Senator Sessions on immigration

Alabama's junior U.S. Senator, Jeff Sessions, has been an outstanding voice of reason in the ongoing debate over illegal immigration. In the past two weeks, he has delivered a series of floor speeches on the issue. The full transcripts are available on Sen. Sessions's web site: March 29, March 31, April 3, April 5, April 6, and April 7. I haven't had a chance to read them all yet, but from what I've seen so far, there's some good stuff there. I'll be posting some excerpts over the next few days.

In his March 29 speech, Sen. Sessions announced his opposition to the bill that had just been reported out of the Judiciary Committee, saying that it was essentially an amnesty bill. In that speech, he framed the immigration debate like this:

Mr. President, we are a Nation of immigrants. There are so many great stories of people who have come to this country and enriched our Nation and benefited their families and had great life experiences. There is no dispute about that. I don't think there is a single Member here who would deny that.

But there is a suggestion that those who do not support the Kennedy bill--or whatever you want to call the bill that came out of the Judiciary committee, of which I am a Member and the Presiding Officer is a Member--if you don't support that bill, you want to run everybody out of the country and you want to lock them up and prosecute them. If you don't support this bill, you have bias against them and you don't believe in immigration. You don't believe in the great freedoms of our country. Nothing could be further from the truth. That is not right.

What we are trying to do is to develop a system to deal with the immigration crisis that we have that is consistent with our values as Americans, that is consistent with the rule of law in this country, that treats people who do the right thing better than it treats people who do the wrong thing. That is what this debate is all about. We are trying to set policy for the future about the people who are allowed into our country, how many and under what circumstances. A Nation surely has a right to decide how many people it allows to come in. We are one of the most generous nations in the history of the world in allowing people to come here. But we have a right to decide how it should be done. ...

I want to say a couple of things first. We are going to pass legislation dealing with the entry of people into our Nation. We are going to pass legislation, and I will favor properly drafted legislation that will increase the number of people who come to our country lawfully. We want to pass legislation that treats fairly and decently and humanely the 11 to 20 million people who are here illegally. But I hope and trust we won't pass amnesty which gives the full benefits of legal entry into our country to those who come illegally.

That is really what we are talking about, because what we learned in 1986 was that when you do that, before the ink is dry on the bill, other people come in illegally because they expect we will be right back here again in this Congress giving them amnesty again. So we need to reestablish the principle of law. That is all I am saying. We can treat people in a good way. We will not have to remove all of these people from America. They would not have to be prosecuted and put in jail. How silly is that? That can't be done. Nobody is proposing that.

What we are working on is legislation that can bring law, bring principle, and bring integrity to our immigration system, and I believe it is within our grasp to do so. ...

Sessions went on to identify four different amnesty provisions in the bill:

[1.] Element No. 1, the committee bill takes every illegal alien in the United States who pays $1,000 and was employed before January 7, 2004--whether full time, part time, seasonally or self-employed--and puts that person on a direct path to citizenship. The family of the illegal aliens, their spouse and children, would also be given amnesty, even if they are not already in the United States. They would now be able to come and come legally.

How will it be given out? How do you get on this direct path to citizenship? What is required of the person who seeks it? The truth is that other than illegal presence in the United States, very little is required. ...

[2.] The second major part of Specter-Kennedy substitute amendment--that was an amendment that was substituted for the original Specter bill in the past--is a new program for bringing low-skilled workers into the United States, in addition to illegal aliens already doing these jobs. The program puts them on a direct path to citizenship. It is a new program.

The new program would bring 400,000 low-skilled workers per year into the United States on a 3-year work visa. This visa is renewable for 3 years. It is essentially a guaranteed entry for 6 years to work in the United States. ...

By the sixth year this program will immigrate 2.4 million new low-skilled workers, at a minimum, into the United States. ...

Under the bill language, you can qualify for this new program and come to the United States as a low-skilled immigrant even if you were in removal proceedings and signed a voluntary departure agreement but never left, or you were already removed from the United States and illegally reentered. If you had been removed and illegally reentered, you are eligible.

One might ask, why does this program cover these people? I thought the program was for people who wanted to come to the United States to work in the future, not for those who are already here. This provision is specifically designed to make sure that illegal aliens who are not covered by the bill's amnesty provisions because they did not work in the United States prior to January of 2004, or because they were not legally present in the United States on that day, are not left without a direct path to citizenship also.

This bill covers everybody. It should be called ``no illegal alien left behind.'' I am not exaggerating. It is fixed so that if they are not covered under this ``magic'' date, January 7, 2004, they are covered under the new exemptions of the 400,000 people per year.

[3.] Element three, the Dream Act. That was brought up several times. It never moved in the Senate. But boom, in 2 minutes, Senator Durbin offered the Dream Act and we voted on it in committee Monday afternoon as an amendment to the bill. It took him less than 2 minutes to get it in the bill as an amendment.

The Dream Act does two things. It grants amnesty to an unlimited number of illegal alien minors who graduate from a high school and enroll in college or the military for at least 2 years, or who perform hours of volunteer work, or who can show ``compelling circumstances for the inability to do any of those three,'' and, two, eliminates United States Code section 1623 which I will describe below, thus allowing all illegal aliens enrolled in college to receive in-State tuition rates. This means that while American citizens from Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Massachusetts, have to pay out-of-state tuition rates if they send their kids to the University of Virginia or the University of Alabama, people who have illegally immigrated into this country do not. ...

Allowing all the illegal aliens enrolled in college to receive in-State tuition rates means that while American citizens from the 49 other States have to pay out-of-State tuition rates to send their kids to the University of Alabama or Virginia, people who have illegally immigrated into this country might not. Out-of-State tuition rates range from 2 to 3 1/2 times what in-State tuition rates are. It has always struck me that one of the things you do to encourage people to come here legally and abide by the law, is not give benefits to those who come illegally. It is one thing not to prosecute them; it is one thing not to take them out of the country; but to give them benefits that people who do the right thing get? We should not do that. It is bad policy. ...

[4.] While we were going about our business in committee, the AgJOBS bill was offered as an amendment. ... It was a 106-page amendment. It put 1.5 million illegal alien agriculture workers on a direct path to citizenship--just like that. ...

How does it do it? After the Feinstein amendment, 1.5 million illegal alien workers who pay a $500 fine and demonstrate they worked in agriculture for 150 workdays in the last 2 years will be given blue cards and will be allowed to stay in the United States. Because a workday is defined as 1 hour of work per day, an alien who worked in agriculture for only 150 hours--there are 168 hours in a week--over 2 years will qualify. So if you work 150 hours over 2 years, you qualify. Spouses and children of illegal alien agriculture workers also get legal status and work permits, and they are not limited to working in agriculture either.

The blue card holder is eligible for a green card in two ways: after 3 years of 150 additional workdays--1 hour per day is all that is required--per year or after 5 years of 100 additional workdays per year.

Then, what about citizenship? For these who come here illegally, and they work 150 hours, what happens as to their citizenship? Even though they came here illegally, are they put on the path to citizenship? Yes. All legal permanent residents become eligible for citizenship after 5 years.

The bill that Sen. Sessions spoke against here was eventually rejected, but the "compromise" proposal currently under consideration retains many of the original's worst features. Stay tuned.