Unanimous Consent Requests - S.202 and S.91

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, a year ago today on the floor of the Senate we passed the comprehensive immigration reform bill, and 68 Senators--14 Republicans and all of the Democrats--voted for it. We sent it to the House of Representatives. Included in that bill was a requirement that all employers use a mandatory electronic employment verification system to verify that all their employees were legal. Job applicants were required to show identifying documents, such as passport, driver's license, biometric work authorization card, including a photo ID. Any employer who continued to employ undocumented immigrants faced serious penalties. That would end the hiring of undocumented workers, which the Senator from Alabama has spoken to. E-Verify, though, has to be part of comprehensive immigration reform; otherwise, it would devastate the economy and hurt innocent workers. This was included in the bill, and we said there would be no path to citizenship until we have established this as a nationwide standard to verify that workers truly were not undocumented.

That bill came to the floor a year ago. The Senator from Alabama voted against it. It passed. It went to the House of Representatives. It has languished for 1 solid year. House Speaker John Boehner will not call that bill because he knows it will pass. We are not going to take that bill apart piece by piece, as the Senator from Alabama suggests.

I object.

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the circumstance is this: If a person is legally required to pay income taxes in America, a person is legally entitled to some deductions and credits. One of those credits which a person is entitled to is a child tax credit. If a person has a minor child, that person pays less in taxes in America.

What the Senator from Alabama and this bill try to do is restrict the availability of this child tax credit to some workers in America. I think they have gone too far. I want to make sure working families with small children have the helping hand of our Tax Code. I want to stop any fraud in any program in our Tax Code, but I don't believe this bill is a balanced approach to solving the problem, and I object.

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