Immigration Reform

Floor Speech

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise to point out it has now been 342 days since the Senate passed bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform that would secure our border, turbocharge America's economic growth and provide a chance to heal America's broken families who are being separated by our dysfunctional immigration system.

Here is what we know: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office told us that had we passed the bill this last year, we could have already seen up to $80 billion of economic growth, $20 billion of deficit reduction, 50,000 new jobs, $50 billion more in the Social Security trust fund, $2 billion of revenue for State and local governments, and 40,000 more brilliant STEM--science, technology, engineering, and mathematics--graduates stay in the United States instead of being told to go home.

Instead, we have not been able to achieve any of these important gains. Why is that? It is because the House has refused to do anything--underline anything--to try and fix our broken immigration system. To be clear, the real problem is not that there is a difference of opinion between a House bill and a Senate bill on immigration that cannot be reconciled. The problem is there is no House bill.

We are happy to meet our colleagues in the House part of the way. We would love to sit down and negotiate, but there is no House bill. So the problem is not that the two sides are irreconcilable, it is that one side has refused to do anything. The problem is that House Republicans have completely abdicated their responsibility to address important issues such as fixing our broken immigration system.

For the last few weeks I have explained the reason the House has done nothing on immigration is because the House Republican leadership has handed the gavel of leadership on immigration to far-right extremists such as Congressman Steve King. He is truly extreme on this issue. Steven King says to do nothing--absolutely nothing--and the House does nothing, absolutely nothing.

Well, not only has this point not been refuted by anyone in the Republican Party, it has actually been even further confirmed in the last few days.

Let's start with Steve King himself. Last week King filed an amendment to the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill that would require the Department of Justice to ``investigate'' the Department of Homeland Security's use of prosecutorial discretion toward certain immigrants, including beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or the DACA Program, that the Obama administration announced in June of 2012.

When discussing his amendment, Steve King--listen to this--pejoratively referred to the DACA Program as ``Deferred Action for Criminal Aliens.'' That is what he thinks. He thinks that every immigrant is a criminal. When describing this program, Steve King said:

For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds--and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they have been hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the border.

Was King criticized for these comments? Was he chastised and told he has no place in a modern Republican Party? Was King's amendment at least ignored in the same way every other immigration bill has been ignored?

Unfortunately, the answer to all of these questions is no. For the second time in a year, the House Republican leadership actually rewarded King and handed him the gavel yet again by giving him another vote on another politically motivated appropriations amendment. The amendment to investigate the DACA Program is what received a vote last week. Just as before, the House passed yet another inflammatory King appropriations amendment along partisan lines. His previous amendment was to defund the DACA Program.

This is a man who just last week compared immigrants to Santa Ana's army. He compared immigrants to a foreign invading army. It is a comparison that implies that an immigrant's goal is to harm the interest of the United States when they desperately want to be here and participate in the freedom--both economic and political--we love and enjoy. Yet again, after he said something like this, the Republican leadership hands him the gavel on immigration. That is why we continue to see nothing out of the House other than inflammatory, rhetorical amendment show votes. The score is clear: Steve King is still undefeated, and he is increasing his margin of victory every day.

Well, it doesn't have to be that way. Steve King doesn't represent the vast number of voters in either the Republican Party or even the tea party. Steve King does not represent Republicans in this House. When we joined together on a moderate bipartisan bill that would do so much good for America, it was supported by traditional Republican groups--the business community, the high-tech community, the agricultural growers, the Catholic Church, the evangelical Protestant church, supported this bipartisan bill. Some on the left thought it was too conservative.

It doesn't have to be this way. Steve King doesn't have to write into law whatever the House does. Poll after poll is clear that even Republican voters--conservative Republican voters--want to fix our broken immigration system in a manner that secures our borders, fixes our legal immigration system, and allows those in the undocumented status to get right with the law after a long path, including paying fines, paying back taxes, learning English, having to work, and going to the back of the line and waiting.

Steve King is much like the Wizard of Oz when it comes to immigration. He is pulling the levers behind the screen to make it seem he has the power, but the Republican Party will learn sooner or later--as Dorothy did in the ``Wizard of Oz''--that King actually works by fear, and he doesn't have the power and the wizard's power is overstated. He can't really do very much. The only way to get back home and do something real is in ourselves, not in that man behind the screen--the Wizard of Oz, Steve King. Where are the leaders in the Republican Party with the courage to stand up to Steve King and the far right and say: Enough is enough, we will not let our authority be hijacked by extremists whose xenophobia causes them to prefer maintaining a broken immigration system, where hundreds of thousands still cross the border illegally, instead of achieving a fair, tough, and practical long-term solution?

Make no mistake, immigration reform will either pass this year with bipartisan support and a bipartisan imprint or it will pass in a future year with only Democratic support and a Democratic imprint because Democrats control Congress and the White House. Some Democrats argue it is better for us politically if the latter occurs, and many Republicans, in their hearts, know that is true. But we don't want that. We want to fix our country's problems. We want our GDP to grow 3.5 percent as the GPO said it would if we pass this bill. We want to secure our borders once and for all. We want a fair path to citizenship so that people who work and pay taxes can get right with the law.

Time is running out. We have less than 8 weeks to go to get something passed. There is still no serious proposal from Republicans. If the House fails to act during this window, the President would be more than justified in acting anytime after the summer is over to make whatever changes he feels are necessary to make our immigration system work better for those who are unfairly burdened by our broken laws, but that is not the preferable way to go. The preferable way to go is to go the way the Senate did where Democrats and Republicans banded together to create a moderate, thoughtful, comprehensive bill that fixes our broken immigration system once and for all.

In conclusion, I hope the immigration reform bill passes this year because our economy, our broken families, and our country so badly need it. Let's hope the House finally stops talking and finally stops paying obeisance to their Wizard of Oz on immigration, Steve King, and starts acting.

I yield the floor.

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