Immigration

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I am glad I came to the floor and heard my friend and colleague, the majority whip, from Illinois, and his explanation for how it is clearly within the President's authority to issue this Executive order he plans on announcing tonight. The basic problem is the President himself has said repeatedly he doesn't have that authority. He said it repeatedly. We have all seen the clips on TV and online. He said he doesn't have the power to do it. He was right then, and he is wrong now.

There is a right way and a wrong way to solve problems. The right way would have been during the first 2 years, after President Obama won the election in 2008 and his party commanded 60 votes in the Senate and a majority in the House of Representatives. If this had been a priority for him, he could have done it then.

Instead, on a party-line vote, he chose to jam through the Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare--and we see what a disaster that has been. It was not just me. I was a skeptic. I didn't think it would work. While the goals were laudable and worthy, I just didn't think the Federal Government had the competence or certainly the ability to reconfigure one-sixth of our economy. But the President did it, his party passed it, and it enjoyed no bipartisan support.

That is one of the basic problems with what the President is doing today. The reason why it is so important to follow the Constitution--which requires passing legislation affecting 5 million people through both Houses of Congress and forces us to negotiate and build consensus--is because those are sustainable policies.

If you try to do things on a ``my way or the highway'' basis or on a purely partisan basis, those are not sustainable because we know that as time goes by, today's majority will be tomorrow's minority.

Now a Democrat occupies the White House. Perhaps next time a Republican will occupy the White House. Who knows. The point is that only objectives we pursue through the legislative process according to the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America that are done on a bipartisan basis through that natural census-building that is required in order to reach our goals--those are truly sustainable policies. And when the President decides to do it through an Executive order, exercising powers that he himself said he does not have, what are people supposed to think?

I heard my friend from Illinois say, Well, it has been 511 days and Republicans haven't swallowed the comprehensive immigration reform bill that has come from the Senate. They are not required to swallow it. They can pass legislation or not on their own timetable. The old joke is that the opposing party is our adversary, but the Senate is the enemy. That is the joke in House circles. So there is a natural rivalry between the House and the Senate. They are not expected nor required to accept what we pass, nor are they required to do it on our timetable. I believe Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader McCarthy are committed, as am I and the incoming majority leader come January, Senator McConnell, to making progress on an incremental basis in this important area. It has to be thoughtful, and we have to have fulsome debate with everybody participating in the process.

There are important questions. What impact is the President's Executive order going to have when the unemployment rate is still at 5.8 percent nationally and when the percentage of people actually looking for work is at a 30-year low because many people have given up because of the slow-growing economy? What is the impact of these 5 million--or however many additional work permits the President presumes to have the power to issue--what is the impact going to be on competition for jobs with the economy growing slowly and jobs in short supply? What is the impact of the President's Executive order going to be on household median income? We know wages have been stagnant for the middle class because of this slow-growing economy. What is the impact of millions of additional people competing for jobs in the economy going to be on wages?

I would like to have the answers to those questions.

I would also like to know if the President has the power--which he said he doesn't have but now apparently he has changed his mind--to issue this kind of Executive order affecting 5 million people? What about the other 6 million people who are in the country who did not come in in compliance with our immigration laws, who either overstayed their visas or came across the border illegally?

I come from a border State. We have 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico. We encountered what was described as a humanitarian crisis because we had this magnet known as the impression that we would not enforce our laws that encouraged people to make that treacherous journey from Central America across Mexico. Many of these immigrants lost their lives, were sexually assaulted or kidnapped and held for ransom--very dangerous circumstances in the hands of the criminal organizations that basically control this business. This is a business for them. But if the President has the authority to do this for 5 million, why not the 11 million? How does he explain his action to the 6 million people who will now see these 5 million getting preferential treatment? And how in the world does he explain it to the people who have waited patiently year after year trying to do it the right way? The President has effectively bumped them out of the line and bumped 5 million people ahead of them.

