June 5, 2006

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Speech about Immigration and
Trip to American Cemeteries in Europe and North Africa
Metro Atlanta Rotary Club

Thank you. I am honored to be in the best Rotary Club in Atlanta.

A week ago Monday, on Memorial Day, your club did not have a meeting, but the week before in anticipation of Memorial Day, your club recognized our veterans and our servicemen. I want to thank you for your recognition of Captain Furat who is currently in the Shepherd Center, who is to me a real hero and deserves the recognition and the attention for what he did, so thank you to the Shepherd family and Alana Shepherd who is here today and to all of the men and women in the armed forces.

Tomorrow is the 62nd anniversary of the invasion of Normandy by the Allied Forces; an invasion that in the end is the reason you and I have the freedom to assemble today. Have you ever thought that if that invasion had failed, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the things we love to do everyday? I got so inspired last week in Normandy because I went on behalf of the U.S. Government, as the Chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, I went to eight Memorial Day services in six days, on the continents of Europe and Africa, and happened to be at Normandy on Memorial Day.

And I can tell you, I have always been patriotic, I have always been appreciative, I have always been thankful, but I have never been as moved as I was during those six days. It was so inspiring to me, that what America’s ‘greatest generation’ did, allows us to do what we do today. You know if Hitler and the Axis powers prevailed in the 1940s, think of the things that never would have happened. Martin Luther King would never have had a Civil Rights Movement, there would never have been the establishment of Israel – there might not even be a Jew alive today in the world. A club like this couldn’t get together and have a Four-Way Test looking to see what is in the best interest of all. You couldn’t walk freely on the streets, talk freely on our phones, or enjoy the free enterprise of capitalism today.

So tomorrow, or tomorrow night when you go to bed, or whenever you say your prayers, remember that tomorrow, the 62 nd anniversary of the greatest act of courage in the history of mankind, the invasion of Normandy led by our armed forces of America, which is the reason we are all here today. And if you don’t think it’s important, let me share a story with you real quickly.

At Margraten, Netherlands the Sunday before last, the day before Memorial Day, we conducted a memorial service at the American cemetery in the Netherlands, where there are 6,874 U.S. men and women in service in a beautiful memorial. There were 10,000 Dutch at that service. The Royal Dutch Men’s Choir sang ‘God Bless America,’ and the Royal Dutch Air Force did a fly by, but most importantly, everyone of the 6,874 graves, of those great men and women buried right there, is adopted by a Dutch family that has cared for it each week of every year, since that cemetery was dedicated. And I am sure that if the Dutch can appreciate those brave men and women as much as they do, we in this country should do everything we can to make sure that each generation that succeeds us follows in the remembrance of this day and remember what our men and women in the Armed Services have done for all of us.

To that end, I will speak on immigration. But before I leave the last subject, the president was right to say that we may have made some mistakes in Iraq, but it is wrong of the American people not to understand that what we’re doing in Iraq is fighting for the same self determination, freedom and liberty that we fought for years ago on the beaches of Normandy. I would suggest that if you talked to any of those in Holland that I met with last week, or any of those in northern Africa at Carthage, any in Tunisia or Paris, the American cemetery in Paris, I dare say if you ask your guests here today from Slovenia and Yugoslavia, what is it that we as human beings cherish more than anything else, it is freedom and liberty and the right to self-determine our future.

We’re fighting the right battle, at the right time, for the right reasons, and in the right place. If we stay the course, brave men like Captain Furat, of the Iraqi Army who fought side-by-side with us, as well as those brave men and women who are fighting terrorism, will prevail. And this will be a safer, sounder world, for my children, my grandchildren, and the generations to come.

I’m not one for seeking headlines, I’ve always left that for other people in fact nine times out of 10 in politics, when you get in the headlines it is not because of something you have done well. But the last few weeks, on the immigration debate in the Senate, we got quite the attention for a position that I took on the immigration debate and I want to talk about that a little today. One great benefit of the American political system and the great benefit of the U.S. House of Representatives is that everyone has to be re-elected every two years. Although it is really a pain, and we all thank you who are so kind to donate your money but gripe about it too, one good thing about people running every two years is that they have an idea of what the pulse of the public is. I fortunately ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004 and was one of 33 Senators who had just been re-elected to the senate.

So I knew, as well as I thought I could know, what was one the minds of Georgians, and I will tell you, in terms of domestic issues, the number one issue in 2004 and the number one issue today is illegal immigration.

The Congress is doing the right thing to address the issue of illegal immigration, because it is sorely in need of new policy, new direction and a new infusion of ideas. But there a few very well intentioned, but misguided individuals that if they stay the course in their directions, will cause us to repeat the great error we made in 1986. In 1986, America was confronted with three million illegal aliens in this country, which was perceived to be an illegal immigration problem. Congress came together and passed a major sweeping reform that strengthened border security and granted amnesty. In actuality, Congress never invested the money for border security, but granted the amnesty. And 20 years later there are 12 million people here today illegally. If we repeat that mistake today, and grant people legal status who are here illegally without sealing the borders first, our problem in 20 years will not be 12 million, but probably 24 million.

