Friday, March 31, 2006

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Floor Statement on Border Security
Remarks as Delivered on the Senate Floor

Mr. President, yesterday I took the floor to speak at length about the legislation before us and to talk particularly about the history of amnesty in the past dealing with immigration. I talked about the dangerous step we would take if we created another opportunity to attract even more to come here without first having secured our borders. The amendment I have asked to be placed before the Senate today accepts a very simple premise, and that is that we have failed as a country to secure our borders. We continue to have those coming here illegally to work because it is easier than coming here legally. And until we stop that and shut that down, any program granting status to an illegal person in this country should never be implemented.

In the insurance industry, swimming pools are entitled an attractive nuisance. In the business of immigration, American policy is an attractive nuisance. We are attracting people to come here the wrong way. We are not penalizing them for coming here the wrong way. And we are now allowing people to come here the right way, a seamless system that seems to work. So this amendment is merely a trigger. It says that notwithstanding what programs we adopt in the Senate before final passage, no program granting status to someone who is here illegally or may come here illegally in the future will take effect until the Secretary of Homeland Security has certified to the President of the United States and to the Congress that our borders are reasonably secure.

I am not going to take a lot of time, but I want to repeat something I said yesterday: A month ago I took to the border myself along with Senator Coleman.

We went to Tijuana and San Diego, Fort Huachuca in Arizona. We saw firsthand the mechanisms that are available and being used today that will secure our border. We also saw firsthand the huge holes because we have neither funded the intelligence equipment and the eyes in the sky nor put the manpower on the border.

I, for one, will hold myself responsible and will be a reminder to this entire Senate that when we pass an appropriations act this year for Homeland Security and enforcement of immigration and customs, if it doesn't include the unmanned aerial vehicles we need on the border and the agents we need to enforce immigration law, then we are turning our back on a problem that began in 1986 and has continued until this day, and that is the benign neglect of us to fund the necessary equipment, manpower, and material to make the laws of this country work to allow people to come here in the right way as easily as possible but with accountability, and the people who come here the wrong way, to know there is a consequence to pay.

Human nature is human nature. People will respond when they know what the story is. Right now, they know the story is that it is easier to get here by sneaking in. In this measure, we send a signal that there will be no amnesty, no more free pass nor a continued flow of illegal people coming into this country. Instead, there will be consequences for ignoring the law, and there will be respect and appreciation for a normal, rational immigration process to work, so that America's labor needs are met, but America respects the borders between ourselves, the nation of Canada and the nation of Mexico.