Political Quotes

“Mr. President, over the course of the next several weeks, I hope to come to the floor and visit with my colleagues about the immigration bill that will soon be going through the Judiciary Committee. Today I want to share my thoughts on the parts that deal with the border security section of S. 744. The immigration bill is very likely to allow millions of people who entered our country illegally or overstayed their visa to receive legal status and eventually green cards. However, it is very unlikely to result in true border security. The bill provides that those in a probationary status--and that is known in this legislation as ``registered provisional immigrant status''--be given green cards as soon as the Secretary of Homeland Security certifies that four conditions have been satisfied. On page 11 of the bill it lays out the process. The Secretary certifies that the border and fencing strategies, and those strategies are ones that she wrote, are substantially deployed, operational, and completed. She also has to implement a mandatory employment verification program and electronic exit system at airports and seaports. The authors of the bill envision that this will happen in 5 or 10 years down the road. There are three reasons this process is problematic: First, the Secretary has unbridled discretion to conclude that the four provisions have been satisfied even if they have not been satisfied.…”