senate at this time.

I am sorry. Oh, there you are. I would be happy to yield for a question from my friend from South Carolina for up to 2 minutes, and then I would get the floor back.

Go ahead.

Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter I wrote, along with Senator DeMint's-- that both appear in the Record, Senator DeMint's first, with mine following that.

Mr. President, I will say that his letter makes our argument. Of course there were more than 60 who voted against proceeding on that legislation. That is precisely why we are back on this legislation, because a significant number of those 60 came to me and Senator McConnell and said that we need to bring this bill back and we need to have amendments heard. So I think the letters speak for themselves.

Finally, let me say this. Would the Senator from Louisiana or South Carolina--I asked for 1 hour--would they agree to 30 minutes equally divided on this amendment, for debate only?

So is there objection?

No, I would not do that.

Thank you very much.

Mr. President, my objection to the request comes from the fact that we are here as a result of the Republican leadership coming to me. And I am glad to be here, but we are here because, as everyone will recall in the first go-round, we had seven votes from the minority. We needed more than that. Everyone realized that. And in an effort to do that, we have these amendments which have been brought before this body. It is a fair process.

I just think my friends from South Carolina and Alabama and Louisiana have made their point, and I think we have made our point, also. This is a process which we are trying to move. Why are we trying to move it? Because immigration is in need of fixing.

Mr. President, it is my understanding the Senator from Arizona wishes to ask me a question, and I will be happy to yield to my friend for a question.

I say to my friend that we have really no alternative. That is the process we are in. So the answer is, I would think there would be a motion to table made if we can't resolve this debate issue.

I would be happy, Mr. President, because of the suggestion of my friend from Arizona, to make a unanimous consent request, so that people better understand this amendment, that the Senator from Connecticut be recognized for 5 minutes, the Senator from Arizona be recognized for 5 minutes, and then following that, the Senator from Pennsylvania would be recognized for purposes of making a motion.

Is there an objection to the request I made?

The next amendment up is the Kyl amendment. Is that true?

Is that Kyl? I withdraw it.

What is the next amendment pending?

Madam President, we have been moving through these. We have a number more to go. What I have tried to do----

No, I do not. I yield to my friend for a question, if it is short. Does my friend have a question?

No, it does not take consent.

I would direct a question to the Chair. It is my understanding that I have the right to withdraw that amendment.

Madam President, during the time that we were in the well during the last amendment, I was told by my friend from New Jersey that he had a question he wanted to ask me. We want to move on. I certainly will try to get a time agreement on it. We haven't been too successful on that in the past. I would be happy to yield to my friend

from New Jersey for a question if, in fact, he still has one.

I understand the question. I will respond to it right now. He started it, if you read the Record, he asked me if I understand what his amendment does. I do understand what it does.

A brief summary, Madam President. This legislation comes up with a point system. The point system----

Madam President----

I have a right to make a statement. Back to where I was before I was so rudely interrupted.

Madam President, I understand the question. In this legislation which has been worked on, as I have indicated, 36 hearings, 6 days of committee action, 59 committee amendments, 21 days of Senate debate, 92 floor amendments, one of the questions a number of us had and have is: What does it do for family reunification? And no one has spoken out more on that issue than the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Menendez.

The question he asked me is about the amendment. Now a point system has been set up where the process has been used over these many months coming up with this legislation to give various points to different parts of the immigration process.

Now, what my friend from New Jersey and others feel would be appropriate is that out of a 100-point system, 10 points would be allocated to someone for family reunification. I understand the amendment. There is more to it than that, but that is a synopsis. That is what the amendment does. It recognizes the importance in America of family. It recognizes the importance in immigration of family.

Madam President, I move to table the pending amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, under the order that is before the body, there is time that has been allocated to the distinguished junior Senator from Alabama. I would ask the Chair how much time he has under the order?

Madam President, I had a conversation during the vote with the Senator from Alabama. I ask him at this time, would this be an appropriate time for him to use the 47 minutes or any part thereof?

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Alabama be allowed to speak, for debate purposes only, for the next 30 minutes, and that following that, I be recognized to obtain the floor.

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

Madam President, it is my understanding that the distinguished Senator from Alabama has about 27 minutes in the time that has been ordered; is that true?

I am also of the understanding, having spoken to the ranking member of the Finance Committee, Senator Grassley, that Senator Sessions is at this time willing to give him part of the time he has been allocated for debate only on this matter.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Iowa be recognized for up to 10 minutes.

Yes, Madam President.

It is my understanding that the Senator from Iowa is going to take 10 minutes of the time of the Senator from Alabama for debate, and if we have an opportunity to debate his amendment, of course, he can speak on it.

Madam President, I can handle the issue dealing with the Senator from Iowa because that is simply time the Senator from Alabama is giving him. As to the amendment itself, I know how strongly the Senator from Arizona feels on this amendment. He has explained that to me. He knows what we have been going through trying to get people the opportunity to speak. The only thing I can do now is ask unanimous consent that the time of the Senator from Alabama, which is 10 minutes, be allocated to the Senator from Iowa for debate only, leaving the Senator from Alabama, at a subsequent time, 17 or 18 minutes.

I think that is very fair. I thank the Senator from Alabama.

I propound a unanimous consent request that the Senator from Iowa be recognized for 5 minutes from the time given to the Senator from Alabama and 5 minutes to the Senator from Arizona for debate only.

I say to my friend from Iowa, I have been trying all day to allow people to speak to their heart's content. I have had objections. At this time, I have no objection to you speaking for a reasonable period of time and the Senator from Arizona speaking for a reasonable period of time. You can talk about your amendment, and he can talk about why he doesn't like your amendment. Forget about the Senator from Alabama. He reserved his 28 minutes.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Iowa be recognized for up to 10 minutes for debate only, and following his remarks, I ask that the Senator from Arizona be recognized for up to 10 minutes for debate only and following their remarks, that I be recognized.

