SENATOR HUTCHISON SPEAKS ON THE SENATE FLOOR ABOUT IMMIGRATION REFORM

Last year, the House put in the Secure Fence Act specificity about exactly where the fence would go. There was no requirement that the local people, private property owners, cities that are right on the Rio Grande River would have any input whatsoever. I do not think Congress can say that the priority fencing is 15 miles on either side of the port of entry of Laredo. It might be 10 miles. We might be spending billions of dollars that are unnecessary putting in 15 miles. It might not even be possible to put it in certain places because of the geography and the topography. We have an amendment in the underlying bill that does require local input so that Congress is not mandating, but, instead, the Border Patrol chiefs, who have been designated by the Department of Homeland Security, will make these decisions.

Mr. COBURN. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I am happy to yield.

Mr. COBURN. Would that not negate the direction of the Secure Fence Act of last year?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. It would most certainly--it doesn't negate the purpose.

Mr. COBURN. No, no. I agree. But it would relieve that problem as you saw in the Secure Fence Act of last year, of 2006.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Would what?

Mr. COBURN. Your underlying language would alleviate that problem in the 2006 Secure Fence Act?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. It doesn't relieve the specificity of miles of fence. It does relieve the specificity of exactly where it goes.

Mr. COBURN. So that would supersede whatever we had in the Secure Fence Act in my amendment?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. That is correct.

Mr. COBURN. So therefore your argument, I believe, is moot, because if you have that in the underlying bill, then that problem is solved and you should be able to support this amendment.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Unfortunately, I am afraid the amendment overrules that minor revision in the Border Fence Act to which, frankly, I have to say to the Senator from Oklahoma, we had agreement from the leadership on both sides of the aisle in both Houses that we would take out that particular part. But the leadership changed, and we were not able to vote against and hold up the bill because it was the Defense supplemental bill to which that Border Fence Act was attached. To have held up the bill would have been to hold up our Defense supplemental, which of course overrode everything. That is why we waited to try to fix that minor part in this bill, which we have done and which would be undercut by the Coburn amendment.

I find myself having to oppose the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma, even though in many ways I understand his purpose and agree with his purpose. Nevertheless, I must protect the rights of my constituents--cities and private property owners. We have to have the input from those local people, and the Border Patrol should be the ones deciding exactly where those fences are needed, not the Congress, most of whom have not ever visited Laredo, TX.

I do hope we can defeat the Coburn amendment and go forward with the bill--well, not go forward with the bill as it stands today but certainly with this part of the bill.

I would like to use the remainder of my time to talk about cloture because I am most certainly strongly against cloture on the underlying bill that is before us. Not that there isn't some good in this bill, but this bill is not ready to be closed out.

The good parts of the bill are the border security parts. Border security has specific benchmarks that must be met before the trigger is pulled for the guest worker program to go forward. That is a good part of this bill.

I added an amendment at midnight last night that shores up the Social Security protection in this bill. There was a loophole in the underlying bill that would have allowed people to gain Social Security credit for hours worked illegally, for days and months and years worked illegally. That would have hurt our Social Security system. We fixed that last night. That is a good part of this bill. There are good parts that need to be worked on to make this a better bill.

However, closing this bill out now would be worse than the present law today, or the present lack of law today. We have chaos in this country with the estimated 12 million, maybe even 20 million illegal people here. We know there are security lapses. We have to fix that. I respect very much the bipartisan work that has been done on this bill, but it is not yet ready. The 5-year sunset of the guest worker program is a killer. We could not possibly say that we are going to fix the chaos that happened after the 1986 act because there were not laws for a guest worker program that worked--oh, but it is only going to last 5 years. That would add to the chaos.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 more minute.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I also wish to make sure I have the opportunity to propose an amendment that would take the amnesty out of this bill. I could never vote for cloture until we have the opportunity to address the amnesty issue.

My amendment would require every person who is seeking a Z-1 or Z-A visa, the people who are going to try to work in our country legally, to return home to apply from there. I think that would make a huge difference in this bill. It would take out the amnesty because it would say, if you are going to work in our country today or tomorrow or 2 years from now or 25 years from now, you will apply from outside the country to come in legally so we have control of our system.

I hope we can avoid the cloture so we can work on this bill in a positive, productive way and do what is right for our country today, tomorrow, and in the long term.

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