I have every confidence that if we were able to do this in a thoughtful, deliberative sort of way, we could find a compassionate and satisfactory outcome for the people who made the mistake of entering the country illegally or who have overstayed. I believe in proportionality. We don't give the death penalty for speeding tickets. So I think there is an appropriate way to address this, but it is not by an amnesty. I call it an amnesty because, basically, there is no reconciliation process. In other words, when a person makes a mistake--and we all make mistakes and we all understand the aspirations and hopes immigrants bring to the United States because they come here for the same reason people have historically come here, and that is for the American dream. We understand that. But we also understand that when somebody has made a mistake, they need to own up to it and they need to reconcile themselves to lawful authority because, otherwise, the attitude is the law doesn't matter, and it is the law that protects all of us no matter who we are, where we come from, or how we pronounce our last name. And when we have a lawless process, as we do now and which this Executive order does nothing to fix, what that does is perpetuate lawlessness and chaos, and it also continues to enrich these criminal organizations that are more than happy to charge people $5,000, $6,000 a head to make that treacherous journey.

Beyond all of the issues I just addressed, this is a terrible precedent. Again, I understand now the President has decided--and some of our Democratic colleagues say, Well, this is the same thing George Bush did and this is the same thing Dwight Eisenhower did. Well, it is not, and the President knew that when he said he didn't have the authority to do this previously. Now he has changed his mind. Now the argument is they issued Executive orders essentially implementing bipartisan legislation such as the 1986 amnesty that Ronald Reagan signed. There were Executive orders taken in furtherance of that consensus position based on the legislation. However, never has any President purported to have the authority to, out of whole cloth, do what this President says he is going to do.

Where does he get the authority to issue work permits? I understand he can prioritize prosecution and deportation, and he has, but where does the President get the authority to issue work permits for millions of people?

This is rocking people's fundamental confidence in their government. We elect Presidents to faithfully enforce the laws, including the Constitution of the United States. That is the oath the President takes when he is sworn in: ``I do solemnly swear.'' These laws, of course, are beyond the Constitution drafted by Congress. It is ``Schoolhouse Rock.'' Bills start in the House, and in the Senate they have to be reconciled and then sent to the President. That is civics 101. Maybe we need a new course called remedial civics 101 for those who have somehow forgotten how the Constitution is written and how it actually is implemented in the form of the legislative process.

Of course, if the President objects to what Congress sends him, that is when the negotiations start. He can veto it. We can vote to override it if we have the votes. If we don't, we are back to square one and we have to start that negotiation again.

I have never seen or even read of a President who seems so detached, so disinterested in actually engaging in this process set out by the Constitution. This President says if he doesn't get his way, I have a pen. I have a phone. I am going to go it alone. Well, that is a disaster waiting to occur, because it is a provocation to the other branches of government which say, Well, we are not irrelevant in this process and we may have something to say about it. I think we will see some of that in the very near future with regard to the way appropriations are made and what functions of government fund it.

I heard my friend from Illinois say, People are even threatening a government shutdown. That is not true.

I take that back. The Democrats are saying that. No Republican has said that. It is just not going to happen. It shouldn't happen and it won't happen.

I love it when our friends in the other party like to tell us about our own internal politics. I was at the White House with the President and bicameral, bipartisan leadership and our Democratic friends said that the House of Representatives can't pass any immigration reform bill. Well, I don't know how they know that, unless they have some insider wisdom that is not obvious to the people who actually work there and have the responsibility to make it work.

What I know and what I believe is that there is a good-faith desire to try to solve this problem, but not by what I call the ``pig in the python'' approach. In other words, we tried that with the Affordable Care Act, a 2,700-page bill involving trillions of dollars of expenditure done purely on a partisan basis and it didn't work. I think there is an understandable aversion to trying to do things in a comprehensive sort of way. So why not break it down into pieces and do what we can, because there are a lot of different pieces that enjoy bipartisan support.

I think the precedent the President is setting is very dangerous, because if he purports now to have this power which he previously said on numerous occasions he didn't have, what about future Presidents? What about policies others may not like? Even if a person believes this is a pretty good idea--a person might say, The President is trying to act because obviously this is a controversial issue and things aren't moving fast enough, so I like what the President is doing. Suppose a person says that. Well, just think about the possibility that a few years from now when we have an election, we have a new President, and what if that President says, Well, President Obama purported to exercise this massive Executive authority in defiance of the Constitution and the laws, so I guess I can do it, too.

This is not the kind of political system we want. This is not good for the American people. We do not want a system in which each party, when they happen to be in power, takes their turn abusing Executive authority. We do not want that. I would have thought there are enough people who love this institution known as the U.S. Senate and believe it has an indispensable role in our government who would say, Wait, Mr. President, don't do it, because we may like the policy, but this really is an end run around the Constitution and the role that is appropriately played by both Houses of Congress and the Executive.

