Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, few issues have bedeviled our country and our political process more than immigration. It is well known by now how difficult it is to get anything done on the topic. Later today, the House will have a vote. I don't know how that will turn out, but we have seen how difficult it is to even get to that point.

The reason it is a difficult issue is multifaceted. The first is, it involves people. It is easy to throw around numbers--100,000, 1.1 million a year, 2,000, but these are human beings who, by and large, want to come to America because it is the best country in the world. That is one of the things that makes it difficult; we are talking about human beings. It is not trade. It is not dollars. It is people. The other reason it is difficult is because we are a nation in which few, if any of us, are but a few generations removed at most from someone who came here from somewhere else. The closer you are to that reality, the more you identify with those who want to come here. I was blessed to be born in the United States, but I didn't do anything to earn that. I happen to have benefited from the fact that my parents lived 90 miles away from the greatest Nation on Earth. They could have been born somewhere else. They could have made a different decision in their lives. I am not sure what would have happened, quite frankly, since my parents had me in their forties, and I am not even sure I would have been born. I am a beneficiary of that incredible blessing.

The flip side of it is, I am also a lawmaker, and I understand that every Nation on this planet has immigration laws. Mexico has immigration laws. Canada has immigration laws. Canada, earlier this week, sent out a statement to TPS recipients in America that if your TPS expires, don't come to Canada because we are not going to let you in.

I have personally witnessed the immigration laws in places like Honduras--one of the source countries of some of our migration. I was there 2 years ago, and I visited a migration place. Basically, Honduras's policy is this: We detain you, we feed you, and we give you 48 hours to get out of the country.

Every country in the world has immigration laws, and anytime those laws are challenged by large numbers of people who want to enter outside of those laws, it creates friction and problems. It has throughout the history of this country, and it is doing it all over the world right now. The governing coalition in Germany could collapse over the issue. Multiple elections in Europe have been decided. In fact, the very future of the EU itself is under duress over the issue of migration and a common border.

So this is not just a difficult issue in America. It is a difficult issue around the world. One of the reasons that it is so difficult here is that we have long prided ourselves on being a nation of immigrants, and we remain that. One of the things that isn't repeated enough--and you will never get this if you listen to some of the ways this issue is covered on either side of this debate--is that every single year, over 1 million human beings enter the United States legally, and many of them, within 3 to 5 years, swear an oath to become American citizens. I believe, with all of my heart, that that strengthens our country. With all of this noise that you are hearing, just remember the baseline, which is that every single year over 1 million people come to this country legally. That has happened, and it will happen again this year. I will tell you that no other nation on Earth even comes close to extending that level of generosity.

The problem we have is that in our region there are countries of incredible instability. This ebbs and flows. I live in South Florida, a majority minority community that is deeply influenced by migration waves of Cubans who have come in multiple waves to flee communism; of Haitians who have come through during different periods of instability; of people who fled instability in Nicaragua, for example, in the 1980s and called this home; of Colombians who fled in the 1990s because of violence there; or of Venezuelans who seek asylum now because of the situation there. Every time there is a hemispheric problem, people in these countries seek to go to the greatest Nation on Earth, which is the closest to them, by the way. That is the United States.

So this is not new for us. Our challenge is how we can accommodate that and accommodate our legacy as a nation of immigrants but also do it through a system of law. There is nothing wrong with having ordered compassion. We have safety net programs in America that provide people who come upon tough times with healthcare and housing and money for food, but there is a process by which to get it. There are qualifications that you have to meet, there is an application that you have to fill out, and there is a limit as to how long you can use it. That is true with most charities as well. So you can be generous, and you can be ordered. Yet every time there is any sort of instability in a region, it places migratory pressure on the United States.

One of the ones that has arisen lately over the last few years is the instability in Honduras, in Guatemala, and in El Salvador. You can watch the documentaries. You can read the books and the articles. You can interview the people.

I can tell you that I know people personally. I don't know them like I met them at an event. I know them. I know their families, and I know their stories because they live in South Florida. I know.

I know people who have left because some local gang, thug, or organized crime group went to them and said: Unless you pay us 10 percent of what you make this month, we are going to kill your daughter; we are going to kill your wife; and we are going to burn your store. When people are told that, they leave. I know people who have left because they can't feed their families. So they come because they are going to work and send back money so that their kids can eat.

