Letter from Senator Inhofe in reply to my thanks email.
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Dear Doctor
Thank you for your interest in the recently-passed Senate immigration bill, S. 2611, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 .
I have stated many times that any immigration solution I will support must address our porous border, must not provide amnesty or reward illegal behavior, and must improve the naturalization process for those who come here legally. In my opinion and the opinion of many experts, commentators, and 95% of the thousands of Oklahomans who contacted my office, S. 2611 did not meet these requirements; therefore, on May 25, I voted against the legislation (which passed 62-36). Although I am disappointed that S. 2611 passed, I am hopeful that the strong and conservative House of Representatives will answer the call of the American people and insist upon sensible immigration reform in the conference between the Senate and the House to iron out the major differences between the two bills.
As you may know, on December 16, 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 with a vote of 239-182. Overall, I was pleased with the legislation that came out of the House. H.R. 4437 emphasized border enforcement and did not include amnesty or a guest worker program. On January 27 of this year, the House referred its bill to the Senate.
Despite efforts by some in the Senate Judiciary Committee to produce legislation like H.R. 4437, there was considerable disagreement over the Senate version of the bill. You may remember the highly-publicized and divisive debate in the Senate at the end of March and the beginning of April. At that time, there were essentially three bills up for discussion: the Senate Judiciary Committee version modeled after the McCain-Kennedy bill, Senator Frist's border enforcement bill, and the "Hagel-Martinez Compromise." Eventually, all of these bills failed when cloture, a procedural vote to end debate, was unsuccessful. The reason for the cloture vote failures was largely due to Republican opposition to the obstructionist tactics of the Senate Minority Leader, Harry Reid; afraid of amendments that would strip amnesty provisions from the bills, Reid and the Democrats blocked all amendments.
After a month of negotiations, the Senate resumed the immigration debate on May 15. The new underlying bill was the "Hagel-Martinez Compromise" as filed by Senator Specter (S. 2611). The Compromise divided the illegal immigrants currently in the United States into three groups depending on how long they have been here (over five years, between two and five years, and less than two years) and then grant delayed citizenship in varying degrees to those who have been in the United States over two years. Along with the fact that it is unfair to grant citizenship to individuals who have sidestepped the legal channels of entry, I believe that this system is a recipe for fraud as some people will surely attempt to falsely prove that they have been in the country longer than they really have been.
In addition to amnesty, I have a number of other concerns with the bill. For one, the $2000 fine required to become a citizen is less than one-fifth of the cost that many illegal immigrants usually pay to get smuggled into the country; I do not believe that the fine is large enough, especially since it will not cover the social benefits that will be paid by American taxpayers. Also, many government agencies have complained that the provisions laid out in S. 2611 place an excessive burden on their capabilities. For instance, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is requested to process security clearances for the millions of illegal immigrants currently in the country in only 90 days. If they are able to do so, which is unlikely, there is no way that the security checks will be as thorough as necessary, if at all, especially since an interview is not even required. Even after these checks, DHS must keep all information confidential, so potential terrorist threats might not be relayed to the appropriate agencies.
By increasing the level of legal immigration to three times the current level, S. 2611 also places a huge financial burden on every American taxpayer. The Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector predicts that in eleven years S. 2611 will begin costing the taxpayer approximately $50 billion annually. This is due to a number of factors including the low education levels of many of the illegal immigrants, as well as some portions of the bill that do not require employers of illegal immigrants to pay back taxes and which allow illegal immigrants to collect Social Security benefits for the period for which they did not have legal status. It is not right to push this financial burden onto future generations of Americans. While there are provisions I supported in S. 2611 that will be effective, such as extending the fence along the southern border, the overall expense, security risks, and ambiguities of the bill are simply too great.
The ENFORCE Act, S. 2117, which I introduced late last year, solves many of the problems the current Senate bill fails to address including: providing for the construction of a complete, high-security, state of the art fence to prevent illegal border crossings; the creation of a border patrol support force made up of recently-retired border patrol agents, and the creation of an Office of Investigations of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The full text of S. 2117 is available on the Library of Congress website (
http://thomas.loc.gov). Although my bill remains in the Judiciary Committee due to Democrat opposition, it includes a number of provisions that I would like to see in an immigration bill coming out of the Senate-House conference.
I understand that Americans want the government to secure our borders and not grant amnesty to illegal aliens. I support the United States citizens' belief in compassionate immigration when it is done legally, but it is unfair to these legal immigrants when we ignore the rules and reward law breakers for crossing our borders illegally. Being an American is a great privilege, and it should be treated as such.
Thank you for your correspondence. It is an honor to represent you in Washington . Please contact me with any concerns in the future.
Sincerely,
A
James M. Inhofe
United States Senator