Thursday, March 30, 2006

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Floor Statement on Border Security
Remarks as Delivered on the Senate Floor

Mr. President, in 1903, Andrew Bengsten boarded a ship and left Sweden, the son of Isak Bengsten. He landed on Ellis Island and took the last name Isakson, which is the Scandinavian tradition, to take the father's first name and add ``son'' to it. In 1916, he had a son named Ed, and in 1926 he became a naturalized citizen.

He went to West Texas as a laborer, and later on to Atlanta, GA as a carpenter. In 1944, his son Ed and Ed's wife Julia had a son, who by the grace of God is me. No one in this body has any greater respect or admiration for this great country and our process of legal immigration than I.

As we approach the most important debate this Senate will encounter in this session, it is important that it be a debate of dignity and a debate of substance and a debate where we learned the lessons of the past and make sure that immigration in the future holds the same promise it held for my grandfather 103 years ago.

I have filed an amendment at the clerk's desk, which at the appropriate time in the debate I will offer, which to me is the key as to whether we proceed on whatever the final product this Senate may adopt may be. It is a point that has been missed by many and avoided by some but we must focus on and we must accomplish. It is an amendment that very simply says no provision of any act we pass which contains a guest worker program will go into effect until, first, the Secretary of Homeland Security has certified to the President and to this Congress that our borders are reasonably secure.

I want to tell you why that is important. It is important because 20 years ago, in 1986, a great President, Ronald Reagan, and this Congress adopted a program that gave legal status to 3 million illegal aliens in the United States. We did so in the hopes of clearing up the problem. Instead, what we created was an attractive reason for more to come illegally in hopes of gaining the same status. Today, 20 years later, we have estimates of 11 million to 13 million Americans who came exactly that way--over the border illegally in hopes of that same promise that happened in 1986.

Were we to pass in this body this year a bill granting status that does not require, first, security on the border, then we will create the same attractiveness we did 20 years ago. The result will be the same, and the legacy to another Congress and the problems in our social services system in our great country will be great. It is important that whatever security requirements we place in this legislation--and there should be many--be funded and be in place before any other provision takes place.

Second, it is important to understand that enforcing the border is something we can do. Before I introduced border security legislation a few weeks ago, I traveled to the United States border with Mexico. I went to San Diego and Tijuana, met with our border agents who are having remarkable success now because of technology and, of course, because of improved numbers.

I went to Fort Huachuca in Arizona where the one and only unmanned aerial surveillance vehicle, the Predator, has a 150-mile stretch of the United States-Mexican border secure because we have eyes in the sky 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

For $400 million, we can deploy a fleet of 26 of those unmanned Predator aircraft to have eyes in the sky 24/7 along the entire 2,000-mile border. That will have a tripling effect on our manpower because it allows us through technology to identify those who are coming and where they are, to position the agents we have to intercept them and turn them around. It will send the signal that no longer are we going to look the other way but instead we are going to focus on those who are trying to come here illegally and be smuggled, and shut the door so they will apply legally to come to this country the right way, as so many American guests have and some citizens have, to ultimately become naturalized.

This place we all call home and the rest of the world calls America is a very special place. Our problem isn't that people are trying to break out of this great country; they are all trying to break into this great country. We owe it to our country and our future and to the legacy of our children to assure that the path to this country is legal and operable, and that it isn't done illegally and involve smuggling.

While often many of us talk about the Southwest border, it should also be true on the border with Canada as well, and it should be true at our ports.

Whatever we do in this 2 weeks of debate, it must ultimately be predicated on, first, securing the border of the United States, whether it be on the north or on the South. We must have fortitude in this Senate to pass the appropriations necessary to fund the programs to secure those borders. Rhetoric is cheap. Enforcement on our borders can be expensive. But it must be essential.

The distinguished Senator from New Hampshire, who is on the floor, has been an absolute leader to the appropriations and the budget process in focusing like a laser beam on seeing to it that we authorize and ultimately appropriate the funds to do exactly that in terms of manpower. I will join him in that as well as those who put the funds up for the unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance and the ground sensors for tunneling and other technology we have.

It is a matter of us developing a resolve to secure the borders of the United States of America. We must not demonize anybody. First, we must secure the borders which the American people expect us to secure.

I come from a great State, the State of Georgia, a State that is a major agricultural producer in this country, a State where there are many migrant laborers. I am well aware of what the green industry, the agricultural industry and the construction industry workforce, is made up of. We owe it to those industries to see to it that we have a legal path to come to this country and to work and appreciate America, that no longer will there be smuggling of illegal aliens across our border, but instead we have as a country a legal path for people to come and an illegal door that is shut because we have stopped turning and looking the other way.

I look forward to this debate. I appreciate the promise of this country, because were it not for our legal immigration process I would not be here today. But I will fight as hard as I can to see to it that whatever passes this Senate requires first and foremost the securing of our borders before the extension to guest workers or any status be granted. If we do not, we will have recreated the problem we created in 1967. We will deal not with just 3 million illegals coming but millions and millions and millions more, all because we looked the other way at a time when we needed to focus like a laser beam.

The people of this country are looking to us to secure our borders for the homeland and for immigration. We must secure them first before we do anything else.

A comprehensive bill is possible, and I have no problem with addressing comprehensive reform. But those reforms that involve guest workers must only be implemented after the certification by the Secretary of Homeland Security that our borders are secure. For failure to do so is to pass on to another generation of Americans a compounded problem.