The senator from north carolina. Mr. Tillis thank you, mr. President. I dont believe the gentleman from kentucky he did object to the motion . Well, mr. President , thank you. Just one brief comment. Thank you for presiding. I was supposed to be up there 30 minutes ago, and i will be up there in a couple of minutes. I also want to take a moment to talk about the great opportunity we have next week to pass immigration reform. The great opportunity that we have to fulfill the promise to the daca population of some 1. 8 million that the president has proposed we provide a path to citizenship. Its a proposal that has 25 billion allocated over ten years, with maybe 2. 5 billion to 5 billion appropriated in the bill that we will take up or various amendments that we will take up next week. The first pillar is daca. We have satisfied that, and i believe we have it pretty close to done. On border security, were done. Because the president himself has said its not a monolithic wall over 2,300 miles. Its not even a wall over half that territory. Its about maybe a thousand miles. And a thousand miles of wall also include some walls that are secondary. When you see a milelong wall, it is actually two walls because there is a secondary barrier. Were also talking about technology and infrastructure so that we can start working on the opioid epidemic. Tons and tons, millions of doses of heroin, fentanyl and other drugs come across our border every month. By implementing border security, a lot of people think this is just about preventing people from crossing the border. This is about securing our nation. And fortunately, many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle recognize that. They think that the proposal, many of them, i dont know that all of them do, but many of them believe that the department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol have put together a great strategy that makes sense. I have always criticized last year, we dont need to build a wall across all 2,300 miles, but we need security. We need to know whats coming into this country. Whether people are crossing the border illegally or whether they are pumping hundreds and hundreds and millions of doses of poison into the thousands of people that die every year of opioids. In my state of north carolina, more people die from opioid overdoses every year than interstate accidents. Over 1,400. So im glad to know that pillar one, a path to citizenship for some 1. 8 million daca recipients, has an opportunity to become law, to make that difference i was talking about, not the point. 25 billion to secure the border. Now were having a great discussion about whats called the diversity lottery. Its about 50,000 visas every year that are allocated in a random way today that makes no sense, in a way that actually makes sure that underrepresented countries have an opportunity to come here. Maybe some 15,000 a year. Many from subsaharan africa. And the other ones can be used to draw down a backlog for people who have been trying to get into this country for as long as 17 years. We talk about we want more people immigrating, but the reality is if you get in line today through the legal processes, it could take you 10 to 17 years to get through the process. Were trying to figure out a way through that allocation of the diversity lottery to make that half the time. So people that have been waiting 17 years, we can clear out the queue and others in the queue will never get that long. That nine years in total. I think were making great progress here. So the last thing we have to work season is chain migration or family unification reunification. Today about 72 of the 1. 1 Million People that come to this country every year are through what they call a family petition. So they are people that may have some relationship here. They could be a brother, a sister, a mother, a father. And thats important to do, but its also important for us to take a look at what our economy needs, what America Needs to make sure that we have the resources and the people that best provide a great platform for the americans, and we have to fight for all the americans that we have to fight hard for in this country. So there are simple provisions. Something like if you have an advanced degree, maybe we should allocate some of what is going into just purely family reunification into getting engineers, doctors, scientists, highly educated people who want to come and live in this country. At the other end of the spectrum, we need people of various skills, with a Community College certification, maybe. A welder. A technical drawer. The number of things that you can get in a Community College. I know this because i went to a Community College, actually two of them. And there are a number of skills that you get over two years that you may have gained in a foreign country or you may want to come here and complete the degree and then stay here. Thats all were talking about in terms of adding a merit component to what right now is just purely random or purely familybased immigration. I think there is a way to bridge that gap. I know people are kind of drawing their swords on certain issues, but lets look at what were trying to do. Number one, to promote immigration to this country, but number two, make sure that some of that is very much focused on the constant needs that we have in this nation to have the economy grow. And by the way, if the economys growing, theres going to be a greater demand for resources and people to support that growing economy. So i think at the end of the day, if we do this, it could have the effect of actually promoting a case for more negligence, more Legal Immigration over time. I want to thank senator durbin and senator graham, a number of people who have really spent years trying to solve this problem. By the same token, i would tell them you have spent years trying to solve the problem with a single solution, and it hasnt worked. It hasnt worked in a republican administration, it hasnt worked when president obama was in power. It didnt even work when you didnt need a single republican vote to vote for comprehensive negligence reform. There was a time here because no republican voted for obamacare, so there was clearly a time here that the table should have been set for whatever Immigration Solution you wanted in the same way that the table was set for whatever Health Care Solution president obama wanted. I dont begrudge him for taking advantage of the opportunity, whether or not i disagree with the policy, but its very telling if that solution which started back in 2001 couldnt make it through a sympathetic republican president s administration, if that legislation couldnt make it through after 2008 with a clearly sympathetic president obama administration, why on earth would we simply propose the same thing thats failed for 17 years . When were so close to coming up with something this balanced, this compassionate. I have all kinds of people mad at me because i support a path to immigration for 1. 8 million. I wear that as a badge of honor. Its the right thing to do. Its also the right thing to fix the visa lottery and work on migration that still maintains roughly the same numbers but does it in a responsible way that also protects the interests of the american people, the people who are here today, and to create a better environment for the people who want to move here tomorrow. So, mr. President , again, thank you for standing in my place for a moment. Im going to yield the floor, and i will come up to the