But, apparently, there are few, if any, folks on the other side of the aisle who believe that our tradition and our constitutional system of legislating is worth preserving--at least in this instance.

I have spoken at some length about the practical consequences of the President's amnesty, but those consequences also bear repeating since the eyes of the country are now focused on what the President is going to announce tonight. We know from recent experience that the President's unilateral amnesty will be communicated to people in other countries as a signal that they can all come in. That is what happened with the unaccompanied children; 62,000 of them I think the number is, roughly, from Central America since last October.

The reason there was a flood and a humanitarian crisis, as described by the President and the administration themselves, is because the signal was the green light is on and people can come to the United States.

People need to come legally. As long as they get here, they can stay. This is because it undermines one of the basic premises of effective law enforcement, and that is deterrence. In other words, we don't want to just try to stop people after they break the law. Actually, it is too late to stop them. What we like to do is deter people from even thinking about breaking the law and, in this instance, even making that perilous journey.

There is going to be a surge, an uptick, of some type of an illegal immigration. People are going to see this as a further signal it is OK to come, and they don't need to comply with the law, they don't need to wait. They can just come. If they are one of the lucky ones, they get to stay because this President or somebody will issue a further pardon.

As I said earlier, this is also a major boom to the cartels and other gangs who control Mexico's smuggling networks. It will almost certainly lead to thousands of people who committed crimes in this country gaining legal status. It will also, as I said earlier, punish people who played by the rules and waited patiently in line trying to immigrate to the country legally. It will punish them by putting them in the back of the line.

Let me just repeat this because it is important to me. America is the most generous country in the world when it comes to legal immigration. We are the beneficiary of the brains, the ambition, the hard work of people who come here from all over the globe. All of us weren't--or almost all of us, our ancestors were not born in the United States. We came from somewhere else. Mine came through Ellis Island from Ireland after one of the potato crop famines in the 19th century. So we understand both the desire to pursue the American dream in this country and the benefits that accrue to our country as a result of legal immigration. That is why we are such a generous country when it comes to legal immigration, but the current chaos associated with illegal immigration has a number of very negative consequences.

I mentioned a moment ago my State has 1,200 miles of common border. It gets attention every once in a while as it did when this humanitarian crisis involving these unaccompanied minors occurred, but it happens day after day that people are detained coming across the southwestern border from all over the world.

I met a young man about 6 months ago when I was down on the border who had emigrated from Bangladesh. I wondered how in the world did he get here from there. There were a number of other Senators and Congressmen with me. We asked the Border Patrol: Can we ask him? They said: Sure.

It turned out he spoke enough English. I asked: Well, how much did it cost you to get here?

He said: Six thousand dollars.

I said: How did you get here?

He said: I had to transit eight countries to get here.

That is a pretty complicated itinerary for anybody even under normal circumstances, but what it demonstrates is there are networks not just in Central America and Mexico but around the world that feed people into this network in order to immigrate to the United States illegally. What we are doing is nothing about that. Last year people were detained at the southwestern border from 140 different countries. If someone goes down to the outside of Falfurrias, TX, down in South Texas, they have rescue beacons the Border Patrol has put out. If someone made this long trip from Central America through Mexico in the hot weather, let's say, and they are dehydrated, they are worried about their life and their health, they can actually go hit this rescue beacon and the Border Patrol will come pick them up which is maybe not their first choice, but it is better than dying from exposure.

The languages of those rescue beacons, the ones I saw outside the checkpoint at Falfurrias, TX--they are in English, Spanish--that doesn't surprise anybody. The third language is Chinese. Chinese is not a native language for most--for anybody, I bet, in Brooks County, TX. What it demonstrates is that there is a pipeline coming across the southwestern border from all over the world. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see what a potential threat that is from a public safety standpoint.

I know there are people who scoff at the idea of enhanced border security. The Senator from Illinois said we have enough Border Patrol to have one every half mile, 24 hours a day. This would be a way to try to secure the border. It has to be a combination of technology. It has to involve boots on the ground, and in some places--this is controversial along the border--we need to have what they call tactical infrastructure, fencing in some places, particularly in urban areas where it is easy to sprint across and be lost in a crowd before anybody discovers them.