I ask everyone: If you are a parent and your children are hungry and if you are fearful that your children or your wife or your family could be killed by a gang, would you not do almost anything to help them?

We understand that part. Yet that has to be balanced with the reality that America is a country that is proud of its heritage of being a nation of immigrants that continues to be generous in welcoming them but that it also has to have a system. It can't be disordered because, otherwise, it strains our capacity. It also overlooks another obligation we have, and that is the obligation to our own people.

No nation on Earth, not even one as wealthy and as great as America, can welcome every single human being on the planet who wants to come here. That is not harsh. That is true. What other country does? Canada doesn't do that. Mexico doesn't do that. No other nation on Earth, including the ones that are criticizing us, has a policy like that, and many are much more restrictive than the United States. In most of the nations in Europe, you can go there, but they don't ever let you become a citizen. Every country has its own set of rules, and our rules have fluctuated. There have been times in our history when we have been much more restrictive than now in terms of immigration.

So we have this situation. We have this incredible instability in places like Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. One of the responses to it, which I strongly support--we will fund it again this year--is something called the Alliance for Prosperity. In the long term, it is probably the best thing we can do to deal with the problem we have right now. What that does is to build the capacities of the governments in those countries to deal with those gangs that are threatening people. It creates economic opportunities so people don't have to leave.

By the way, this migration isn't good for those countries. If you are the country of Honduras and your youngest, hardest working people are leaving, how are you going to build your economy in the future? It doesn't like it either. We need to help Honduras. We are trying to, and we are doing that, but it takes time for it to work.

If you don't think that will work, then, I ask you: Why don't we have migratory crises from Peru or Chile or Uruguay or Colombia or Brazil or Argentina or Costa Rica or Panama? We don't have migratory crises from those countries because, while they don't have America's wealth, you can find a job and you are not being threatened every day by a gang. The more we can do to help countries reach that point, the less migratory pressure we will have. That is, by far, the most effective border security measure we could take, if it works. We have to make sure that it works.

So now we have this situation, and it is a difficult one. I hear these people on television, and I have to tell you that I don't know where some people get their information or even care about how they get their information, but they just say things that aren't true, and they make it sound like it is so simple.

Here is the bottom line. Imagine, for a moment, that a family arrives unlawfully at the U.S. border, meaning that the family doesn't have a permit to enter and it doesn't have a visa. The family just unlawfully crosses the border. You are now apprehended. You have children with you, and you are an adult.

The law says--something called the Flores settlement, which is binding, which the White House is challenging with this Executive order--that you can hold the children for 20 days. You can detain the adults. They violated the law. It could be a misdemeanor. If it is a repeated offense, it is a felony. It could even be a civil offense, potentially. You can detain the adults if you need to, but you can't detain the children.

This is the dilemma because, if you don't detain people, we know that a substantial percentage--and I mean a very high percentage of people-- once apprehended and released, never shows up for the hearing. People are scheduled for hearings before immigration judges, but it could take a couple of years. When the hearings come, we don't even know where they are to even notify them of the hearings. They just don't show up. They don't show up at all. If you let them go, you will never see them again. You are basically passing them through.

Yet you can't detain the kids they came with. So you are left with this choice: I can't detain the kids; therefore, I can't detain the family together. So either I let them all go and never hear from them again or I detain the adults and separate them from their children. That is the decision the administration made along with saying: We are going to enforce every single one of these cases. Yet I already told you that if you let them go, your chances of ever having them show up again are virtually nil in many cases. That has led to the problem because, even though we are a nation of laws, we are also a nation with deep Judeo-Christian principles.

You are watching it on television, and you are seeing kids who are crying. Forget about being a Senator now. You are a parent, and you are thinking to yourself: This is horrifying that this is happening in America. It has to end.

So the administration says: We are going to end it, and we are going to detain them together, and someone is going to sue us under the Flores settlement, which is why Congress must act.

I watched some of the speeches on the floor last night by some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and the best way I can describe the argument is that I understood it, and, if I am wrong, then somebody should tell me. I listened to the arguments carefully because I was thinking that there has to be a way to deal with this because it is a tough issue.

This was their argument: No. 1, do not detain the children at all. Keep the Flores settlement in place, and don't detain the children.

No. 2, don't separate the families. That means, not only can you not detain the children, but don't detain the parents. Let them go.

No. 3, if they don't show up for their hearings and you eventually run into them, don't deport them either.

