The legislation recognizes the importance of immigrant farm workers and respects and rewards their work.

We must commit to sufficient funding for our border security agencies, including the Border Patrol and our immigration enforcement agencies.

We are also dealing with something else. Mr. Chairman, in certain economies, and the agricultural economy is a unique one.

Congress cannot defer any longer.

Our border is not secure. If we are going to assure the American people that we are going to win the war on terror, we have to have a secure border.

We must treat those who are here illegally as exactly that.

I believe that if we acknowledge the vital role of hardworking immigrants in our economy and create a comprehensive program, that it will be an important step toward reestablishing respect for our laws and restoring safe working conditions…

Fixing the current system: our legislation reduces the existing backlog of applications for family-sponsored visas.

It recognizes the need to identify the current work force that is here; to cause them to be documented.

Our bill would, very briefly, first, strengthen national security by identifying undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

It is time we quit doing that, we laid it on the table, and we addressed the issue.

While he and I will disagree on some of the ways that we fix the problem, it is the great benefit that we have in this country that we can disagree over issues.

Our legislation is a bipartisan, comprehensive proposal that addresses the complicated and difficult issues related to U.S. immigration law.

The second bill is the DREAM Act, a bipartisan compromise reached by Senator Hatch and Senator Durbin.

We need a total overhaul of our immigration policies.

We call it AgJobs. Here in the Senate, it is 1645. It is, in my opinion, Mr. Chairman, the lead legislation.

to provide foreign workers for jobs that would otherwise go unfilled, our bill admits a limited number of workers.

With Congressional veterans such as Senators John McCain and John Kerry leading the way, a broad based group of Senators and Congressmen have supported the step by step process of normalization.