María Elvira Salazar: “first I want to make a comment about the process that has been underway on immigration. We sometimes think about what is…”

“first I want to make a comment about the process that has been underway on immigration. We sometimes think about what is the most important thing we are given as Senators. What is the privilege we get to exercise on behalf of the American people in representing our States? We get to work on issues of enormous importance to civilization, to the United States, and to our respective States in this country. But one of the decisions that is made here by the majority leader is what kind of time is going to be allocated on what kinds of issues. Well, this majority leader, Senator Reid, said 2 months ago he would set aside May, some time in May, for us to deal with the issue of immigration. He did the right thing, because what he did is he held peoples' feet to the fire to deal with this issue that some people would rather not deal with at all. He said for us in the Senate, the 100 Members of this Chamber would be spending a significant amount of time in May and now into June dealing with this issue. But the amount of time we spent working on the issue of immigration goes far beyond the current effort we have on this bill. Last year, through the Judiciary Committee hearing that lasted for weeks prior to a markup and then for almost a month here on the floor of the Senate, we labored hard day and night to come up with a comprehensive immigration reform package.”