Immigration

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, America is a nation of immigrants. But for the Native Americans, the first people over here, all of us have come to this country in various stages in our family life: personally, through our parents, grandparents, and beyond. We have built, within the confines of our Nation, an amazing story to tell the world of how such a diverse group of people can come together in one place and make a nation that has an impact on the world itself. That makes it very difficult to understand sometimes why we struggle so much with the issue of immigration. It is so central to who we are, what we have done, what we will become. Yet, when the conversation comes around about immigration policy, immigration law, we dissemble into warring factions and too often get little or nothing done.

The Presiding Officer may be surprised to know that it has been almost 36 years--36 years--since this Congress has passed any meaningful or substantive immigration law. The last real effort was under President Ronald Reagan. That is not an indication that our immigration system is perfect. It is far from perfect. There are many problems with it, as we look at it in a critical and important way.

I look at it from a perspective that maybe is different than some. I am the son of an immigrant. My mother was brought to this country at the age of 2 from Lithuania, became a naturalized citizen, and was very proud of that fact and raised her three boys to be proud of it as well.

Just a few steps from this Chamber is my office that I have decorated with the naturalization certificate of my mother right next to my desk, a reminder of who I am, where I came from, and also a warning to anyone coming into the office that this Senator feels very strongly about the issues of immigration.

Now I have the responsibility, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to actually deal with the laws surrounding immigration. It is not an easy assignment. If we have failed for 36 years to come up with a law, it is because there are strongly held views on both sides. Yesterday was a good illustration of that.

I called for a hearing with my friend and colleague Senator Alex Padilla, a California Senator, on farm labor, farm workers. The reason we wanted to call this was because it was not untimely that we had received a bill from the House of Representatives, which they passed on a bipartisan basis, to rewrite the laws on farm workers. They did a great job. I want to commend them for the effort of sending this legislation our way, this bipartisan legislation with 30 Republicans joining most of the House Democrats to enact it in the House of Representatives. And now it is over on our side of the Rotunda. It is a timely and important question.

We estimate that there are 2.4 million farmworkers in the United States who plant and pick our crops, milk the cows, process the food, and work in poultry and meat processing. And without them, these industries would struggle to survive.

That is not my analysis; it is the analysis of the American Farm Bureau and many other organizations that represent agriculture in America.

Of the 2.4 million farmworkers in the United States who pick these crops, half of them are undocumented. That means that, literally, they work in the fields picking the crops that reach our tables and they could be deported at any minute.

The bill that came over from the House of Representatives addresses that. Here is what it says. It says: If you can prove that you have worked picking crops for at least 10 years--10 years--and you can pass a criminal background check, we will give you the opportunity to apply for citizenship. But it is not instantaneous. Ten years is just the starting point. You then have to give us 4 years more of working in the fields, and then we will give you a green card. And in 5 years more, you could be eligible for citizenship. You are going to go through all kinds of reviews and background checks on your path to that moment.

So literally, we are saying to farm workers: If you will give us 19 years of your life picking our crops, we will give you a chance to be a citizen.

I have just heard that process characterized as amnesty--amnesty. For people who are breaking their backs, in the sweltering heat of America, with the toughest jobs imaginable, spending 19 years of their life putting food on our table and then passing a criminal background check, some call amnesty. I won't.

And if you had listened yesterday to the hearing, you would understand why even that process, as bipartisan as it was in the House, is in a tangle of politics here on the Senate side. Two speeches given by members of the Republican membership of the committee really told the story. They started talking not about farm workers picking crops or milking cows or processing our food, they started talking about terrorists, drug dealers, human traffickers, violent criminals coming across our border.

And they rejected the notion that we should give any of them the opportunity for citizenship at any point. They didn't even read the bill. About 19 years of hard work in the field before you could possibly qualify, they just said ``reject it.''

And when I listened to that, I wondered what they had for dinner last night because it is quite likely that whatever they had--whether it was a vegan diet or one that included meat or other food products--it was on their plate because one of these people that they have just characterized as a potential terrorist is breaking his back, day in and day out, to make sure that there is food for every American.

We heard stories. Linnea Kooistra was a dairy farmer in Woodstock, IL. She and her husband own a dairy farm. That may be one of the hardest assignments in the world. Those cows are going to get milked twice a day if you are going to make a living, and you better be prepared to give time to do it every single day, twice a day. She and her husband did it for years, won awards for their work.