If we are not going to detain children and if we are not going to detain parents and if they don't show up for the hearings and we are not going to deport them unless they are violent criminals, then, the de facto policy is this: If you come to the United States alone, you will be detained and returned, but if you come to the United States with children, you will be released and, potentially, never be deported.

Now, this is not conjecture. I already told you that I know people. I want to tell you the perception that that creates. People can argue about whether dividing families is a deterrent or not. I don't even want to make that argument because I don't think that is a deterrent that we should use as a nation. It is not who we are. We should never say that we are going to punish your kids in order to keep you from doing something. Yet I can tell you that, whether or not it is a deterrent, it is most definitely an incentive to have a policy that says: If you come alone, you will be apprehended, detained, and returned, but if you come with kids, we are going to let you in.

It is true that I find it cruel to separate these kids from their parents. I want to tell you what else is cruel, and that is the journey that people have to undertake in the hands of some of the most horrible human beings on this planet who traffic human beings through Mexico and across our border. Let me tell you how horrible it is. It is so horrible that many of the young women who actually make that journey ensure that they get on birth control before they go on the journey because they expect to be sexually assaulted. That is how cruel it is. It is cruel because children disappear on that journey. We don't know what happens, but they vanish. It is cruel because families are often robbed and beaten on that journey. It is one of the nastiest, most cruel journeys anyone could imagine.

I will never forget being in Honduras a couple of years ago when we were at a migrant center. Our U.S. Customs and Border Protection people, who were embedded there alongside our Honduran partners, were talking to this young man who happened to be from Cuba and who was on his way to the United States. They warned him. They showed him. They talked him through it. They said: Once you cross this border, you are about to be in the hands of some of the worst human beings on the planet, who make a habit of killing people, assaulting people, trafficking people. This young man was determined.

To be honest with you, I don't know what happened to him. I gave him my number. I told him that if he were to make it to the States, we could be helpful, whatever it might be. We never heard from him again. I imagine he made it or something else happened. I, personally, tried to discourage him from making the journey.

So, yes, it is cruel to divide families. It is also cruel to have an incentive for people to bring children on this journey, and that is what this is.

To go back to the point, unless I am wrong, as I understand it, the policy that we are being asked to support by some is this: Don't detain the kids. Don't detain the parents in order not to separate the families. When they don't show up for the hearings, don't deport them.

Well then, basically, your de facto law is that if you come to the United States alone, you will be detained and returned. Yet if you come with kids, you will get to stay. That is irresponsible. If that is, in fact, the policy, then you should admit that this is our policy and that this is what we think the law should be. You can't go around saying you are for border security but then never say what you are for. You can't go around saying that we should only enforce our immigration laws on dangerous criminals. Everyone agrees with that one.

The bottom line is, if we want to continue to be a nation of immigrants and of immigration, then we have to have an ordered system of immigration. Otherwise, you have what we have now. You have what we have now in America, and you have what we have now all over the world, which is many people--a nation of immigrants--turning on immigration, not because they don't believe in it but because they think what we have now is unsustainable and wrong.

You will never hear me say that these people are animals or terrible people. They are not. Look, any time you take thousands of people and put them together, and, of course, there are going to be bad people among them, but it is my experience and my deep belief that the overwhelming majority of people are just looking for a better life. People are looking to send money back to their families, to live in safer places, and to reunite with loved ones who are already here. Their motives are not wrong, but there has to be a process by which to do it, and our laws put us in this position every single day.

I will never forget this. A handful of years ago, the home across the street from ours was occupied by a family. I don't know what happened-- well, I know what happened, obviously. At some point, they didn't pay their rent long enough, and the landlord evicted them, which requires you to go to the courthouse and get a court ruling. The sheriff's office comes and opens the door and takes out all your furniture and puts it on the curb.

We drove by and saw that family sitting there on their couch. There were three kids. The mom was on the cell phone calling somebody. All their possessions were sitting in plastic bags on the curb because they didn't pay their rent. They were evicted, and it was painful to watch. We did what we could. We tried to talk and see whether there was anything we could provide to make sure they had a place to stay that evening. But no one suggested that what we should do is just not allow landlords to evict people for not paying the rent. No one suggested that because we realize that if we ever have a law like that, no one will ever rent their property to people again. If we stopped enforcing the right of a landlord to evict people from their homes, if we were to stop enforcing that, then there would be no more landlords. Nobody would ever put anything up for rent. We would have a housing crisis. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't break our hearts to see the images of what that means when we see that applied.

