[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 37 (Wednesday, March 29, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2488-S2490]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts who 
has just spoken. Senator Kennedy has led so many important fights in 
the Senate. This may be one of the most historic. We know our 
immigration system is broken. It just does not work.
  In my office in Chicago, almost 90 percent of all of the work we do 
is on immigration. The stories will break your heart. There are people 
who have come to this country and, for reasons that often cannot be 
explained, are not in legal status today. As Senator Kennedy said, 
approximately half the undocumented people in America arrived here 
legally. What happened? They were going to school on a visa and they 
didn't take the necessary course work to be a full-time student. They 
lost their legal status. They were part-time students. They started 
again as full-time students, and they are undocumented as a result, or 
they came and stayed beyond their visas or they came into circumstances 
that, frankly, created family situations so they could not leave: A 
woman falls in love with an American citizen, is married, and has 
children. Her husband is an American citizen, all her children are 
American citizens, but she is not. She is an undocumented person in 
this country.

  But let me tell you one story or one group of stories that I think 
dramatizes some of the injustices of the current system that I think 
should be addressed. A few years ago, Senator Orrin Hatch and I worked 
together in a bipartisan effort to pass what is known as the Dream Act. 
Senator Hagel, Senator Lugar, and I are now cosponsoring it on a 
bipartisan basis. It came to my attention because we got a phone call 
from a woman in Chicago, a Korean-American woman who works at a dry 
cleaners in Chicago 12 hours a day. She said she had a problem. Her 
problem was her daughter, who came to the United States at the age of 2 
and became a musical prodigy. She played the symphony piano by the age 
of 8. She has played with the Chicago Symphony. She is an amazing, 
talented musician.
  She was recruited by Julliard School of Music--the best in America--
to develop her skills as a musician. When she started to fill out the 
application, she turned to her mother and said: It says here: 
Nationality. American, right? And her mother said: No, we never filed 
your papers. And here she was, a bright future ahead of her, and she 
called my office and said: What am I to do? We called the Immigration 
and Naturalization Service and they said: The answer is obvious. She 
has to go back to Korea.
  Back to Korea? She had been in this country for 16 years. Through no 
fault of her own, she was not a documented citizen or in legal status. 
She had fallen through the cracks, one of the 11 million.
  Let me tell you another story. It is about Diana, who was brought to 
Chicago at the age 6 by her family from Mexico. Diana is undocumented. 
She has lived her entire life in the United States. There is a 50-
percent dropout rate among undocumented students in America--50 
percent. She didn't drop out of school; she did the opposite. She 
stayed in school and made the dean's list all through high school. She 
graduated with a 4.4 average out of 4.0, taking advanced placement 
classes to pursue her dream of being an architect. She was accepted at 
Northwestern University and was so excited. She came to learn that 
because she was undocumented, she couldn't get financial assistance. 
She couldn't go to Northwestern. She went to another college. She is 
still trying to be an architect.
  Tell me: Is America a better place if those two girls leave or is it 
a better place if they stay?
  The Dream Act gives young people such as that a chance, people who 
came to the United States, young people, through no decision on their 
own--their parents made the decision. They did the right thing, 
followed the rules, didn't break any laws, went to school, were good 
students, studied, aspired, and dreamed of the opportunity in this 
country, and then learned, to their bitter disappointment, they were 
reaching a point where they could not pursue their education.
  The Dream Act says this: If you are one of those people, if you have 
been here 5 years or more, if you entered the country under the age of 
16, if you are in high school, you have a chance, and the chance is 
this: Complete high school and then either 2 years in college or a 
college degree in the next 6 years, or serve in our military for 2 
years, and we will then give you a chance to start a long path toward 
citizenship. That is important.
  I can't tell you the people who come up to me in the city of Chicago, 
students, for example, who are undocumented, who want to teach. We need 
them so badly. They want to teach math and science and critical 
languages. Yet, being undocumented, they can never be licensed to teach 
in my State of Illinois or virtually any other State.