Now, they have just kind of semiretired into row crops, which are challenging, too, but not like a dairy farm. And she said: You know, the thought of our continuing our farm was impossible unless we had immigrant labor.

The jobs on their dairy farm are tough, demanding jobs. People aren't lining up to apply for those jobs. They needed immigrants to make it work, and they couldn't get them.

There was a fellow that was there yesterday--an extraordinary guy, person; I had just met him for the first time--and I ran across him by watching television. I said, yesterday in a hearing, that my appetite for television starts with the Chicago Bears and goes through baseball, a lot of politics and news, but I never miss, if I can help it, the CBS ``Sunday Morning'' show.

Two weeks ago, this man named Shay Myers, whose home is in Idaho and who farms in Oregon growing asparagus, came on the show and did such a remarkable job, and I said to my wife: I would like to get him before our committee.

Well, he was there yesterday, and he told his story again, and he told about that asparagus field. There aren't many left in the United States because it is tough work and it is unpredictable, and some people just can't make it and how tough it was for him when finally the entire asparagus crop is ready, but there are no pickers for the crop. And it is backbreaking, intensive work.

He took his entire production of asparagus and basically said: Because I can't clear immigrant workers across the border, 90 of them, to pick my acreage on asparagus, I am just notifying the public in the area, It is free, come and take it; it is going to rot in the fields if you don't.

He just gave up and made nothing as a result of it. He grew up, he said, in a community in Oregon or Idaho--I am not sure which--which was half and half, half Anglo, half Hispanic. And he said: I am a very conservative person politically, but how can you say that these people haven't earned their opportunity for citizenship? They work so damn hard, and nobody else wants to do this work, and we count on them.

And, he said: I just happen to believe that growing these crops in the United States is a good thing. American consumers, more and more, are saying: We want some standards. We want to know about the chemicals you are going to use on these crops. We want to know about your farming practices.

He said: I pay close attention to those in America. Other countries that send us those crops from other countries don't pay any attention to it.

And he made a very, very valid point. When I think about those workers and how critical they were to him and his livelihood, it is hard for me to sit here--or stand here and ignore some of the criticism of this farm workers bill.

I want to salute Michael Bennet, of Colorado, in particular. He is our colleague here. And he has, time and again, been able to mobilize the growers and the farm workers into an agreement on a bill. He did it again. He did it once before. I saw him do it, almost miraculously, with our Gang of 8 effort, a comprehensive immigration reform 7, 8 years ago. And now he has done it with this bill. It is amazing.

Arturo Rodriguez was there, one of the founding members of the United Farm Workers--an organization, you will remember, from the days when Cesar Chavez was drawing our attention for the first time in America to who picks the crops. Rodriguez was there, and he was speaking for the workers again--bringing workers from Michigan and Georgia, who were young Hispanic women, who were working in the field just a few weeks ago and now are sitting in the Halls of Congress, begging for this legislation.

When I think about all that and then hear that work effort, that bill, being dismissed by the Republican leader this morning as mass amnesty--``mass amnesty,'' that was the phrase he used--it saddens me, and it angers me. It saddens me that many of the Senators who are saying these things aren't listening to these farm workers who are giving their lives so that we can have food for our families.

Tom Vilsack was there yesterday, the Secretary of Agriculture. I like him. I voted for him twice to be that Secretary. I am glad he has the job. He told the story of going to the State of New York, meeting a man who had been a migrant worker, picking crops for 20 years. This man had heard about Vilsack's arrival and about this legislation that was pending, and he said to the Secretary of Agriculture: I hope this happens so I can see my family.

And Vilsack said to him: Your family, where is your family?

He said: In Mexico. He said: I have been here for 20 years picking crops in the United States of America, going from field to field and State to State--20 years--and I haven't been able to see my family in that time.

And Vilsack said: Why?

He said: Because I am undocumented. And if I cross that border to see my family, I may never get back here again to pick the crops and earn the money and send it back to my family so they can get by.

We don't think about that very often, do we? We think, Well, these workers come in, and everything is just normal. Nothing is normal about being undocumented and picking someone's crops and not being able to see your family for 20 years.

I am not going to give up on this issue of immigration. America shouldn't give up on immigration. There are a million reasons why the theory that helping to find good immigration laws is mistaken in some way when you consider the fact that each year we naturalize a million people in America. Those are people who went through the process I described many times, waiting for years for that opportunity. And we say a million new Americans, through this legal process, is normal and good for us. I think it is.

