[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 16] [Senate] [Pages 21484-21485] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]IMMIGRATION REFORM Mr. SALAZAR. Thank you, Mr. President. I rise tonight to speak to the so-called fence bill and ask my colleagues and urge them to oppose the construction of this fence in the way it has been proposed to the Senate. I oppose the construction of this fence because at the end of the day this is not going to fix our borders. It is not going to deal with the lawlessness that we currently are having to deal with with respect to immigration, and it is not in the long-term interests of the United States of America. For me, I may be the No. 100 U.S. Senator, but I have heroes on both sides of the aisle. I remember Ronald Reagan when he went to the Berlin Wall and he told Mr. Gorbachev that he should take down the Berlin Wall. He was about taking down walls and bringing communities together. I remember John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a person who inspired my whole life in politics and our country. I remember him working on creating the Alliance for Progress with the notion being that the Western Hemisphere would be a much more successful hemisphere if we were able to work with nations that were all a part of this hemisphere. That Alliance for Progress by President Kennedy is still celebrated throughout the United States and throughout Latin America because of his vision that we would bring communities together. Yet what we are doing today on this national security issue of immigration reform is abandoning principles and allowing politics to triumph. This body tonight, by voting for what I expect will be successful passage of this bill, has allowed politics to triumph over what is in the best long-term interests of this country and over the principles that we worked on together to try to bring about comprehensive immigration reform. I stood with a number of my colleagues on the Republican side putting together what was a comprehensive immigration reform package. We had leaders on the Democratic side who have inspired me for ages, such as Senator Kennedy, Senator Durbin, and Senator Reid standing with people such as Senator Craig and Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others to try to pull together comprehensive immigration reform. At the end of the day, we were able to get that comprehensive immigration reform. The President lauded it because it was a good bill. It was legislation that dealt with creating a system of law and order, that would have taken us out of the lawlessness we currently have in our country with respect to immigration and have created a comprehensive system to deal with this major issue of national security, economic security and moral values. Our legislation dealt with border security. Our legislation dealt with the enforcement of our immigration laws. Our legislation dealt in a realistic way with the penalties and the registration that would apply to the 12 million or so people who are here in this country undocumented today. It was legislation that was comprehensive in nature. Yes, we were proud we had Senators such as Graham, McCain, Specter, Reid, Kennedy and a whole lot of other Members who stood behind this comprehensive approach to immigration reform. Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield? Mr. SALAZAR. I yield. Mr. REID. Mr. President, I support, as did the Senator from Colorado, tough border security. I voted, as did the Senator, for an amendment in the [[Page 21485]] context of an immigration reform bill that would have authorized for Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff 370 miles of fence based on what he told the Senate he needed. Building some fencing as part of a comprehensive reform bill makes sense. Would the Senator agree, we cannot take a piecemeal approach to fixing our borders? Mr. SALAZAR. I agree with my friend from Nevada that, indeed, Secretary Chertoff and others have said that a fence by itself will not deal with the problems we are facing in immigration. Secretary Chertoff's statement was, in his words: In fact, building a fence in the desert would have the somewhat ironic result of requiring us to put more bodies right up against the border because it would be a less efficient way to deal with it. So, yes, the Secretary of Homeland Security himself, along with the Attorney General of the United States, has taken a position that this is the wrong way to go. Mr. President, as we put together this legislation, I want to quickly review what it is we did as we went through the legislation. First of all, with respect to border security, we were tough on our border, but we were substance. We said we would add 12,000 new Border Patrol agents. Mr. REID. Mr. President, I say my friend from Colorado, we have an important agreement we would like to put before the Senate. I ask the Senator from Colorado allow me to interrupt him. The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time remains. Mr. REID. Yes. The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator object? Mr. SALAZAR. No. ____________________