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| Senator Barack Obama |
Mr. President, I come to
the floor today to enter the debate on comprehensive immigration reform. It is
a debate that will touch on the basic questions of morality, the law, and what
it means to be an American I know that this debate
evokes strong passions on all sides. The recent peaceful but passionate
protests that we saw all across the country--500,000 in Los Angeles and 100,000
in my hometown of Chicago--are a testament to this fact, as are the concerns of
millions of Americans about the security of our borders.
But I believe we can
work together to pass immigration reform in a way that unites the people in
this country, not in a way that divides us by playing on our worst instincts
and fears. Like millions of
Americans, the immigrant story is also my story. My father came here from
Kenya, and I represent a State where vibrant immigrant communities ranging from
Mexican to Polish to Irish enrich our cities and neighborhoods. So I understand
the allure of freedom and opportunity that fuels the dream of a life in the
United States. But I also understand the need to fix a broken system.
When Congress last
addressed this issue comprehensively in 1986, there were approximately 4
million illegal immigrants living in the United States. That number had grown
substantially when Congress again addressed the issue in 1996. Today, it is
estimated that there are more than 11 million undocumented aliens living in our
country.
The American people are
a welcoming and generous people. But those who enter our country illegally, and
those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an
age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people
to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked.
Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of
the immigration laws. The bill the Judiciary Committee
has passed would clearly strengthen enforcement. I will repeat that, because
those arguing against the Judiciary Committee bill contrast that bill with a
strong enforcement bill. The bill the Judiciary Committee passed clearly
strengthens enforcement.
To begin with, the agencies charged with
border security would receive new technology, new facilities, and more people
to stop, process, and deport illegal immigrants. But while security might start
at our borders, it doesn't end there. Millions of undocumented immigrants live
and work here without our knowing their identity or their background. We need
to strike a workable bargain with them. They have to acknowledge that breaking
our immigration laws was wrong. They must pay a penalty, and abide by all of
our laws going forward. They must earn the right to stay over a 6-year period,
and then they must wait another 5 years as legal permanent residents before
they become citizens.
But in exchange for accepting those
penalties, we must allow undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows and
step on a path toward full participation in our society. In fact, I will not
support any bill that does not provide this earned path to citizenship for the
undocumented population--not just for humanitarian reasons; not just because
these people, having broken the law, did so for the best of motives, to try and
provide a better life for their children and their grandchildren; but also
because this is the only practical way we can get a handle on the population
that is within our borders right now.
To keep from having to go through this
difficult process again in the future, we must also replace the flow of
undocumented immigrants coming to work here with a new flow of guestworkers.
Illegal immigration is bad for illegal immigrants and bad for the workers
against whom they compete. Replacing the flood of illegals with a
regulated stream of legal immigrants who enter the United States after
background checks and who are provided labor rights would enhance our security,
raise wages, and improve working conditions for all Americans. But I fully appreciate that we cannot
create a new guestworker program without making it as close to impossible as we
can for illegal workers to find employment. We do not need new guestworkers
plus future undocumented immigrants. We need guestworkers instead of
undocumented immigrants.
Toward that end, American
employers need to take responsibility. Too often illegal immigrants are lured
here with a promise of a job, only to receive unconscionably low wages. In the
interest of cheap labor, unscrupulous employers look the other way when
employees provide fraudulent U.S. citizenship documents. Some actually call and
place orders for undocumented workers because they don't want to pay minimum
wages to American workers in surrounding communities. These acts hurt both
American workers and immigrants whose sole aim is to work hard and get ahead.
That is why we need a simple, foolproof, and mandatory mechanism for all
employers to check the legal status of new hires. Such a mechanism is in the
Judiciary Committee bill.
And before any guestworker is hired, the
job must be made available to Americans at a decent wage with benefits.
Employers then need to show that there are no Americans to take these jobs. I
am not willing to take it on faith that there are jobs that Americans will not
take. There has to be a showing. If this guestworker program is to succeed, it
must be properly calibrated to make certain that these are jobs that cannot be
filled by Americans, or that the guestworkers provide particular skills we
can't find in this country.
I know that dealing with the undocumented
population is difficult, for practical and political reasons. But we simply
cannot claim to have dealt with the problems of illegal immigration if we
ignore the illegal resident population or pretend they will leave voluntarily.
Some of the proposed ideas in Congress provide a temporary legal status and
call for deportation, but fail to answer how the government would deport 11
million people. I don't know how it would be done. I don't know how we would
line up all the buses and trains and airplanes and send 11 million people back
to their countries of origin. I don't know why it is that we expect they would
voluntarily leave after having taken the risk of coming to this country without
proper documentation.
I don't know many police officers across
the country who would go along with the bill that came out of the House, a bill
that would, if enacted, charge undocumented immigrants with felonies, and
arrest priests who are providing meals to hungry immigrants, or people who are
running shelters for women who have been subject to domestic abuse. I cannot
imagine that we would be serious about making illegal immigrants into felons,
and going after those who would aid such persons.
That approach is not serious. That is
symbolism that is demagoguery. It is important that if we are going to deal
with this problem, we deal with it in a practical, commonsense way. If
temporary legal status is granted but the policy says these immigrants are
never good enough to become Americans, then the policy that makes little sense. I believe successful,
comprehensive immigration reform can be achieved by building on the work of the
Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee bill combines some of the
strongest elements of Senator Hagel's border security proposals with the
realistic workplace and earned-citizenship program proposed by Senators McCain
and Kennedy.
Mr. President, I will
come to the floor over the next week to offer some amendments of my own, and to
support amendments my colleagues will offer. I will also come to the floor to
argue against amendments that contradict our tradition as a nation of
immigrants and as a nation of laws. As FDR reminded the
Nation at the 50th anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty,
those who landed at Ellis Island "were the men and women who had the supreme
courage to strike out for themselves, to abandon language and relatives, to
start at the bottom without influence, without money, and without knowledge of
life in a very young civilization.''
It behooves us to
remember that not every single immigrant who came into the United States
through Ellis Island had proper documentation. Not every one of our
grandparents or great-grandparents would have necessarily qualified for legal
immigration. But they came here in search of a dream, in search of hope.
Americans understand that, and they are willing to give an opportunity to those
who are already here, as long as we get serious about making sure that our borders
actually mean something.
Today's immigrants seek
to follow in the same tradition of immigration that has built this country. We
do ourselves and them a disservice if we do not recognize the contributions of
these individuals. And we fail to protect our Nation if we do not regain
control over our immigration system immediately.
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