Why don't you just yield it back?

For debate only.

Mr. President, I know this is not debatable, I understand that, but we are going to move to table Baucus, Grassley, and Domenici. I ask unanimous consent that the first vote be the standard time; the next two votes be 10-minute votes.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the motion to table.

Well, first, we have a unanimous consent request.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, as I indicated earlier, I am going to move to table the--oh, we can't do that. We are stuck on this amendment. Why don't we agree to the amendment now and move on to something else?

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, the distinguished junior Senator from Oklahoma has indicated he wants to speak for up to 10 minutes as in morning business. I ask unanimous consent that he be so recognized and that I be recognized following his 10 minutes. I have explained to the Senator from Oklahoma, and he understands, this is for debate only.

Mr. President, I know my friend from South Dakota wishes to speak. I have a unanimous consent request I wish to make that will put us into a situation where he can speak. I understand he wants to speak for 5 minutes. This will only take a minute, and then I will be recognized to do some other business we have to do tonight. It is nothing in relation to immigration. No one need worry about that.

Mr. President, is it the Senator's understanding with this legislation we will have virtually the strongest border in the history of the United States of America in the Southwest? Is that the Senator's understanding of the effect of this legislation?

Does the Senator agree with the Council of Economic Advisers that said passing this legislation will mean there is $55 billion--$55 billion--in fees and in fines that will be paid that will be used to strengthen the border, to enforce worksite enforcement, to make sure we are going to have a tamperproof card, which is essential for any kind of immigration system; and that if this legislation does not pass, that $55 billion is going to be paid for by the American taxpayer? Does the Senator understand that is the implication of these votes?

We have, as I understand, 10 minutes; is that correct?

I yield 5 minutes of that to the Senator from Colorado.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

If the Chair would let me know when I have 1 minute.

Mr. President, maybe we could take a moment and look at those words that are written in stone right above the Vice President's chair there: e pluribus unum, meaning one out of many. One out of many. That is the desire, that is the hope, that is the dream of this country: one out of many.

Many come from different traditions, backgrounds, and experience, but we all are one country with one history and one destiny--not with the Bond amendment, not with the Bond amendment.

The lines written at the Statue of Liberty are:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning

to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my

lamp beside the golden door!

That is right, as long as those individuals are working and who will never become citizens, who will never have that right to become a part of the American dream, and once you stop working, out of the country you go. Better gather up all of your belongings, because you are going to be out of status, and out of status means you can be subject to deportation.

You can imagine what that individual is going to say to their employer when the employer says: Sure, you have worked 40 hours. You work 50 hours, 60 hours, and bring your wife in and make sure she works overtime this week as well; otherwise, you are out of status. You are out of here.

That is what the Bond amendment would do to Americans. One America that has rights and privileges, and to a second group in America they say: Once we wring out of you the last bit of sweat that you can give to some employer, you are finished, you are out of status, you are deportable.

That isn't what this country is about. Maybe we don't like the fact that people are not satisfied with the regime we have given or recommended in this legislation that says: You go to the back of the line. You came here because you wanted to work, because you wanted to provide for your family; you came here, and you are at church on the weekends; and you came here and your son or daughter is serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. But we say: OK, you go to the end of the line, pay a fee, learn English, and you have to demonstrate that you are working and you are going to become a good American. That isn't good enough for some.

Well, Mr. President, this creates the two Americas, which I think all of us understand is not what this Nation is about. That is the result of the Bond amendment, and I think it would be a major step backward. We can imagine the resentment and hostility that will seethe and grow with generations that come with their families when they see them exploited. Talk about a danger and social dynamite in our society, this amendment will breed that. We don't need that or want it, Mr. President. We should not have it. I hope the amendment is not accepted.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, we have broken borders. The 1986 act had no enforcement mechanism, and that was under a Republican administration. We are not bringing that up. We have 12\1/2\ million immigrants. You can say we are going to ship them back, and it will take $250 billion and 25 years to be able to do it. Buses will stretch from Los Angeles to New York and back again. Are we going to do that? No, we are going to take another route and just exploit them and not do what is in this legislation, which makes them pay a fine and demonstrate that they are going to work hard and learn English and provide for their family and give something back to America, like they do when their sons and daughters serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. You will be able to stay here under the Bond amendment, but you are going to work for an employer. When you get tired of working, we are going to report to the INS that you are out of status, and out you are going to go, lock, stock, and barrel. It will be just sweat labor here.

We are going to have two Americas. You may not like our solution, but it is preferable to this alternative, which will create a permanent underclass. I think it would be a mistake.

I yield back my time.

Madam President, can we have order? These amendments are important and the Members deserve to hear the Senator.

Mr. President, the Senator from Arizona has explained the technical provisions of this legislation very well, but I want to underscore a very important difference. And that is how each system will treat their workers.

If there is some glitch in the system, under the legislation before us, under the existing law, the worker should be able to continue to work and can continue to work until ultimately there is a determination by a court that the worker should not be confirmed. The decision being appealed is called a nonconfirmation. If there is a glitch in the system--and we understand there are going to be a number of glitches in the system, but this was a provision that we took a considerable amount of time to make sure that workers who are going to be caught up in the system, if there is a glitch in the system, they will still be able to continue to work until there is a real indication of trouble. They will continue to work, unlike the proposal of the Senator from Iowa.

