SENATOR HUTCHISON DISCUSSES IMMIGRATION REFORM

There are some good features of this bill. I think we have run into many problems, one of which is it didn't go through committee, which I think everybody agrees has caused there to be so many conflicts and rewrites, and when you adopt an amendment, it changes something else. That should have been done in committee. Another is that this issue hits so close to so many people. So we see objections from all different types of groups, Democrats and Republicans, business groups and labor groups. So it is something that I think now is on the radar screen of the American people. It is something that I think is good that we are discussing because I do believe it is Congress's responsibility to fix this problem. It is a problem that was made in a 1986 act of Congress when amnesty was granted and the law was not enforced. There was no guest worker program that was going forward, so we had illegal behavior and there was a blind eye turned.

Now it is 20 years later, after 1986, and we find ourselves having to deal with the inability to know who is in our country because we have not enforced the laws and we have not had a workable program to provide the jobs that would grow the economy of our country. So here we are, trying to pass a bill that will fix the problems of the past but also to set a standard that says we are not going to have the going-forward capability for someone to come into our country illegally and stay long enough that they will be able to become legal without applying through the processes from their home country.

There are good parts of the bill. I give those who have worked so hard on this bill credit for significant border security increases, for an effort to end chain migration. In most countries in the world, the guest worker green card equivalent ratio is two-thirds workers, one-third family. It is the opposite in America; it is two-thirds family, one-third worker, which is why we have this crisis of needing more workers but not having the capability to bring them in legally in a process that will work. So that effort was made in this bill, and it is one of the important good points of the bill. So I recognize there are good parts of the bill.

The problems in the bill must be fixed if we are going to do this right and deal with the people who are here illegally in a responsible and rational and pragmatic way but also set the standard that we start now, and will be set through the future, that you must apply from your home country to come into this country to work legally. If we don't set that standard in the bill, we will have another disaster 20 years from now that a future Congress will be trying to fix.

My problem with the bill is the amnesty. Anyone who tries to say it is not amnesty is not being realistic. If you can come to this country, stay, never have to go home and go into the process of legalization and going into our Social Security program, which is allowed in the underlying bill, that is amnesty. So I have an amendment going forward that will try to take the amnesty out of this bill. That is one of the major things I think we can do to make this a bill that could be supported. My amendment would provide that all adult work-eligible illegal people in this country would have the ability to come forward, and they would have 1 year to do it, for a temporary permit while the processing is done on that person's background, and then a temporary card would be given, after which a person would have 2 years to go back to their home country and apply and come in legally to get that Z visa, or that ZA, which is the ag worker visa, legally in our country. It was important.

One of the things we did in my amendment that I think is so important is we treat every work-eligible adult the same way. Whether it is an ag worker, restaurant worker or someone working in a hotel, everyone would be treated the same way if they are in the Z-1 category or ZA category--the workers we are trying to regularize would have the same requirements.

Now, there will be an amendment later that will say just the heads of households would have to go home. That was my original thought. But then how can I say the working spouse of a head of a household could stay here, but the head of household could not? So we set the 2-year timeframe for the people who are adult, work-eligible people illegally in our country--we set 2 years after they have signed up for their temporary permit for them to go home and get regularized, get that final stamp before they come back, and if they do have a homestead here with children, they would have 2 years so that one spouse at a time could go home. To me, that says we are setting the standard today. It will be the standard that we ask people, if they want to have the privilege of working in our country, to do; and we will ask people who want the privilege 10 years from now and 25 years from now to do the same, so that we send the major message, which was the problem we had that created the crisis, that you cannot come to our country and stay illegally and eventually get regularized without ever having to apply, according to the law from your home country. That is what my amendment does.

We do have a modification of the amendment as it applies to agricultural workers because we don't intend to change the sort of different requirements for an ag worker to keep their ag worker visa the same. We have modified our amendment so the basic requirements for agricultural workers, which is somewhat different from the restaurant workers, would stay the same, but the ag workers would have the same requirements that the restaurant worker has, and that is they would have to go home within the 2-year period after they have signed up as illegal and apply from home, or have the ability, if the Secretary designates another consulate as able, to return home to the consulate to take that application that would be done. So we have the SAFE ID, which is going to be the basis of the worker verification system, which will be a tamperproof ID that will have a picture and a biometric signal that can be picked up easily by an employer. It will be an online verification system so the employer can, with ease, determine that the person working is eligible to work.

If we can do this and take the amnesty out of the bill, it is so very important that we set the standard now, so that everybody who wishes to have the privilege to work in this great country will know what the rules are and will know that the rules are going to be enforced. That is the purpose of my amendment.

I believe if we can pass this amendment, it would add a major component to this piece of legislation that would say not only are we going to have border security measures and this effort to end chain migration, have the merit-based system, take care of the H-1Bs and technical workers we want to come in and to attract into our country, that all these things would be done that are good.

But in addition, we are setting the standards today and into the future that if you want to work here, you come in through the system, applying from outside the country.

I hope my amendment will be able to be passed. Having the 2 years after the first year would allow the process to work. Anyone who says we cannot do the processing with all of the consulates that are available in the countries, most of whom are going to be in Mexico or Central or South America--and easily accessible--and also Canada, anyone who says we cannot do that over a 3-year period, I think, is raising a red herring.

I believe it is possible, if we are committed to doing it and committed to the laws of our country that would be adhered to by everyone who comes in.

We must know who is in our country. We must have a guest worker program going forward that will work and accommodate the economy that does need these work jobs that are not being filled.

I hope we can come to an agreement on this bill that we can all support and know that it is right for our country today and it will be right for our country 25 years from now and that future Congresses will not look back and say: What were they thinking? Why didn't they do what was right for our country? I hope we can do that, Mr. President.

I reserve the remainder of my time.
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