The stress in our public school systems, the stress on our social services, the stress on our hospitals, and the stress on our law enforcement will be at the breaking point – if it is already not at the breaking point in selected locations in Georgia and throughout the Country. It is not a chicken and the egg issue; we need to secure the borders so that the way to come to America is the right way. We have a pathway to citizenship, it’s called legal immigration. And there are thousands of people everyday cooperating with our legal system. We should honor their effort to learn our language and our history, renounce their former citizenship, and pledge their allegiance to this country. They should be honored and should not take a second seat to those who try to come in a circuitous route.

Now let’s be quite clear, there isn’t anyone trying to break out of the United States of America, they’re all trying to break in – and they are for a very good reason: this is the greatest country on the face of the Earth. We’re a nation of laws, and we should respect our laws, and we should enforce our laws, because only through enforcement comes respect. My position on the immigration bill that was debated in the Senate was an amendment I offered. It was the first amendment to be debated and it was considered the crossroads of the legislation. It simply said that any program in this legislation granting legal status to someone in the United States that is here illegally, or that comes here illegally, shall not take effect until the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has certified to the President of the United States and the Congress of the United States that all border security operations are funded and operational. That is not unreasonable; that is the essential core to make any legislation or reform work.

I was pleased to read my e-mails when I got home. You see, we had a week off and I traveled, and a lot of my colleagues went home and a lot of them who voted against that amendment realized that maybe they should rethink their position on border security first. And I think that is because when they got home, the American people talked to them. And I sincerely hope that we can come together in a conference committee sometime this summer and get our legal immigration house in order by doing the following: Investing the money, $6 to $8 billion, to buy 26 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’s for 24/7 eye’s in the sky security on our border; second, to hire and train 6,000 border security officers that we are short by our own admission; third, build the detention facilities so we no longer practice catch and release. That used to be a hunting or fishing term, but now it’s a term when you catch someone illegally and release them back into Mexico. And if you watched ‘60 Minutes’ last night, they go to the next draw in the curve, and then come over.

If you don’t have enforcement then you don’t have a deterrent. It is time we invested in the prosecution of the violation of our laws on our side of the border. So that districts – the judicial districts, the prosecutorial authority and the judiciary of all the borders are sufficient to swiftly administer justice because they are violating the law. We need to ensure that geographic locations, like Smuggler’s Gulch in San Diego, where barriers have proven to be effective in deterring circuitous entry in the United States are invested in and empowered, then we can secure the border of the United States of America in the Southwest.

And don’t let anyone tell you that we can’t do it. If we can transplant hearts and fly a man to the moon, then we can secure our borders. It’s a matter of a will and commitment of the Congress of the United States and the President of the United States. By the grace of God, and the fact that Andrew Bengsten who later became Andrew Isakson came to the United States of America from the potato famine in Sweden in 1903, I wouldn’t be here today. My father was born in 1916 before my grandfather became naturalized. My father became a citizen by birthright under the 14 th Amendment. I am a second generation American. I love the opportunity of this country, and I respect the laws of this country, and I want every Yugoslavian and Slovenian, every Iraqi, and every Iranian, determined to have peace and liberty that is willing to pledge their allegiance to our country to be able to do so. But only if we have immigration that is legal and it works and our borders are secure.

We are a nation of immigrants; we were bounded by folks who came here primarily fleeing religious persecution in Great Britain. We’ve been built by Germans, by Swedes, by French, by people from Belgium, by people from Asia, by people from Africa. We are a great nation because of our diversity. It is important that we focus on this issue of immigration as the strength of our nation – the power of our future; not being us versus them, but by looking at those who came here, and why they came here, and the way in which they entered and the contribution they made. And see to it the same respect that they had for legal entry into this country and the opportunity and the promise of the United States of America exists in the future as immigrants come. We can do it as a nation. We have done many things which people have said we couldn’t. We can secure our borders, reform our immigration laws and return America into an orderly system of diversity and immigration.

My last point is this; someone said to me today, “look at what happened in Canada.” I want to talk about this for a second. Three terrorist cells have been intercepted and interrupted either trying to come into the United States from Canada or just on the other side of the United States in Canada. Because the Canadians are as committed to the security of their border as we are committed to the security of our border, we have stopped potential terrorist attacks, and we have stopped terrorists. We have a secure border that works to our north. If the Mexican government would work as hard to secure their border as we enforce our side, we wouldn’t have problems to the south, either. The Canadian example is a good example how border security should work. For the Canadian Royal Mounted Police and the Canadian intelligence in concert with the border patrol of the United States of America and our intelligence, ensure we have a border that is secure. I will grant you that geography and geology and climate have a lot to do with ease of security – it’s a lot different than the expanse of the border in the southwest. But I will tell you that because of the Canadian government’s cooperation and commitment which is equal to ours, that border is secure, and on top of that our threats to homeland security are stopped on a daily basis. We need to ensure the same thing happens with the south border of Mexico and we can do it. And if I have anything to say about it before this session is over, we will make the commitment to see to it that the borders of the United States of America are secure.