The amendment of the Senator from Iowa says that if there is found to be some glitch in the system, they will have a legal case, but they will have to demonstrate--this is the test: that the government's conduct has either been negligent, reckless, willful, or malicious. The employee will have to demonstrate one of those qualities, which means they have to go out and get a lawyer. They will be let go, and they will have to go out and get a lawyer and go through the whole legal process in order to recover some damages. There is a large difference.

I believe the underlying provisions which have been included--this is it, and I agree this is one of the most important provisions in the legislation. We want employer enforcement. That has to be a part of it. Tough borders that are going to be enforced and legality in the workplace, and the only way we are going to have legality in the workplace and also protection for the workers is the underlying bill.

The bill requires SSA to begin issuing only fraud-resistant, tamper- resistant, wear-resistant Social Security cards within 2 years. This will help prevent counterfeiting and identity theft by undocumented workers. The Grassley amendment has no comparable provision. It only requires that the worker give an employer a Social Security number rather than presenting an actual card.

If we are serious, and I think all of us in this body, are serious, about dealing with the undocumented, we have to have tough worksite enforcement, and we are also going to have to have tamper-proof cards. I think this moves us in that direction in a very positive and important way.

As I say, most importantly, at a time that we are going to go into this transition, how are the workers going to be treated, and really there is a dramatic difference between how those workers are going to be treated under the proposal we put forward under the existing bill and under the Grassley amendment.

For these reasons, I hope his amendment will not be accepted.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Isn't it true that the Finance Committee estimated that under these systems, there were going to be a certain number of mistakes that were going to be made?

That is exactly right. It is significant numbers, in the hundreds of thousands, as I remember. It is in the hundreds of thousands of mistakes that are going to be made as they set this up. I am just wondering about the protection of those workers. In our bill, we provide that those individuals should be protected because they can keep their jobs while they appeal a nonconfirmation. I am wondering if the Senator will relate to us how he thinks----

Do I have any time remaining?

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

Madam President, are we in morning business?

Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam President, I think all of us understand we have had a very full day today of voting on this legislation, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act. After more than 30 days of hearings since 9/11, after the 6 days of markup in our Judiciary Committee on the legislation that we addressed last year, which is very similar to the underlying legislation that is before us; after now some 23 days of debate on the legislation, both last year and now; after the consideration of more than 70 different amendments--70 different amendments--there is an awareness and understanding by the Members of this body about the substance of this legislation and, hopefully, a recognition of its importance.

We are sent here to legislate--not just to make speeches and to submit amendments but to legislate in our national interests, and we have a national challenge. We have a national challenge. I think everyone as Members of this body understands it. Certainly we receive the phone calls, the wires, the e-mails, and the rest. After it is all said and done, I think the people in our respective States and the people of this country are expecting us to exercise the best judgment about this legislation. They are not asking us to put our finger to the wind and say, from which way is the wind blowing the strongest and from what direction, but to try and take some initial steps--and they are initial but very important and fundamental steps--that can make a difference in terms of our national and border security.

(Mr. CASEY assumed the Chair.)

The American people are expecting action in this body. Tomorrow, in the morning, it will certainly be an extremely important and perhaps decisive vote about whether we are going to complete our responsibility, or whether we are not. I have respect for those who have expressed reservations and observations. But my commitment and view is stronger than when we first started this legislation. The importance of this legislation, I think,--I find it more persuasive than the day it was initially introduced, developed, and shaped over the period of the last years.

We all have been faced with this legislation more closely over this debate and the debates we have had in recent days. We know, as we have heard frequently, and as I have said and many others have said, we have a national security issue and a problem. We can, as a nation, no longer afford to have, effectively, almost an open border in the Southwest. We also know, because in our committee we have listened to those who understand this issue, when they say we need to have secure borders, they also understand that with the strong kind of magnet attraction the American economy has, there is going to be leakage on that border. No matter how high we build walls or how many radars or air drones we have there or how many border guards we have, there is going to be leakage, unless we provide at least some opportunities for those who have some skills that in the United States we find we are unable to get filled in terms of the American workforce.

There has to be at least some opportunity for those individuals to come to the United States. Those of us who support this legislation believe in legality. We believe in national security, but we believe in legality. What we have today is lawlessness. We have lawlessness on the border, approaching the border, after the border, and in too many shops, plants, and factories around our country, including in my own State, in which we find the undocumented exploited, and they continue to be exploited. That is happening today.

We have to ask: Do we have something that is going to be basically serious about the border? Are we going to have a way for us to be able to say, OK, there are certain skills that we need here in terms of the American economy--those may be high skills, but in many circumstances it is going to be low skills, according to the Department of Labor. This legislation approaches that issue. We may say we would like to have it skewed this way or that, to some degree, but the fundamentals are essential in terms of the legality on our borders, in terms of national security, and also with regard to worksite enforcement.

As one who has, along with others, been involved in these debates about immigration reform, unless you are going to have a tamperproof card, you might as well forget it. We have learned that lesson in the 1986 act and in the 1992 act and earlier periods of time. The idea that somehow tomorrow we are not going to be willing to continue this process and end this process without the assurances that we are going to end up with a tamperproof card is going to mean that the challenges we are facing on this issue at this time are going to be multiplied many times over, many times over. That is a fact.

Some people are troubled by the way that has been fashioned in this legislation. I think there is a strong and persuasive case we can make. We will have an additional opportunity with the Schumer amendment and, hopefully, with passage of cloture tomorrow. So we have those elements that are law enforcement at the border, respectful law, by coming into the United States and respecting our laws and our immigration laws, law enforcement at the worksite, and respect for the laws in that period of time. To say to those individuals who have come that--their motivations for coming here, by and large, are the values which Americans respect and admire, such as hard work. Sure, there may be some individuals who have gamed the system out there. But there can be no denial when any of us look at this situation and examine it and when you look at particularly the faces and meet the individuals, as

we all have, and we have had the issue spoken to so well by many of our colleagues, this is a population that is interested in hard work. That is a value Americans admire. They also admire the fact that these are families who work hard and care about the members of their family.

