Pathway to Citizenship

Floor Speech

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Ms. JAYAPAL. Madam Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez. It has been a joy in Congress to have the gentlewoman's voice, to have her passion, and to have her advocacy. This is what makes me so proud to be the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus because of the words, the passion, and the advocacy of Representative Bowman, of Congresswoman Leger Fernandez, and of our 94 other members who are part of the Progressive Caucus. The Special Order hour that we host for this Progressive Caucus is about the issues that matter to the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Let me be very clear, progressives have been at the forefront of fighting for comprehensive immigration reform for a very long time. Our Progressive Caucus is extremely diverse. We have members who are part of the Hispanic Caucus, part of the Asian-American Caucus, and part of the Black Caucus.

The reality is that we represent the diversity that is immigration today in this country.

Madam Speaker, when I think about immigration, this is very personal to me for multiple reasons. I am an immigrant myself. I am one of only two dozen Members of Congress who serve in Congress who is a naturalized citizen. When I came to Congress in 2017, there were actually only six of us at that time. Then it moved to 12, and now it moved to 24. It is good that we are here and that we are representing the voice of immigrants who come from all over the world seeking refuge because that is the identity that the United States has as a place to seek refuge.

I came here when I was 16 by myself. My parents just had a few thousand dollars in their bank account, and they used all of it to send me, their child, across the ocean by myself at the age of 16 because they believed that this was the place that I would have the most opportunity.

But it isn't just that. It was 20 years ago that in Washington State I started what was a grass-roots effort to organize against the Bush administration at that time cracking down on immigrants, Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, and South Asian Americans and curtailing civil liberties. That was the moment that I got involved in grass-roots organizing around immigration issues and ended up starting and founding what became the largest immigrant advocacy organization in Washington State and one of the largest in the country.

Madam Speaker, if John Lewis were here, he would tell you that the first thing that I said to him when I came on to the floor is: You taught me how to make good trouble.

The reason is because I, too, got arrested multiple times fighting for immigration reform in civil disobedience that was about calling attention to the pain of the country when we treat immigrants with the cruelty that we have treated immigrants with both Democratic and Republican administrations through the past to today.

Yes, Donald Trump did something to the immigration system that was beyond anything that had been done before. But we should be clear that much of the cruelty has existed prior to the Trump administration coming in going back to the exclusionary history of immigration law in America, but then also continuing through what was called welfare reform. That was the so-called immigration reform that actually began the criminalization of immigrants in the United States.

So the work that we do here in Congress as Representatives of our communities on so many levels is incredibly important, because we get to change the conversation about what the issue is and what we need to do. We also get to change the conversation about where to put the priority for legislative fixes to the issues that we are facing.

We have an opportunity coming up in the reconciliation package to do the right thing for immigrants--not just for immigrants, by the way, to do the right thing for America, because let's be very, very clear, America would not survive without the labor and the toil of immigrant communities. That is why I am so excited about the opportunity to actually advance a path to citizenship for Dreamers, TPS holders, essential workers, and farm workers in the upcoming reconciliation package.

This is an opportunity for us to actually face the truth about who it was that kept the country going during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic only underscored how our communities and our economy rely on the work of immigrants. Throughout the pandemic, immigrant workers have filled a broad swath of duties from picking and preparing the food we eat, to cleaning our homes and community spaces, to serving as front-line medical professionals and the heroic teachers who educated our kids over Zoom.

We are talking about an estimated 5.2 million undocumented immigrants who were serving as essential workers, nearly 15,000 DACA recipients who have pivoted to remote learning as teachers, 1.7 million immigrants working in the food supply industry to put food on our tables, and over 200,000 undocumented immigrants working as healthcare practitioners including as registered nurses and home health aides.

That is why we put as one of our top five priorities for the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the reconciliation package a roadmap to citizenship for these essential workers.

One million of these undocumented essential workers are also Dreamers. Just a few weeks ago, a judge in Texas cruelly ruled against the DACA program, stopping the government from processing new applications and, once again, throwing the status of hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients back into limbo.

This is not what the American people want. It was yet another urgent reminder about why we need to end the filibuster in the Senate and pass the Dream and Promise Act that we already passed multiple times in the House of Representatives.

This, though, cannot wait. We cannot wait, and so it is time for us to act in this upcoming package.

Further, over 7 million immigrant essential workers do have legal status, but they only have temporary status or are waiting to adjust their status. When we talk about immigrant essential workers, it is crucial that we recognize that many of them do have legal status and have been waiting--in some cases, in waiting lines projected to last over 80 years to transition--to a roadmap to citizenship.

I know that when I became a citizen, Madam Speaker, it was after 17 years of being on multiple visas. By the time I became a U.S. citizen, it was impossible for me to uproot my family, my parents, and bring them to the United States to be with me. That is why they still live in India, and I live here. I have not lived on the same continent as my parents since I was 16 years old.

Every day, essential immigrant workers put their own health and the health of their families at risk, showing up to work on the front lines so that we and our families could stay safe. They do all of this knowing full well that a simple traffic stop could tear them away from their families and communities, and that should they get COVID, they likely wouldn't have access to healthcare.