Last year there were roughly 414,000 people detained coming across the southwestern border--414,000 from more than 144 countries. Does that sound as though we solved the problem of border security? No.

We are also sending mixed messages, as I said earlier, in terms of deterrence because people keep coming because they think they have a pretty good shot of making it in, and then the President issues an Executive order.

I wish to mention one other issue that has a particular impact on communities in my State of Texas, because we are on the frontlines of this issue, which is cost to the local taxpayer. I know the distinguished Presiding Officer is a former mayor. The cost of health care, law enforcement, and education fall not primarily on Federal taxpayers, they end up falling on local taxpayers, including the taxes they pay for their school district or their city or their county, the emergency health care provided to the local emergency room and of course law enforcement costs.

Believe me, people who come across the border are not all coming for the right reason. There are people who exploit our poorest border with criminal intent on their mind. They are dangerous, and so law enforcement has to take special precautions. That costs money. It costs the local taxpayers.

The Federal Government has been abdicating its responsibility along the border for a long time. I, for one, have to chuckle when my friends from nonborder States want to tell me and tell my constituents about our backyard because frankly, to put it in a nice way, they need more information because they don't know what they are talking about.

Most of my friends in the--this is understandable. We all understand our States and our regions. We know them better than other parts of the country that perhaps we haven't been to, but most of my colleagues--I get the impression that their knowledge of the border is from movies they have seen or novels they have read, not from the facts on the ground or studying statistics issued by the Border Patrol or the Department of Homeland Security.

There is a right way and a wrong way to do what the President is purporting to do. The right way to do it is in accordance with the Constitution which requires both Houses to pass legislation and try to reconcile those in a conference committee and then send them to the President.

There are regular negotiations taking place all along the way, but there are enough areas of consensus that I believe we can make true progress. We have not been able to do it through a comprehensive bill because I think there is enormous skepticism, not just about Washington but about Congress as well as about comprehensive bills having unintended consequences.

Take the Affordable Care Act. The President said: If you like what you have, you can keep it. Your prices will go down, not up. That ended up not being true. When that happens people are skeptical. What are they trying to sell us next? The best way to deal with that, it seems to me, is to break it down into smaller, transparent pieces, and then move the pieces across the floor in the House and the Senate, and let's get them to the President.

After we have done that one, two, three, four times, I think people will then say: Well, you know what we have just done is immigration reform in an incremental sort of way. It is not going to satisfy everybody. Again, if your demand is I want everything I want or I am not going to take anything, we know what happens when people lay down those sort of ultimatums. You get nothing.

While there are areas on the immigration topic, which admittedly is controversial, it is challenging, but it is our responsibility to address these challenges and these difficulties and do the very best job we can. The answer is not--and it can't be--a Presidential abuse of power.

As I pointed out earlier, when we try to do things on that basis, just like if we try to pass legislation on a purely partisan basis, it doesn't work. It is not sustainable. It is a provocation to the people who have been carved out of the process to try to do what they can to defend their role in the process, and that is what I worry about.

I remember being at a conference not that long ago when James Baker III and Joseph Calafato spoke. They talked about the importance of bipartisanship. Not that I am ever going to get the Presiding Officer to agree with me on everything I believe and he is not going to agree with me on everything I believe, but they made the point when it comes to some of the most challenging topics, bipartisanship solutions are the only ones that are actually sustainable.

What happens is after the next election, the party that was pushed out of the process and run over then says, OK, we are going to try to repeal everything they did because we didn't vote for it and we don't support it. That commends itself to my way of thinking to a recommitment of bipartisan accomplishment. I am committed to that.

I know from talking to colleagues across the aisle that after 4 years of being shut out of the process themselves in the Senate, they are going to enjoy the new Congress come January because they will be able to participate in the process. If people have a good idea, they can come to the floor and talk about it. They can offer their idea and get a vote.

Nobody is guaranteed to win every time, but people should have a right to get a vote and to raise the profile of the issues they care most about and the people they work for care most about.

I wish the President wouldn't do this. It will not work. It is unconstitutional. It purports to exercise a power he himself said he does not have, but he seems determined to do it nonetheless.

I believe the American people will react negatively to this President's claim of authority to issue this amnesty, and I believe then the next step is for Congress to do everything we can to stop it and then to do it the right way, not the wrong way.

I yield the floor.

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