Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, let me say at the outset Senator Collins is my friend and colleague, and we have worked on many things together. I respect her especially because the Department of Homeland Security was literally her creation, along with Senator Lieberman and others.

The fact that we have now agreed on a bipartisan basis to set aside this immigration debate and to fully fund this critical Department is the right thing to do. A 98-to-2 vote is unusual on the Senate floor. It reflects the fact that we finally reached that consensus on funding the Department of Homeland Security. I hope our vote later today also reflects that. But I do take exception to some of the statements she has made about her own measure which she is offering.

First I would like to invite her--and I am sure she has been there a thousand times--to walk down this corridor and look up the staircase to the painting, a painting that shows Abraham Lincoln with his Cabinet. It is the moment when he signed an Executive order. President Lincoln signed an Executive order, and with that Executive order 152 years ago, the Emancipation Proclamation freed 3 million slaves in the United States of America.

Barack Obama is not the first President to issue an Executive order nor is he the first President to issue one which affects millions of people. Which President held the record for an Executive order giving rights to 1.5 million immigrants in this country before Barack Obama? George Herbert Walker Bush. In fact, virtually every President since Eisenhower has issued an Executive order relative to immigration. Now we didn't see Republican hair on fire when it was being done by President George W. Bush or George Herbert Walker Bush. It is only when Barack Obama does it that they scream and rage it is unconstitutional. Yet let's look at the argument they are making.

Senator Collins is making the argument that the Executive order signed by President Obama, known as DACA, that affected children who might qualify under the DREAM Act and could protect up to 2 million young people in America, was legal. I agree. She says her bill that she is offering today reflects that.

Then she says that 2 years later, when the President issued an Executive order that could protect on a temporary basis up to 5 million, that was clearly unconstitutional. What is the difference? Well, it is a difference the courts will have to try to resolve. I think we ought to think twice before we try to defund or repeal the President's Executive orders of November 2014.

President Obama makes it clear that if you are the parent of an American citizen child or a legal resident alien child, you have to come forward, pay a filing fee, submit your name for a criminal background check, and if you have a bad criminal record, you are gone. If your record clears and you have no criminal history to be concerned about, then you can work in the United States on a temporary basis for 2 years.

That is it. It doesn't give you permanent citizenship or legal status beyond that.

Isn't it better that our country be safe enough to know that these millions of people are no threat to us, where they live, who they work for? I think that makes sense.

It is a shame Congress hasn't done it. We can still do it, and I hope we will. But the Collins approach, sadly, is going to deny that, and it is going to say, frankly, that the priorities currently set for deportation of dangerous people will be swept away but for the specified crimes which she includes in her bill.

I will state that the President's Executive order already covers every one of those offenses--every one of those felonies. So Ms. Collins is not adding anything to the debate. I know that the Senator offered this in good faith, and I believe she can be an important part in finding a bipartisan solution to the immigration question. But I urge my colleagues to reject the Collins bill that comes before us today. It was a bill crafted in the House of Representatives in anger over the President's Executive order. It does not protect DACA and the DREAMers, and that is why the immigration groups to a person have come out against the Collins amendment.

I hope my colleagues will join me in voting against the measure.

I yield the floor.

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