Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018
Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, today, Wednesday, is day 83,723 since the Senate first achieved a quorum and started work. No grand celebration there. That is 229 years, 2 months, and 22 days. In that time, this body has deliberated over some of the most difficult issues of our time--of any time--slavery, war, voting rights. They have all been difficult issues that our Nation has debated in this building.
But lately it seems we have less and less debate and more and more empty-Chamber quorum calls. For the people who watch the debate in this room and watch an empty room and think ``Where is the debate happening in the Senate?'' I can assure you there is work being done. There is a lot happening in committee hearings right now. There is a lot happening in different offices on trying to work through the issues.
Our days are busy and full, but for some reason, we are not getting to some of the biggest debates of the moment that need to be done and completed. We had a real push in the nomination process. We spent 100 days in the last 18 months just on a quorum call waiting for a nomination to come up. That didn't happened in the last five Presidents combined. There have only been 25 requests for additional time for any nominee in five Presidents. This time, in 18 months, there have been 100. It is slowing down the body. We have to fix that.
We have to fix our budget process. Our appropriations process is working a little better this year, and that is good. We moved three bills last week. That is the first time that has happened in a decade in the Senate. That is good progress, but we have to complete the process so we don't end up with omnibus bills. That is going to take some reform. There are 16 of us--8 Republicans and 8 Democrats--who are meeting consistently to work on how to reform the process of our budgeting to make sure that we can fix that.
So there is some work that needs to be done. There is also some reform that needs to be done. But as we deal with things like the farm bill this week--so far, we have not had amendments and votes on it--we have to reform the process on how we get through the farm bill, how we get through our appropriations process, and how we get through nominations.
We also need to work through things that are difficult, things like immigration. I have been in this body multiple times to talk about this issue, and I will continue to come back to this body to raise it. The challenge we have with immigration is that there seems to be no deadline to solve it, so Congress just delays actually working on immigration. When a deadline comes, Congress finds a way to get around it, or the courts step in and make some change and say: We are going to make some ruling, which delays a decision here, and it just gets delayed again.
The Nation is once again looking at the issue of immigration because of what we are watching happen with families on the border. Americans are people of great compassion. We do not want to see families separated. But we also understand the basics of the law. So how do we deal with all these things together?
I would say first, this body has to learn how to focus on solving the issue of immigration rather than just complaining about the issue of immigration. We can't have it come up every once in a while when it is in the news and then work on something else when the news stops focusing on it. We have to solve this issue.
Last February, we had four different bipartisan bills that came before the Senate. All four of them failed. You would think that there would have been work to say: Let's combine them. Let's find the common ground between the four different bills, form a final bill, and pass it in the Senate. Instead, the Senate got distracted with something else and walked away.
We have to solve the issues on immigration. What is currently separating families is not a new issue. Some people believe it might be, but it is not new. This comes out of the Flores decision from 1997. Every single President has struggled under this Flores decision from a court in California. That court said that you can only detain children for 20 days. Well, it takes 35 days to do a hearing. So the court set up an impossible situation where it takes 35 days to do a hearing and you can only hold children for 20 days. So every administration has had the same problem: Do I release people into the country and tell them to show up for what is called a notice to appear at a future court date so their family can stay together, or do I separate families?
Previous administrations have said: I will just release people into the country and will tell them to show up at a hearing at a future date. Well, there are a couple of problems with that. One is that thousands upon thousands of those individuals never show up for their first hearing, the notice to appear. The vast majority beyond that, after they show up for their first hearing, are given what is called a notice of removal, which says: You don't qualify to be in the country legally, so you need to leave. The problem is that 98 percent of those individuals then don't leave. Once they get that notice of removal, they find a way to disappear into the country. They move to a new city, and they are gone.
This administration is struggling with that, saying: Well, what we have created is an incentive to come into the country illegally. If you cross the border and bring your family, you will be released into the country, and then you can just disappear, and no one will ever try to find you.
That is a problem with the legal system, period.
I am not cold to immigration. Quite frankly, I am grateful we are one of the most open immigration countries in the world. We have 1.1 million people a year who become legal citizens of the United States, going through the process the right way. I just spoke at a naturalization ceremony in Oklahoma City. If you ever come to one--and I encourage every American to go to one of the naturalization ceremonies, but take Kleenex with you. They are incredibly moving events--watching people from all over the world stand and raise their right hand and take their oath to become an American citizen, say the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time as an American, hold the little American flag and wave it, and seeing their family cheer them from the audience, saying: We are Americans together. It is incredibly moving to see that. There are 1.1 million people a year who do it the right way.
Let me add one more number. Half a million people a day legally cross our southern border. Let me run that past this body again. Half a million people a day legally cross our southern border. We are not a nation that is closed to immigration. We are a nation that is open to immigration. Half a million people a day legally go through that process of crossing the border back and forth. That is just coming from the south to the north; that is not counting the people going from the north back to the south, back into Mexico.