For instance, TPS holders have been serving on the front lines, even as the former President rescinded their TPS designation and threatened to rip them away from their communities.

Recognizing the tremendous contributions of immigrants, countries like France actually acted to expedite citizenship for essential immigrant workers. Not only is that the right thing to do, but it is also good for our communities and for our economy.

Most of these workers have lived alongside us as friends and neighbors for over a decade. They are deeply rooted in our communities. Many have U.S. citizen children and family members, and tearing them from their homes and their families would leave gaping, irreplaceable holes in communities across the country.

Moreover, if doing the humane thing isn't enough for you, and if doing the popular thing isn't good enough for you either, then look at the economic benefit. In 2019, immigrant essential workers had an estimated $860 billion in spending power, and that is after paying up to $239 billion in Federal and payroll taxes, as well as an estimated $115 billion in State and local taxes. So it is clear that immigrants are helping to sustain our communities and bolster our economies.

Madam Speaker, the gentlewoman and Mr. Bowman were talking about the importance of going to the border, and I just have to recall some of the worst cruelty that I saw in the last 4 years. I was the first Member of Congress to go into a Federal prison where mothers and fathers who had been separated from their children, in many cases, babies as young as 3 months old, under the previous administration and the previous President, when they were imprisoned--these parents were imprisoned and separated from their children.

When I went to see them, a couple of weeks into this crisis, and as the first Member of Congress to do so, I met with hundreds of parents, mothers and fathers who did not know where their children were.

Some of them were given slips of paper that had names of children on them. But guess what? They weren't their children because DHS had lost all trace of which children belonged to which parents.

What we know today is that there are still hundreds of children who are separated from their parents. Their parents have been deported, in some cases, and they will never be reunited. This was by design. This was cruelty of epic proportions perpetrated by the last President and everybody who went along with those policies. Not all Republicans did, by the way.

I remember when Laura Bush spoke out against this and said this is not who America is. Well, I have a different perspective on that because we have had a lot of things happen in America that remind us that we have a bad side to America as well.

But we have resilience. We have refuge. We have humanity. When that trumps, that is the best of America.

The reality is, Madam Speaker, I went down to the border, as well, multiple times. In fact, I see my colleague over here. I think he called me--I forget what he called me, but I think he called me a Congresswoman coyote.

No, I am not yielding to you, Mr. Gaetz. But I appreciated that because I helped children across the border as a Member of Congress.

How could anybody be against that? These were children traveling alone. Had I not been there, as a Member of Congress, they wouldn't have gotten over and been able to be processed because the last administration actually closed all the ports of entry.

When I went to Tijuana and met with so many of these people--I remember a 15-year-old boy who had been shot in his knee. His mother said to him to just go as quickly as he can because his brother had already been killed by gangs. Just go. Just go. Just try to get there.

This was a strapping young boy, and he wept as he played me the message that his mother had left him so that he could listen to it over and over again in the shelter that he was in to get away from gangs and violence.

This is what we are dealing with. That is why I have introduced the Roadmap to Freedom resolution, which lays out a positive vision of who America is, and who we should be, and who we can be if we continue to embrace those roots by which everybody came here, unless you were Native American. Either you came enslaved on ships against your will and were forced to work and your labor was taken, or you came as an immigrant in some category.

The reality is, Madam Speaker, there are many things that we have to do. Thank goodness this new administration closed the Irwin Detention Center, where women were being sterilized without their consent. Thank goodness that for-profit, private detention center was closed in Georgia.

We had that resolution--that was my resolution--on the floor. And do you know what? It passed with bipartisan support. Members on the other side of the aisle, as well, couldn't stomach that.

We have an opportunity here to do something really tremendous in the next reconciliation package. I know firsthand that our immigration story is one of struggle and resilience. Immigrants push boulders up mountains, and we succeed because we have to. There is no other option for us.

It is that strength of courage that comes out of struggle that is what defines America, defines immigrants in America. So, I look forward to doing everything I can to make sure that the Congressional Progressive Caucus continues to push for bold, progressive immigration reform and that we make sure that we get a path to citizenship for our essential workers who have been taking care of all of us through this pandemic.

Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Leger Fernandez for her tremendous work, her leadership, her heart, and her passion.

Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Jayapal, and I really do appreciate the Congressional Progressive Caucus' support for making sure that we include immigration reform in the reconciliation.

We can do that because it has a direct economic benefit to this country, and it has a direct economic benefit that will be reflected in the budget. And we support it.

But I think the other thing to remember is the country supports it. The support for doing immigration reform is huge. Sixty-seven percent of voters support the DREAM Act. Eighty-three percent of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for immigrant youth. Sixty-five percent of voters support citizenship for undocumented farmworkers.

It is something that the country supports because they understand that immigrants, they are us. They live with us and care for us and are us. Americans know that, and they support that.

So, then, we must ask, why are we not doing this? We will work on that.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Tlaib) to tell us the stories and to raise her voice about the immigrant experience.

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