[[Page S2489]]

  Should these young people have a chance? Should they be allowed now 
to become part of America and our future? I think they should. The 
Dream Act is part of this immigration reform, and I urge my colleagues 
to support it. I yield to the Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, first let me commend Senator Durbin for 
his leadership on the Dream Act and making sure that it is now a part 
of the bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee. I was a cosponsor 
of that Dream Act, and I support it being a part of the bill.
  For me, the current debate on immigration strikes very close to home. 
Those words at the base of the Statue of Liberty, ``Give me your tired, 
your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,'' have a 
profound personal meaning to me.
  On my wall in my office, I have a picture of the house in which my 
mother was born and raised until she was 20 years of age in the small 
town of Suha, Slovenia. It is a small house with a dirt floor. Yes, my 
mother was born and raised in a house with a dirt floor until she was 
aged 20. Then she got steerage on the SS Argentina and came to America. 
She was going to land at Ellis Island, but landed in Boston because of 
bad weather. I have a copy of the documentation from when my mother 
landed here in America, it had her name and where she was from, and 
what she owned. She had one suitcase, a train ticket to Des Moines, IA, 
and $7. That is how my mother came to America. When she came, though, 
she was welcomed into the American community. She got married, 
obviously raised a family. She has since obviously passed away, but she 
became a productive citizen, a loyal American who gave a lot back to 
her adopted homeland.
  I know the current debate has stirred up a lot of passions, but this 
is nothing new. Across the centuries, successive waves of immigrants--
Germans, Irish, and again on my father's side my great-grandfather, who 
was an immigrant from the northern part of Ireland; Chinese, Italians, 
Greeks, others--every time they have come here they have aroused strong 
emotions. But in every case, Americans eventually rose above their 
economic fears and ethnic prejudices. We were true to those Statue of 
Liberty words and, as a result, America has become stronger and richer 
and fairer. We are indeed the envy of the world.