I know people who lost their homes in foreclosure. Their homes are their dream. They came across difficult times and couldn't pay the mortgage, and they were out of their homes. It breaks your heart, but I haven't heard anyone suggest that we should make mortgages unenforceable.

It is not the same thing, but my point is that our laws always put us in this situation, but the answer can't be to not enforce the law. Every single day, even as I speak to you now, somewhere in this country, some adult is going to be arrested, and this adult is going to go to jail--perhaps for many years--and their children are not going to be able to see them.

I am not claiming that someone who commits a horrible crime in America is the same as someone who crosses our border. My point is that it happens every day, and no one should diminish it, but no one suggests that we should no longer arrest anyone or apply the law to people if it divides them from their families, because jails are full of people who have been divided from their families.

I make these points not as comparison. I am not saying that being evicted from your home and crossing the border are the same thing. I am not saying that being convicted of a serious crime and spending years in jail and crossing the border are the same thing. What I am saying is that oftentimes the application of our law leads to results that trouble our hearts, but we recognize that if we don't apply the law, the alternative is as bad, if not worse. That is where we are.

The reason why a nation of immigrants has a significant percentage of Americans who frankly want to see immigration significantly slashed is not because they have forgotten where they came from but because they think this thing is out of control. They are OK with 1 million people or 800,000 people a year coming into the country legally; what they are not OK with is anyone who wants to come, coming anytime they want, from anywhere they want, and they react against it.

It is easy to hear these people on television say: Well, that is something horrible that is going on in America. It is the President's fault. It is this one's or that one's fault.

It is happening all over the world. It is happening in every country in Europe. It is increasingly now putting pressure on Canada. It is happening in Mexico, which a few years ago began to crack down on their southern border.

So the best way forward is a bill that Senator Tillis and others filed yesterday, and that is one that would allow us to house families together while their hearing is pending. Some will qualify for asylum and get to stay. Others will have to return together. Is it perfect? No. The U.S. Government is not in the business of housing families. We do have an obligation to ensure that we can expedite their hearings so they are not there for a long time. We do have an obligation to say: If you legitimately qualify for asylum, you should be given the opportunity to apply for it. We do have an obligation to say that while we retain families, we are going to provide them safe, sanitary conditions, because that is who we are as a people, and that is who we should be. We do have an obligation to do all of that, and that is why this bill adds 200 new judges to help expedite and why it calls for expediting cases that involve families with children.

I know this is a tough issue, but our law cannot be that if you come here unlawfully with children, you get to stay and we are not going to enforce it, because that creates a cruel incentive for more people to do that. If we are basically saying: We have laws, but we refuse to enforce them, then we don't have an immigration system, and people will turn on immigration, and then we can't solve the problem.

I say to you in closing, as someone who is by no means an immigration restrictionist--by no means--in fact, I support doing something reasonable with the people who have been here for a long time and are not dangerous criminals and are now part of our country. I support extending TPS for the Haitian community, many of whom are now business owners in Miami-Dade County, where I live. I support extending TPS for the Honduran community who are here legally. TPS makes you legal. Some of them own businesses, and some have graduated and are going to medical school. I support all of that. I support doing something responsible with people who were brought here as children through no fault of their own and who have grown up here. Some of them don't speak any language but English. I support their finding some permanency in this country and a path to citizenship. I support all of that stuff.

I also support enforcing our immigration laws so that we can welcome more people in the future. But there has to be a process. Every sovereign country in the world has laws and a process, and most of them enforce their laws in ways that are much more stringent--in many cases, much more barbaric--than anything that you will ever be accused of having done in the United States. That is not what I am advocating, and I don't know anyone who is.

So it has been a tough week on a tough issue. I hope we will act. I know how appealing this is as a political issue. I know how much cable news time people get on both sides talking about it. I hope we can make progress at least on this one little piece and then move forward and do the rest of it. But this one little piece--I hope we will deal with it. I think we have a proposal before the Senate that doesn't make the situation perfect, but it sure makes it a lot better than it is right now; it sure is preferable to dividing families; and it sure is preferable to a law that tells people: Bring your children on this very dangerous journey because if you do, you will get to stay. It is my hope that we will act and get something done.

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