Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act-Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I rise today to discuss a topic of great importance to our country's security, economy, and social fabric, and that is our broken immigration system.

No one can dispute that our system is broken. We do not yet have sufficient resources on our border or in our interior to prevent illegal immigration. And our legal immigration system takes far too long, has far too much bureaucratic redtape, and does not sufficiently serve our economic needs. In the meantime, our broken system has created millions of broken families. Many of these families are separated simply because of immigration status.

All of these problems can be solved by passing immigration reform legislation. Immigration reform will jump-start our economy, reduce our national debt, secure our country, and heal these broken families. The truth is, we have heard excuse after excuse after excuse from House Republicans about why they have not put immigration reform legislation on the floor.

First, it was that the Senate had to act first with broad bipartisan support. Well, that was taken away when the Senate passed bipartisan comprehensive reform legislation with 68 votes--a vote total which is virtually unprecedented for such important legislation.

Then it was that the House could only pass measures under the Hastert rule, which meant that a majority of the Republicans in the House had to support a bill in order to get a vote. This excuse was also taken away when the House showed it could pass other legislation, such as the debt ceiling, Sandy relief, and the Violence Against Women Act, without needing to fulfill the Hastert rule.

Then it was that the House could not pass one bill; it needed to break up the bill into component pieces. They thought this would be a deal killer. We said: Fine, we will work with you on the smaller pieces of immigration reform as long as all of the important pieces are addressed at or around the same time.

Then it was lack of trust of the President. That too was a phony excuse given that the President has deported more individuals than any other President. But even here we said: If that is really your problem, let's pass a bill now and delay implementation until 2017. We will get the President out of this equation so he is not used as an excuse. The House had no answers for that suggestion.

Now we have a new excuse. The excuse is that we supposedly cannot pass immigration reform because Eric Cantor lost his primary election. Well, just like all of the other excuses that have proven to be illusory, the idea that they cannot do immigration reform because Eric Cantor lost his election is another phony excuse for not passing immigration reform put together by those who willingly and unashamedly hand the leadership gavel on immigration to far-right extremists like Steve King.

I want to be very clear about two things today. First, Eric Cantor was never the solution on immigration. He was always the problem. Every time I talked to Republican Members, business leaders, growers, and faith leaders about immigration reform in the last several months, I consistently heard that the House leadership wanted to move forward but they did not have Cantor's support. Cantor was the chokepoint for immigration reform for these past few months. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Cantor's loss makes it easier--not harder--for House leadership to pass immigration reform.

Secondly, the polling is clear. Eric Cantor did not lose his primary because of support for immigration reform. It has been widely reported that 72 percent of registered voters in Cantor's district polled on Tuesday said they either strongly or somewhat support immigration reform that would secure the borders, block employers from hiring those illegally, and allow undocumented residents without criminal backgrounds to gain legal status. And this is the case in one of the most conservative districts in Virginia and the country. The polling is consistent with other recent polling which shows support for immigration reform among a majority of Republicans and a plurality of tea party supporters across the country. Even 70 percent of Republicans in Cantor's district support reform. Again, to be clear, not even the majority of the farthest right segment of the Republican Party supports deportations and the current broken system. But that is what we still have in place today.

So to repeat, Eric Cantor did not lose his primary yesterday because of immigration. He lost it because he had lost touch with the people in his district.

The election shows the Republican Party has two paths it can take on immigration: the Graham path of showing leadership and solving a problem in a mainstream way, which leads to victory, or the Cantor path of trying to play both sides, which is a path to defeat.

The lesson Republicans should take from last night is that embracing and showing leadership on immigration reform is a far better path to victory than running from it, particularly for Republicans who are not tea party members but mainstream conservatives. The example shown by Senator Graham is dispositive. Rather than trying to be all things to all people, he defended immigration reform strongly in his State and was rewarded by the people of South Carolina, the Republicans of South Carolina, which is an extremely Republican and conservative State.

Senator Graham sat with us from day one and crafted an immigration reform bill that he could sell to the mainstream conservatives in South Carolina, and he was rewarded last night by his State for being a man of principle.

One final thing about last night's election. David Brat won by receiving 36,000 votes in a Republican primary in rural Virginia in an election where 65,000 people showed up. The total population of the Cantor district is over 750,000 people, and there are 11 percent more Republicans in the district than Democrats. For some context, in the 2012 election, Eric Cantor received 220,000 votes and his Democratic challenger 160,000 votes. The point here is that it would be a monumentally lame excuse for Republicans to say that our Nation's immigration policy should be dictated by the whims of less than 20 percent of the

Republican voters in a rural Virginia Republican district.

So the time for excuses is over. The time for action is now. It has been nearly 1 year since the Senate passed bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform legislation that would secure the border, turbo charge America's economic growth, and provide a chance to heal America's broken families who are being separated by our dysfunctional immigration system.

For far too long, Republican House leaders have yielded the leadership gavel on immigration to the xenophobic leaders of the extreme far right of the party such as Steve King, who has previously described immigration as a ``slow-motion holocaust.''

The question is whether House leadership will side with the Steve Kings and David Brats of the world or if they will side with the opinions of the vast majority of Republican voters and even the vast majority of voters in the Seventh Congressional District in Virginia.

Time is running out. The window is now open for passing immigration reform legislation, and the clock is furiously ticking. We have less than 7 weeks to go to get something passed, and the time is now for Republicans to give us their proposals on fixing the broken system. I say 7 weeks because it is highly unlikely that immigration reform could pass during a Republican Presidential primary season, where the party leaders will have to move to the extreme right to try and capture the Presidential nomination.

Therefore, it is time for the House leadership to declare unequivocally that immigration reform will be placed on the floor for a vote before the August recess. Without this declaration and the pressure to act, we will not be able to get immigration reform drafted and passed during this window.

Make no mistake about it. If the House fails to act during this window--a clear indication that they have no inclination in solving the problem--the President would be more than justified in acting anytime after the summer is over to take whatever changes he feels are necessary to make our immigration system work better for those unfairly burdened by our broken immigration laws.

But administrative relief is not what anyone wants to resort to. Those measures will be far too limited to fix all of the problems that currently plague our broken system. What we need right now is true leadership. Let's work together to get this done. A true leader will say: I will do what is good for my country--and for my party--even if it means that an extreme wing of my party will be unhappy. That is leadership. That is necessary.

We stand ready to work with any of our Republican colleagues who want to achieve solutions in good faith. But for now, I will conclude by saying that immigration reform is both necessary and inevitable. It is necessary because it will secure our country, grow our economy, reduce our deficit, create new jobs, and provide us with the best and the brightest. It is inevitable because the population of voters who believe this is an important issue continues to grow and become more politically active day by day.

So to my Republican friends, the choice is yours: Work with us on immigration reform this year and help the country now or do nothing and watch as immigration reform eventually passes without your support or your input. I hope we can act this year, but we will ultimately act. Let's hope we can finally do what is right before every other option has been tried.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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