We are an open nation for immigration, but we have real issues that need to be resolved. Let me run through a couple of these.
We have to solve the Flores issue. We shouldn't have an impossible situation to say: You can either release people into the country whom we know, by and large, will never show up for a court hearing or detain them and separate families. That is intolerable. This body can fix that, but no one has since 1997. It is time for us to be able to take ownership of that and to be able to fix that. We should not separate families, but neither should we just release them into the country and give them a notice to appear.
Many people in this body may not know, but right now, if you called our Department of Justice and DHS and asked them: In the regions of the country, when is the next available court date for an immigration hearing for a notice to appear? They will tell you--because we have just checked--that the next available court date--if you are crossing the southern border right now, they will hand you a notice to appear for August of 2022--August of 2022. They will release you into the country on your own recognizance, hoping you will show up 4 years and 2 months from now at the next available court hearing. That is intolerable.
So what do we do? Let's start with some basics. Can we agree that we should add more immigration judges? We have 350 immigration judges in the country. Last year, this body agreed and voted to add another 150. It is still not close to what is needed. We have a backlog of 700,000 immigration cases right now. It is not possible for that group of immigration judges to actually get through all of that.
Can we agree to add more immigration judges so individuals get due process but don't have to wait 4 years to get due process? We should be able to agree on that.
We should be able to agree on reforms to the process. It takes over 700 days to hire a new immigration judge. That is a broken process for hiring. Can we agree that process needs to be fixed?
Can we agree on basic southern border security? That used to not be a controversial thing. In 2006, this body passed something called the Secure Fence Act. It added 650 miles of fence and border onto our southern border. That vote passed with overwhelming support from this body, Republican and Democratic. Outspoken conservatives, such as Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, and Senator Barack Obama, voted for the Secure Fence Act in 2006. This used to not be a partisan issue that we would just have basic border security. So 650 miles of fencing is now on our southern border today because of the bipartisan Secure Fence Act that passed with overwhelming support from this body in 2006. Can we still agree that securing our southern border is a good thing or is that still a partisan issue? I hope it will not be. That should be a basic principle of trying to secure our southern border. Every Nation just wants to know who is coming in and out of our borders.
Even for asylum seekers--there has been much in the news about asylum. Asylum seekers who go to the port of entry have not violated any law. They are going to a port of entry and saying: I request asylum. What is interesting from that is even if I go back to, let's say, 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, of the people who came to the border requesting asylum, after they got into the country, only 40 percent of them actually filed paperwork for asylum. Of that 40 percent who actually filed paperwork for asylum, only 13 percent of them actually received asylum, and that is in the last year of the Obama administration.
We should allow for asylum, but they should come to the ports of entry. That is the right spot to do it, not skip around the ports of entry, and when they are arrested for coming between the ports of entry, then claim: Now I want asylum.
Those folks, the vast majority of them who claim they want asylum, never actually file the paperwork to get it. Once they are released into the country, they never follow through with the actual request. We should be able to fix some of those issues.
We should also be able to fix the DACA issue. I have raised this in this body multiple times, and I have talked about it often at home. We have a couple of million kids who have grown up in this country whose parents illegally crossed the border when they were infants and children at the time and who have grown up in this country. They don't know another country. Now, their parents violated the law. Those kids did not violate the law. What do we do with them?
The most simple principle, and that is what I hope we can agree on common ground is, let's secure the border. Let's take a couple years to make sure we secure the border, but let's also give a shot to those kids who are here with the DACA Program to be naturalized, to become citizens of the United States in the only country they have ever known.
This shouldn't be that controversial either. Quite frankly, that opinion is agreed upon by President Obama and by President Trump.
Back in February, over 70 Members of this body voted for a bill that allowed for naturalization of individuals in the DACA Program. We had four bills we voted on. None of them got 60 votes, but if you count up each of the people who voted for them on a bill that included naturalization of those kids, over 70 people voted for that in this body on some level.
We have common agreement that we should do that. We can't seem to finish the work to actually do it though. We should be able to resolve it. We should be able to fix the issues of family separation. We should be able to solve basic border security issues. This is doable stuff, but we need this body to focus and to actually get it done.
Every issue we debate is controversial. Some of them are louder and more controversial than others--I get that--but that is our job, to go through the difficult issues, read the Constitution, and talk to the people at home to deal with the issue and make a decision.
I encourage this body to finish the work. We should be able to secure our border. We should deal with this issue of family migration. We should keep families together but actually go through the legal process, not just release them into the country for a hearing 4 years from now, for which they probably will not show up. We should do this and find that common ground.
Let's work together. Let's finish the task that needs to be done on this and actually get this resolved.
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