Mr. President, $40 billion a year is sent back to Central and South America by the primarily undocumented workers in the United States. This is where individuals are making $10,000 to $12,000 a year. So they care about their families. They are not coming in on their own to try to game the system. The statistics are there. I think those figures speak for themselves in terms of their willingness to work hard, care about their families and, as we all know, this community, this constituency--they are men and women of faith and belief, strong individuals of faith and belief.

On another occasion, we would say those are American values that we admire, and so many of them want to be part of the American dream and make America better. They reflect it by urging their sons and daughters to go into the service--thousands of them being in the service of our country in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many of them have lost their lives in the service of this country. So many of these families--as I listened to the mayor of Los Angeles today talk about a number of mothers he had met who lost their children in Iraq--the particular one he referred to had been undocumented and their son had been lost. In any event, that is the general sense of their desire and willingness, similar to other immigrants who came at other times.

So what is their great violation? The violation is that they have violated our immigration laws. That is serious. What is on the other side of those barriers? The magnet of the American economy. The magnet of the American economy has drawn these individuals like moths to a flame. Sure, it is all there because they have violated our laws, but they work hard and they care for their families. They are men and women of faith, with an extraordinary record of looking after their grandparents, and they have a great desire to be part of the American dream. They have violated laws and they should have a penalty. We looked around and looked around, those of us, Republicans and Democrats, at what should be the penalty. Should they get a penalty? The $5,000 processing fee can vary. We can put a requirement in about learning English. In Boston, MA, it is not that the undocumented don't want to learn English; it is a 3-year wait. Courses in English cost from $2,000 to $3,000 in my part of the world. I look forward to the Alexander amendment--the Senator from Tennessee. He wants to at least provide greater access to individuals to learn English. We are for that. There are requirements that they have to learn English. They have to demonstrate they have worked here and that they paid their taxes and they have to demonstrate that they are good Americans and that they are learning English. We have those requirements. Before they can even think about moving on the pathway to a green card, they have to wait in line for the 8 years to clear up.

Then, according to a merit system, over the next 5 years, they will be able to hopefully get on the path for a green card and then wait another 5 years to become a citizen--8 years, 5 years, and 5 more years. That is 18 years for some of those individuals, plus the penalties and fines--for people who want to be a part of the American dream.

This has, as others have spoken to, very important provisions in here about the ag jobs. I remember going through the Southwest in the early 1960s when I arrived in the Senate. Americans were involved in the Bracero Program, which, outside of slavery, was the greatest exploitation of humanity. Perhaps we could talk about some of the incidents in terms of the Native Americans certainly. But this was a sanctioned program that continued for years and years with the exploitation and abuse of people.

That was the beginning of the rise of the farmworker movement and the extraordinary tensions that existed between the farmworkers and the agricultural interests. It took a long period of time. Finally, they got together to try to have a program which both of them agreed with, which is the AgJOBS bill, to make a difference to 800,000 or 900,000 people who are some of the hardest working people in America. Then there's the DREAM Act. There is some responsibility in the areas of education. We know of the difficulty so many have in completing high school. It is true in the Latino community. This kind of opportunity-- if they are the sons of people who came here undocumented, these children didn't know about it, but if they work hard and complete school, they have the opportunity to serve this country and they can get on a pathway for citizenship, or if they are otherwise eligible and the State approves, they can also continue in education.

So there are, I know, strong views about these different provisions; but, quite frankly, I think it is a compelling story that demands and requires action. If we fail this opportunity, we know we are going to miss this opportunity for some time. It is getting late into the season now, July and August we will be out and in September is the appropriations time. We will move into a highly politicized period of time, and we will move into a Presidential campaign. So we will miss an incredible opportunity.

I hope the Senate is going to be responsible tomorrow. We know if we fail, those individuals are all going to be out there; the numbers are going to increase, exploitation will increase, and we are going to have the silent amnesty that others have referred to. That is the real alternative. I don't say that because I believe the failure to act is bad, and it is going to get worse, although I believe it will. It is that if we can take this action and make this downpayment, we can continue to work on this issue as the House does. That will take time. We can obviously work with those who are interested in it and try to make adjustments and changes and try to strengthen and improve it. That is the way the legislative process works. Hopefully, we will be able to come to the period where we can all feel the final product is the best judgment we have had on this bill. That is the optimum, and it seems to me this is an exceedingly important opportunity we should not miss.

Finally, I again thank our leaders for giving us a chance to come back to this issue. We know it has been a complicated and difficult one. As I have said repeatedly, immigration and civil rights are the hot-button issues. We have had complex issues in our HELP Committee dealing with biologics, an enormously complex and difficult issue. We came together and passed that legislation. We had issues dealing with information technology, privacy, grants, and we came together and took action. Our committee has been dealing with the general cost of education and loan programs, and we were able to, Republicans and Democrats, cut some $18 billion from the lenders and return $17 billion to the students. We came together, Republicans and Democrats, and have been able to get reauthorization of the Food and Drug Administration. We look forward to continuing with mental health parity and other issues. But it is the issues of immigration and civil rights that are the hot-button issues, and they get the juices flowing.

I hope tonight people will stand back and think through the significance of this vote tomorrow. It is going to be a matter of enormous importance to our country. It is going to have enormous importance in terms of quality of life for millions of people. We are going to make the decision whether they are going to continue to live in fear or whether they are going to be able to come out of that darkness into the sunshine and be part of this country. If we don't act, we all know what is going to be happening in local communities all across the country and the increasing backwash that is going to arise that is going to make other matters much more difficult for us to continue to make progress on.

