WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Chairman of the Senate Agriculture, today made the following statement regarding Senate passage of the Immigration Reform Compromise Act of 2006. Chambliss voted against the bill.

"I believe this bill is a bad bill -- it puts more emphasis on amnesty than on border security. Regardless of where Georgians stand on dealing with the current illegal population, the constant refrain I hear from constituents is, ‘secure the border.’ If we do not secure the border and have serious interior and worksite enforcement, then we have accomplished nothing. The magnitude of the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States is astounding, and we must work to provide more Border Patrol agents, better infrastructure, additional checkpoints and the use of the latest technology available.

"This bill is an amnesty bill -- that’s the bottom line. The majority of Georgians and I believe the majority of Americans oppose the amnesty approach in this legislation, and I continue to stand by them with my strong opposition. It’s been tried in the past and did not work, and this bill just repeats those mistakes of the past with far-reaching implications on future generations.

"I have said throughout the course of this debate that I just don’t understand why we have to connect a pathway to citizenship to immigration reform. There are a lot of these people, whether it's 11 million or 20 million, whatever the number may be, who came here for the right reasons and that being to improve the quality of life for themselves and their families - and we can show compassion for those individuals by allowing them to work temporarily in jobs when no American workers can be found. It is NOT compassionate to either American workers or foreign nationals to allow immigrants to take jobs at lower wages and thereby deprive Americans of jobs they would otherwise be willing to take.

"But that does not mean that we ought to give them an automatic path to citizenship. Why would we grant that privilege that we cherish so much to those who have broken our laws? It’s not the right way to address the presence of the large number of illegal immigrants in our country today.

"I have also said that amnesty is not in the best interests of agriculture in the United States. We should not repeat the mistakes we made in 1986, because we know from past experience that agricultural workers do not stay in their agricultural jobs for long, especially when they gain a legal status and have the option to work in less back-breaking occupations. We must continue working to reform the H-2A program to make it more responsive to the needs of agriculture and more user-friendly for farmers. That is what the focus of immigration reform should be. The path this current bill takes will not fix the problems with maintaining a quality, legal agricultural workforce, but will continue the incentives for farmers and ranchers to hire illegal workers.

"I hope that when this bill gets to conference, many of the provisions can be fixed, because we do need immigration reform, just not the kind included in the final bill put before the Senate today."