Pete Sessions: “I will try to wrap up briefly. Mr. President, I believe this section of the bill as drafted is flawed. It goes further…”

“I will try to wrap up briefly. Mr. President, I believe this section of the bill as drafted is flawed. It goes further than the drafters and the American people or the President would want it to go. I am not sure how we can fix it at this point. I think the way to concentrate everybody's mind and get it fixed would be for the Dorgan amendment to pass. Let's start over and talk about how we are going to handle this. My staff has looked at these numbers and tried to be as objective as they possibly can to see just what this would allow to occur in America if it were to pass, and I am confident that it includes more than people would think. First of all, it is absolutely not true that this is a temporary worker program. It is called guest worker, which sounds like ``temporary worker,'' but it is not. A person will come into our country under this program--325,000 the first year. Their employer can apply, the day they get here, the first year, for a green card. A green card gives them permanent residence in the United States, unless they get convicted of a felony or something. They get permanent residence. Within 5 years, they can apply for citizenship. So there is nothing temporary about this so-called guest worker program. The President mentioned this morning a couple times, I understand--I heard it a bit, one clip on TV--that he favored a temporary worker program. This is not a temporary worker program. Second, the numbers are extraordinary.…”