I look forward to tomorrow, and I hope all our Members will exercise their best judgment. We will have an opportunity to move ahead and complete this legislation and then hopefully we will continue the progress we made in the Senate so we can work with those who have differing views in the House and in the Senate and ultimately get legislation that is worthy of the Senate.

Madam President, I will be pleased to use 30 minutes now, and will reserve the remainder of my time, if I could.

Madam President, we are in the process of dealing with a very important issue. A number of our colleagues--in some ways dismissive, I think, of the concerns of the American public--refer it to as an emotional issue. I think it is more than an emotional issue. I think it is a serious issue that requires our serious concern. It requires that this great Senate, on a matter of tremendous importance to our Nation and to our constituents, do it correctly.

I love my colleagues who met to try to write this bill. I believe their hearts were correct. But they are not law enforcement officers. They have not investigated and prosecuted cases. They apparently were inundated with information and ideas, and so forth, from special interest groups and others.

I have said I wish the American people had been in the room. I wish the head of our Border Patrol association had been in the room or perhaps the chief of Border Patrol during President Reagan's tenure or the chief of Border Patrol during former President Bush's tenure. All of those people, including the current chairman of the association of retired Border Patrol officers, have criticized this bill in the most severe manner, saying it is a slap in the face to people who followed the law, saying it will not work, saying the 24-hour name check is not going to work at all, and will not provide security to our country, that it will actually be a benefit to terrorists. I am not saying this; they said this. It would be a benefit to terrorists. One called it the ``Terrorist Relief Act,'' or something to that effect.

What I want to tell my colleagues is, the professionals who deal with these issues absolutely oppose this legislation. Now, we can dismiss that. Maybe you talk to somebody from some news outlet or talk to somebody from some business group or some activist organization, and maybe you have a different view. But the people who enforce the laws every day oppose this legislation.

They do not believe it will work. I suggest it will be demoralizing to them.

Our own Congressional Budget Office has analyzed the legislation. We have them for our use. We rely on that organization. It operates under the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the majority leader here, and all of us. It is a bipartisan group. But the Congressional Budget Office has analyzed our current law and concluded that if current law is not changed, we will have 10 million more illegal immigrants in our country in the next 20 years. We have 12 million now, maybe 20 million. But we would have 10 million more under current law. They say if this legislation were to be passed, we would have some reduction of illegality at the border--not much--but we would have an increase in visa overstays because we have so many temporary guest worker programs going on, and the net result would be that this Nation would only have a reduction of 13 percent in the illegal flow of immigrants into our country. Indeed, there would be 8.9 million more persons illegally in our country 20 years from now than today.

Now, what does that say about my good and well-intentioned colleagues who are trying to tell us all that the thing is going to work, that if you do not pass this amnesty, if you do not give these benefits to people who came here illegally, then you will not get enforcement?

Well, we are not getting enforcement, everyone. The bill does not provide enforcement--not in any significant way that would allow us to proceed effectively.

We had hearings in our committees that dealt with the question of the impact of large numbers of foreign workers on the wages of American workers. It is not, I think, subject to dispute. At the current rate we are going, at the current rate of immigration, legal and illegal, wages of lower income Americans are being adversely affected. Professor Borjas at Harvard, who has written a most authoritative technical book on immigration at the Kennedy School, has said it has brought down the wage of low-income workers 8 percent. That is a lot. That is a lot, an 8-percent decline in wages. In many areas, it could be even greater than that, I suspect. It is pretty understandable that it would happen. If you bring in more cotton in this country, if you bring in more cotton, you will have a lower price for cotton. If you bring in corn, you will have a lower price for corn. If you bring in large amounts of labor, it will pull down the value of a working man's hourly wage. So I am concerned about that.

My colleagues have said a number of times that by getting this--Madam President, there is a little bit of a buzz.

So we have a number of questions that cause us concern. I talked about wages. Let me mention the rule of law.

Our Nation is founded on law. Edmund Burke, when he talked about reconciliation between the Colonies and the King, asked that there not be a war against the Colonies. He said: They follow us in law. He even said: I understand the Colonies have more copies of Blackstone's Commentaries on the law than they have in England.

We have always been a nation of laws. It is our strength. We should not create a system that will not restore that law, even at our borders; otherwise, we are going to have a difficult situation.

Under this bill, we carefully looked at the number. I don't think anyone will dispute it. The level of legal immigration will double-- double the amount of legal immigration. That is a number I don't think most Americans understand. I think they are worried about the current level, which is at about the highest this Nation has ever had--highest by far in real numbers we have ever had--and it is going to double, without any reduction in illegal immigration. So this is a bargain, a grand bargain we should not take. If we do, I think we will regret it because the American people are not going to be happy with us.

By the way, the polls continue to show that our constituents overwhelmingly oppose this legislation. A decent respect for our own constituents, even if we might think them wrong, on an issue of this importance where they are so decidedly hostile to this legislation suggests we ought to slow down and listen to them and talk with them about what their concerns are and make sure when we go back home and campaign and seek reelection, we can look them in the eye and say: I heard your concern, and I fixed that concern, or I believe the legislation answers your concern.

But here we have a completely new bill that has been plopped down on the Senate floor, first with over 700 pages, and then I guess last night there was a 370-page amendment, and that had so many errors in it that even the sponsors themselves have plopped down another amendment of 403 pages. They want to vote that through right away. I don't think that is what we owe our constituents.

