| While I believe that a reasonable level of legal immigration will help strengthen our country, I am concerned with the number of immigrants who are living in the United States illegally. I support strengthening our border security and a comprehensive overhaul of American immigration policy.
While I commend the bipartisan panel of Senators that worked tirelessly to negotiate the most recent attempt to reform immigration, S. 1639, there were several huge problems with this bill, and I believe that a more thorough vetting of this legislation through debate and amendment could have fixed those problems and ensured that it contained policy changes the American people would support.
As many have observed throughout this debate, there are currently millions of illegal immigrants residing within our nation’s borders. No one knows exactly how many, only that they are here, they are working, and, in large part, they contribute to our economy.
We also have many businesses and industries that must have access to foreign labor, especially during this time when, while are seeing record lows in unemployment, we still have a shortage of workers. Under the status quo, employers are too often forced to make a decision between hiring illegal workers and wondering whether our inefficient and often arbitrary enforcement efforts will catch up with them or abiding by the law and closing the doors of their businesses.
We need to find a fair, compassionate and lawful way to deal with the illegal immigrants already this country. We need to create a guest worker program for those businesses in need of foreign workers. And, we need to improve the system by which we legally distribute visas and green cards to make it more fair and efficient.
The authors of this legislation have tried to address these issues in the current bill, and I applaud them for their efforts. However, they addressed them in various ways that, in the minds of many, make this bill completely unworkable and ineffective. The policies proposed by legislation are almost impossible to implement and even if they could be implemented, there are so many loop holes and exclusions that almost every solution in the bill can and will be bypassed by those who want to continue to exploit the system. I am convinced that many of my colleagues understand these concerns and even agree with my assessment, but they are so anxious to end this debate and reach a successful conclusion they compromised several core values that Americans hold dear and made damaging concessions. |