There are some who say that if we said to farm workers, You have a path to citizenship, a 19-year path to citizenship, of backbreaking work in the fields, that we are sending a message to countries to turn them loose, come on into the United States, no questions asked. I couldn't disagree more.

We should have a process in America in immigration which we are proud of, that reflects our heritage and our belief in immigration as part of our future as well. I think there are just some basic things that every Member of the Senate should consider and, I believe, should be the basis of our immigration policy.

First, we need a secure border. In the age of COVID-19 and drug dealing, I want to know who is coming into this country and what they are bringing. That is not an unreasonable question to ask at our borders. A secure border is important for those reasons.

Second, we should never knowingly allow any person to come into this country who will do us harm, nor allow anyone into this country who threatens us.

And third, we need an orderly process, one that respects the law because the United States cannot absorb all of the people who want to come here right now. We have to have an orderly process, knowing who is coming into the border and what impact they are going to have on our Nation.

And then we ought to sit down and, instead of throwing around all the labels of mass amnesty and terrorism and human trafficking, acknowledge who these people are.

One of the things that the Senator from Kentucky referred to, I am sure, is a decision last week in Texas by a Federal court. That judge, Hanen, again, ruled in a way that troubles me--I think troubles many people--that the DACA Program, created by President Obama that has given up to 850,000 young people a chance to become at least legal in America temporarily, was unconstitutional and wrong. I think his decision is terrible, and I hope that the Biden administration appeals it and we win the appeal.

But the people who are affected by that decision, by the DACA decision, are young people, as I mentioned--infants and toddlers-- brought to this country, who grew up here and know no other country. They pledge allegiance to that flag in a classroom every morning. They believe that is their flag, this is their country. And most of them, when they were teenagers, finally realized for the first time they have a problem: They are undocumented.

Should they be given a chance to become citizens of the United States? Overwhelmingly, the American people--Democrat, Republican, and Independents--say: Yes, that is only fair; give them a chance. They were brought here as kids. Give them a chance, those Dreamers, those DACA recipients. And to have them characterized as the beneficiaries of mass amnesty is unfair, and frankly, it doesn't reflect very well on us as a nation.

If we cannot find in our values, in our hearts, an opportunity to give these young people a chance to prove themselves, it really disappoints me that my colleagues would take that position.

These young people are remarkable. For 20 years of my public life, I have come to know them, and I am always amazed by the fact that I don't have to put a footnote at the end of that sentence and say ``except for a few here and there.'' By and large, I have never run into one who has run into problems. I know it happens occasionally, but it is so rare. These are remarkable young people, Dreamers, who just want a chance to be part of America's future.

I have come to the floor over 120 times with color photographs telling their individual stories. Each one is an amazing testimony to who we are as Americans and why these young people want to be part of us and what they can bring to this country. Remarkable stories-- doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, members of our military, frontline workers--on COVID-19. They do remarkable things.

One of them, yesterday, appeared in a video before our committee, Vicente Reyes. Vicente Reyes is a DACA recipient. His mom and dad are undocumented. He is studying robotic engineering at a university in California.

Do we need him? I mean, can we do without Vicente Reyes? I assume we can do without him, but wouldn't we be better if he were part of us, part of the American family, and part of the American future?

That is what DACA is about. That is what Dreamers are about. If we help him, is that mass amnesty to give that young man a chance?

Incidentally, he told a story. He used to be out there picking those crops, and his mom and dad still are. Every morning, he said, before they go to the fields for a 10-hour day of back-breaking work picking crops, he said: Mom and dad hug me. They hug me and I hug them back because we know something. There is a secret in our family. My mom and dad are undocumented, he said. They may not come home tonight.

That is what that family faces to go out and do this back-breaking work, and that is the reality. And to dismiss this as mass amnesty--to even talk about a path to citizenship for Vicente, to talk about some way to help his mom and dad from being frightened every single day of being deported, that is what I dedicated my work for in this Senate and the Senate Judiciary Committee for many years.

I hope we can find some Republicans who will step up and join us in that effort. We need at least 10 of them. That is hard to find. Maybe we can find them. I am hoping we can do it soon.

We have a lot of work to do in this country for the Dreamers, for the farm workers, for the frontline workers who were there when we needed them so desperately during the COVID-19 pandemic and are still there today doing that work.

We are a big, wonderful nation that has a great story to tell, and it is a story of success written by immigrants with their blood and their toil and their dedication to this great Nation. We need to renew that effort.

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