Heidi Alexander: “today the Senate voted on immigration. Immigration is a passionate issue. It affects the lives of people. It affects the…”

“today the Senate voted on immigration. Immigration is a passionate issue. It affects the lives of people. It affects the American creed, which involves the rule of law, which involves the fact that we are a nation of immigrants. It goes to the heart of our country, and we have very strong opinions about it. All of us know that. Of course, that is the reason we have a U.S. Senate. This is not an issue that the Shreveport City Council or the Nashville Metro Council can solve. We can't solve the problem of our Nation's borders. We can't solve the problem in our communities about what to do about people who were brought here as children illegally through no fault of their own. That is our job. That is the job of the President of the United States. That is the job of the Senate, and it is the job of the Congress. We tried before. We tried in 2007, and we failed. We tried in 2013, and this body passed a bill with 68 or 69 votes. I voted for it. If we had passed that bill, as for all the issues we debated today, we wouldn't have them anymore because we dealt then with border security in 2013. We would have added 20,000 border agents, 700 miles of fencing, biometric detection at our ports of exit and entry, and E- Verify for all of the employers in the country. We would have dealt with the issue of legal status for people illegally here, people overstaying their visas, temporary workers. We would have done all of that in 2013, but we did not do it.…”