They say: Well, we have had 2 years of debate, and all that. We had a bill last year that was quite different from this one. It had some things in it better than this one. I thought this year's bill was going to be better, and said it was better several times, but it actually--as I have studied it, I am not sure it is any better. It is weaker in a number of different areas. For sure, it is weaker in a number of different areas. So that is a matter we should consider as we go forward with this legislation. I think we ought to give careful attention to what we are doing.

I want to address one more very important matter that very fine Senators have raised. They have suggested one of the best things that is going to be happening with this legislation is everybody will be given an identification, and the Nation will be safer for that. Therefore, even if the bill is not perfect and has lots of problems, let's vote for it anyway because it has that in it. Let me share some thoughts with my colleagues on that issue.

Michael Cutler, who is a retired INS--Immigration and Naturalization Service--senior agent, participated in a press conference last Thursday at the National Press Club. It focused on the grave threat to national security the immigration bill represents. He also authored an op-ed in the Washington Times last Friday entitled ``Immigration Bill a No Go.'' This is an experienced INS agent. He focused on the security question in the bill: Does it make us safer? This is what he said. I doubt our good friends who met in secret and wrote this bill asked his opinion, but this is what he says after reading it:

If a person--

Let me quote:

If a person lies about his or her identity and has never been

fingerprinted in our country, what will enable the

bureaucrats at the USCIS--

That is who will be checking his 24-hour background----

the bureaucrats at USCIS to know that person's true identity?

If the adjudicators simply make a fictitious identity through

a computerized database, they will simply find the name has

no known connection to any criminal or terrorist watch list.

What is the value of that? Remember, we are talking about a

false name. There is absolutely no way this program would

have even a shred of integrity and the identity documents

that would be given these millions of illegal aliens would

enable every one of them to receive a driver's license,

Social Security card, and other such official identity

documents in a false name. Undoubtedly, terrorists would be

among those applying to participate in this ill-conceived

program. They would then be able to open bank accounts and

obtain credit cards in that false name. Finally, these cards

would enable these aliens to board airlines and trains even

if their true names appear on all of the various terrorist

watch lists and no-fly lists. That is why I have come to

refer to this legislation as the ``Terrorist Assistance and

Facilitation Act of 2007.''

Do you get it? Unless you already happen to be fingerprinted and you come here and you are a known terrorist and you give a false name with some false electric bill, they will give you this temporary visa and you get an ID then. Before, if you are illegal, you would have a hard time getting a bank account or a Social Security card or a driver's license. Now, you are given one. You can travel all over the country with no problems. That is what he is saying. So in many ways, it is going to facilitate a dangerous situation.

How about this gentleman, Mr. Kris Kobach, a former Department of Justice attorney under Attorney General Ashcroft, who specialized in the Department of Justice in terrorism and immigration issues and who has spoken out often and is a college professor

now. He agrees with Mr. Cutler. He posted an article on the Heritage Foundation Web site titled ``The Senate Immigration Bill: A National Security Nightmare.'' He says:

The bill will make it easier for alien terrorists who

operate in the United States by allowing them to create

fraudulent identities with ease. Supporters of the Senate's

comprehensive immigration reform bill have revived it under

the guise of national security. However, the new public

relations campaign is a farce. The bill offers alien

terrorists new pathways to obtain legal status, which will

make it easier for them to carry out deadly attacks against

American citizens. The top priority in this bill is extending

amnesty as quickly and as easily as possible to as many

illegal aliens as possible. The cost of doing so is to

jeopardize national security.

That is Mr. Kris Kobach who has testified before Congress a number of times, former Assistant Attorney General specializing in immigration and national security issues.

So I urge my colleagues to look at this bill because we don't need to pass a piece of legislation that we can't defend to our constituents, that we cannot tell our constituents with confidence it will make them safer. It will reduce illegality dramatically at the border 13 percent; 80, 90, 95 percent is the goal we should have to reduce illegality, and that should be the beginning point. We can get there. We don't need to pass a piece of legislation that is going to double the legal flow, not reduce the illegal flow, and end up having the wages of Americans further diminished by this incredibly large flow of low-skilled, low- wage workers. We don't need to further erode the morale of our Border Patrol officers and erode American confidence in the rule of law.

Those are my thoughts. I hope we will give this serious consideration as we make our judgment tomorrow about whether we should proceed. If we don't proceed tomorrow, that is not the end. Of course, we are going to consider this bill and this issue--continue to consider it. Polling data suggests the American people, what they want us to do, is to take incremental steps focusing on enforcement.

Why don't we just do that? We might could get that done. That would be what I suggest.

Also, one more time, I urge my colleagues to give the most serious consideration to the procedure by which we are moving forward with this legislation. People have said it is unfair. I think it is unfair, but it is more than unfair. It is a historic departure from the traditions of the Senate. The leader of this Senate is arrogating to himself the ability to approve every single amendment that is voted on. No amendment can be voted on the leader does not approve. That is the way this clay pigeon has been set up. That has never been done before. Any Senators willing to come down here and battle and hold out and not give up can get his amendments up and voted on. I think it is a matter that most of us haven't fully comprehended yet. I think Senators who are proud of the great ability of individual Senators, when they feel strongly about an issue--it doesn't happen often--but they can stand up and make sure their amendments get voted on, and they have an opportunity to speak.

Madam President, I reserve the remainder of my time and note the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I will yield up to 10 minutes to the Senator from Iowa.

I understand this would be time allotted to me. The Senator does still have his entitlement to speak on his amendment when that appropriate time comes.

Reserving the right to object, under the circumstances and the nature of the amendment, I am prepared to yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Iowa from the balance of my time.

