María Elvira Salazar: “at the outset, I recognize my friend from Connecticut and agree with his comments and applaud his voice of moderation…”

“at the outset, I recognize my friend from Connecticut and agree with his comments and applaud his voice of moderation and centrist views. Those are the kinds of views that are bringing together the coalition that ultimately will allow us to succeed in passing comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate. I want to speak about two issues today. One is about the law and order aspects of this bill, and the second is to refer to the nature of this debate we are seeing around the country on immigration. The first point I want to make is that the Judiciary Committee bill which was produced with great work on the part of both Democrats and Republicans is, in fact, a law and order bill. For those people who have said it is not, they are wrong. This is a law and order bill because what it does is it takes the immigration issues we are facing in this country and addresses the strengthening of our borders. It also addresses the enforcement of our immigration laws within the interior of the United States. And finally, it applies penalties and registration to those who are here illegally in our country. So I believe the appropriate characterization we should be giving this legislation is that it is a law and order bill. I want to review some of the aspects of border security which are very important. All of us know that today we are involved in this debate because we have broken borders, both to the South and to the North.…”