No, I object, Madam President. If the Senator is going to be speaking on his amendment, it is not mine. I don't like his amendment. I am going to give him 5 minutes out of courtesy. I am disappointed that the Senator from Arizona would not be able to respond.

The Senator from Iowa looks at me. The majority leader won't allow you to speak. I was trying to give you 5 minutes.

I don't care if I speak. Let's forget all this. I can speak some other time. I would like to say why I ought to have debate on my amendment. If I don't talk about the substance of the amendment, can I talk about why I ought to be able to bring up the amendment?

Would you mind if I said why I ought to be able to bring my amendment up?

Thank you. I am not going to talk about the substance of my amendment. I want to remind people before the amendment comes up that, No. 1, I was promised by the Senator from Pennsylvania and, in turn, his talking to the Senator from Massachusetts, that I would have an opportunity to offer an amendment. Now I

have that opportunity to offer the amendment, so that promise has been kept. I have tried to clear it with my Republican colleagues who have been objecting all afternoon so that they would not object to my efforts to offer and debate my amendment. So I hope you realize it doesn't do much good to make a promise for me to offer my amendment if I don't have an opportunity to debate the amendment. That is the first point.

The second point is that I should not even be here having to offer this amendment. If you go back to that Thursday afternoon in April when there were rump sessions in S. 219, I was invited by some of the people to the rump session who were working on this compromise--to come in and offer a compromise on Social Security identification, employer identification, or verification. I went to that meeting and sat there for a long time and explained a compromise. I had no objections to the compromise at that particular time, but 3 weeks later, the document comes out and it is not the compromise I had presented, which I assumed was agreed to. That doesn't surprise me because going back to January or February, Senator Kyl had met with me and some other people, because this is in the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee--we have jurisdiction over IRS and over the Social Security system--saying that they were very strongly in favor of having something that went way beyond protecting the privacy of Internal Revenue tax records and Social Security information and were hellbent on going down a route of giving the Department of Homeland Security any sort of information they want, not within the tradition of protecting the privacy of income tax records.

So that is why my amendment is being offered, because I am going back to that compromise which I presented to the committee in the rump session back in April which I thought was OK. I find out now that it is not. That is why I am going to offer my amendment.

How much time do I have?

Mr. President, I am going to speak generally about the legislation before us.

There is some concern that I have expressed--not so much on the floor but in other public comments I made--that I am one of about 22 or 23 Members of the Senate who were here in 1986 when we passed amnesty, as is in this bill as well. I was one of those Senators who voted for amnesty at that particular time. At that particular time, we had maybe 1 million to 3 million people cross the border illegally and who were here illegally. We all thought--and there have been plenty of references to statements made in the Congressional Record 20 years ago--that if we were to adopt amnesty, it would settle this problem once and for all, do it once and for all. You know, I believed that. But do you know what I found out maybe 5 or 10 years ago? When you reward illegality, you get more of it. Now the guesstimate is that we have 12 million people here illegally. They are not illegal people, but they came here illegally.

I think I have an obligation to consider the votes I made before and, if they are wrong, not make that mistake again. You know, it is a little like the chaos you would have if you didn't respect and enforce red lights and stop signs. You would have chaos at intersections and accidents. Wherever you don't enforce the rule of law, those are the things that happen. You need social cohesion, and social cohesion comes from respect for the rule of law in our country.

So it seems to me that, as we go down this road, what we ought to do is concentrate on legal immigration, the reforms we are bringing to the H-1B program, the reforms we are bringing in the way of a temporary worker program. People would rather come here legally rather than illegally, I believe. I know it is not very satisfying to people to hear that we have 12 million people in the underground. The point is that if people could come here legally to work, they would soon, one by one, by attrition, replace people who are here illegally, I believe.

I am not one who wants to make that mistake again. That is why I am weighing very heavily the issue of what we do with amnesty or what other people who don't like the word ``amnesty'' would say is earned citizenship, guest worker program, those sorts of things that are covering up really what we are doing.

I say if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it is a duck. If it looks like amnesty, it is amnesty. That is the bottom line. We ought to learn the lesson that in 1986 it didn't work. I don't think it will work now. I am 73 years old, so obviously I am not going to be here 20 years from now when we have another immigration bill. But I should not make that problem so that a successor of mine has to deal with 25 million people being here illegally as opposed to the 12 million now or the 1 to 3 million before.

I yield the floor and whatever time I didn't use I will retain or whatever is done with the surplus.

I reserve my time.

Mr. President, I have 3 minutes left, I have been told. First of all, I think the Senator from Massachusetts was doing a good job reading from a letter Secretary Chertoff sent to me. I sent back a rebuttal letter, and I would like to provide the letter for the Senator from Massachusetts to read. It is a point-by-point rebuttal of what is wrong with Secretary Chertoff's analysis of my amendment.

One of the criticisms that Senator Kyl gave against my amendment is we are not going to force employers to look through 160 million workers to find illegal workers. Let's look at the basic legislation. The legislation legalizes people who are here already illegally. So if they are illegally working, and this bill legalizes them, don't you see how ridiculous it is that we are going to tell people to go out and find people who are here illegally when the bill has already legalized them?

The second point is that we eliminate the requirement of a photograph for identification. My amendment requires every U.S. citizen to present a passport or driver's license and every noncitizen to present a legal permanent resident card or work authorization card. Each of these documents is required to contain an individual's photograph.

Moreover, my amendment requires workers to submit their passport number, driver's license number, or employment authorization number in addition to their Social Security number through the employment verification system. Without that information, there is no guarantee that Homeland Security will be able to contact the issuing agencies or determine which document was issued. This is the very same problem that has prevented Homeland Security from utilizing Social Security Administration data in the past.

My amendment further requires the Social Security Administration, the State Department, and the State departments of motor vehicles to establish a reliable and secure method to allow the Department of Homeland Security to verify the identity document of each issuing agency.

On another point Senator Kyl made saying it eliminates after 5 years the information sharing among Government departments, which is critical to making this work, a sunset is standard practice when we compromise the protection for the individual taxpayer, that the taxpayer's income tax information will be private so that, like President Johnson and President Nixon, it cannot be used to violate your privacy for political reasons. That is why that law was passed.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record several letters regarding this issue.

Yes.

Yes, we presented that to you that day in April----

Mr. President, the only response I can give to the Senator from Massachusetts is that we have worked very hard in the Finance Committee to make sure that private income tax information and private Social Security information is protected. It seems to me that is basic to a system of taxation that is voluntary compliance.

We have made some compromises of that, some use of that under very strict guidelines in the past. We presented it to the Senator's committee on this bill the same as we have in the past. The 5-year sunset is one example. Certain penalties for misuse of the information is another one.

It seems to me that is very basic if we are going to have confidence in our tax system and protect the privacy of the individual taxpayer.

I said you would have to have debate in order to keep your promise or it doesn't mean anything.

We don't.

Mr. President, I have a question for the majority leader. Do I understand that currently the pending business before the Senate--or will be pending--is a motion to table the Dodd amendment; is that correct?

Also, just for the purpose of propounding a unanimous consent request, Mr. President, my thought would be, given the fact we are about to vote on an amendment, it would help the body, obviously, to have a brief explanation of that amendment. I wonder if the body would agree to give the Senator from Connecticut 5 minutes to explain his amendment, for 5 minutes on this side, for me or----

Reserving the right to object, if this is a unanimous consent request, I have comments to make in opposition to the amendment of the Senator from Iowa and would like to be afforded an opportunity to do so. So if the agreement is to afford time to one side, but the other side won't get an opportunity to speak, then I will object to that. I hope we can work something out where I would get at least 5 minutes. The Senator from Iowa should have time to debate his amendment, but I want time to respond.

Mr. President, may I be notified after 5 minutes so I might yield time to Senator Kennedy?

Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Iowa. He was absolutely assured by people on our side that he would be allowed to bring up an amendment, and I am glad we have been able to do that. He certainly should be afforded that right.

With that said, however, I can't match his opposition to the bill with his amendment. If you want to assure that the bill will not work, then adopt the Grassley amendment. It substitutes the existing title III in the bill, which is a very good title to ensure employee verification, with a potpourri of provisions that, frankly, look a lot like the status quo and will not ensure that employees are adequately checked to ensure they are entitled to be employed.

For example, the Grassley amendment provides that none of the current employees are checked. In other words, the only people who have to be checked are future employees, so all the people working today, including all the illegal immigrants working today, don't have to be checked under the Grassley amendment.

Secondly, amazingly, the only way to physically verify that the person seeking the job is, in fact, the person with the identity entitled to be employed is with a photograph. Nobody is proposing that we fingerprint people to get jobs, and that leaves the photograph as the best identity document. The bill provides that either a passport with a photograph or a driver's license with a photograph be the document. You have to verify that the person standing in front of you is the person to whom the document has been issued and the rightful owner of the Social Security number he has given you.

The Grassley amendment does not require that a photograph be used in the identification process. This is one of the first things that was recommended by the 9/11 Commission, to have a secure document with a photograph with which you can confirm identity.

Third, and this is amazing, and I honestly don't understand why this would be in the Senator's amendment, but it gives foreign temporary workers the right to file legal complaints against employers who hire American workers instead--basically, to file a discrimination complaint based upon the fact that they were not hired.

Current law does not permit temporary workers to file these complaints. The basic bill would not allow workers to file these complaints. But the amendment does this by eliminating current laws that prohibit temporary workers from filing a discrimination claim based on immigration status.

Next, one of the key things we did after 9/11 was to ensure that Government agencies could share information with each other. When we determined the best way to ensure people are legally eligible to work, we quickly understood that we had to have sharing of information from the Social Security Administration, from the Department of Homeland Security, even, in some cases, from the Internal Revenue Service. Unless these agencies are able to

share the information with each other when we access the databases, we are not going to know for sure whether the individual is entitled to be employed. What the amendment provides is that after 5 years, the information-sharing provisions are sunsetted.

None of these are really calculated to ensure that we can have a good employee verification system. They undercut that system and, as a result, they would weaken our ability to ensure employee eligibility to work.

Finally, in some cases, we have employers who are violating IRS rules because they don't report income. The underlying bill allows the IRS to identify those employers and go after them. This is one of the things the American people are upset with today, that we are not going after employers who are violating the law, who commit tax violations in hiring unlawful workers. The underlying bill allows us to do that. The amendment doesn't allow us to do that, and I don't understand why.

The bottom line is that title III of the underlying bill is a very good, strong provision supported on a bipartisan basis to ensure that we can verify the eligibility of workers to be employed.

Title III, unfortunately, is weakened dramatically by this Grassley amendment which would in all the five ways I indicated undercut our ability to verify employment.

Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time and yield to the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Iowa have an additional minute to respond, and then I will take my last minute.

Yes, for debate only.

I thank the Chair.

Three quick things. The amendment of the Senator from Iowa eliminates both the requirement of an employee to show an official identification card with a photo in State or Federal databases and the DHS-run photo match system that is the ultimate protection against document fraud in the workplace. You have to be able to do that match.

Second, the Senator from Iowa says why would we want to check workers after we have made them legal? Well, the whole point is to be sure we don't have anyone continuing to work here illegally.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of organizations that oppose the Grassley amendment.