  Today, once again, we are in the midst of a difficult and often 
emotional national debate about immigration. I am optimistic that we 
can arrive at a bill that addresses legitimate national security and 
law enforcement concerns, while also being faithful to our tradition 
and history as a nation of immigrants. I commend the senior Senator 
from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, for his skill and leadership in 
reporting a bipartisan bill from the Judiciary Committee that takes us 
in the right direction. I want to commend his ranking member, Senator 
Leahy, and Senator Kennedy for his strong work on getting this bill 
through and making it a decent, fair, but yet strong bill to protect 
our national security and to protect our law enforcement in this 
country.
  My State of Iowa, I am proud to say, has a long history of welcoming 
new immigrants. We have a growing immigrant Muslim population from Asia 
and the Middle East. In fact, Cedar Rapids, IA, is home to the oldest 
mosque in America, and we are proud of that. A quarter of a century 
ago, responding to the plight of Vietnamese and Laotian boat people, 
former Governor Robert Ray introduced programs to bring more than 
30,000 of these refugees to our State. Because of his courageous 
humanitarian leadership, thousands of Iowans opened their homes and 
their hearts to these new immigrants.
  More recently, tens of thousands of immigrants have come to Iowa from 
Latin America and elsewhere. They have come here in search of two 
things: work and freedom. Work, in order to feed and clothe their 
families; and freedom, to learn and to develop their talents, and to 
grow. In most cases, they have found work. The Iowa economy is hungry 
for immigrants who are willing to do jobs that basically are physically 
demanding, oftentimes dangerous, one example, of course, being the meat 
packing industry.
  But not all of these new immigrants have found freedom--the freedom 
to learn and to grow and to develop their talents. Earlier this month, 
at United Trinity Methodist Church in Des Moines, I met with a group of 
new immigrants, an undocumented family. They told me about the 
hardships they face. They live in constant fear. They live in the 
shadows. What do they want? They want to become loyal, contributing 
Americans, to pursue the American dream, to contribute as my mother 
did, as my great-grandfather and his descendants did, to building this 
country we call America. But, instead, they are living an American 
nightmare of anxiety, exclusion, and exploitation.
  So it is time for us to find a constructive and positive way to bring 
these people out of the shadows and into the sunlight. One thing we all 
agree on is that the current immigration system is broken and needs 
reform. It is totally out of sync with today's social and economic 
realities. It is time to come up with a just and fair immigration 
system, one true to our values and our tradition. I know we can come up 
with a bill that is a win-win for all of us.
  To that end, we need at least three things: One, we need tough, 
consistent, effective enforcement of reformed immigration laws. Two, we 
need to enforce sanctions against employers who hire immigrants 
unauthorized to work. Three, we need a temporary worker program with 
documentation that gives immigrants a reasonable path to earning full 
American citizenship. As Senator Kennedy said earlier, we are not 
talking about amnesty. That would be wrong. We are talking about a 
process of earned legalization, giving people who are here a practical 
way to earn citizenship by working, paying taxes, paying a fine, 
learning English.
  We need to deal with the reality before us. We have 11 million to 12 
million undocumented people in this country, many of whom--as we 
listened to Senator Durbin talk about--have lived here for many years, 
and many who came here as young children, as babies. Many of them who 
are here have children. They have other family members who are U.S. 
citizens. They are contributing to our prosperity. They are making a 
big contribution to our society. They may be undocumented; they may be 
living in the shadows; but make no mistake: They are de facto members 
of our American community. They are integrated into the fabric of our 
national life. They are filling jobs that, in most cases, go unfilled, 
and they are not going away. Frankly, we would face huge problems if 
they did. As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said recently: ``If you kick 
out 11 and-a-half to 12 million people, it will bring our economy to a 
screeching halt.''
  So let us acknowledge the reality. Let's establish a legal framework 
within which these immigrants can work and learn English and pass 
security background checks, pay a fine, the penalties that are 
necessary, and then earn the right to eventually become a U.S. citizen. 
At the same time, let's not delude ourselves with so-called simple 
solutions that are unworkable, unaffordable, or just plain mean-
spirited. For example, the House has passed a bill that calls for 
criminalizing undocumented immigrants, rounding them up and deporting 
them, and charging with crimes anyone who might help, including clergy 
and church members.
  Does anyone seriously believe we can round up 11 million to 12 
million undocumented immigrants? Who is going to do it? Are we going to 
spend the $140 billion it would take to hire a vast army of agents to 
do this? And even if it were physically possible to round up 12 million 
people, how do you do it humanely? For example, would we be willing to 
break up families? Would we deport mothers and fathers but allow their 
U.S. citizen children to remain here? Would we deport an undocumented 
immigrant who is here, married, has children? Would she or he take the 
children with them, or leave them here? What is going to happen to all 
these people? How do you deal with this humanely?
  Others advocate we spend tens of millions of dollars to build a 700-
mile wall, a fence, across our southern border. That is nonsense. Did 
the Great Wall of China work? Maybe for a month or two. Think of the 
Berlin Wall. Just remember the Berlin Wall. And think about a wall 
between the United States

[[Page S2490]]

and Mexico. Now we are going to build a wall across the Canadian 
border, too? Let's get serious. This is nonsense, absolutely nonsense.
  And does anyone want to talk about those who come to the U.S. and 
overstay their visas? There are an estimated 4 million people in the 
United States who have overstayed their visas. They get visas, they are 
here, they are working. They overstay their visa and do not go back to 
their home countries; they decide to stay here illegally.
  It is time to acknowledge why immigrants continue to come across our 
border, making enormous sacrifices, risking their lives. They are 
coming for economic opportunity to better themselves and to reunite, a 
lot of times, with their families. In other words, they are coming for 
exactly the same reasons that my mother came to America--to get 
reunited with family members who were here, to work, to raise a family, 
to better her life and to better the lives of her children. The 
difference is they are coming now as undocumented because we failed to 
create a documented, legal avenue for our economy to get the workers we 
need. It is not their fault, it is our fault--because we have not 
designed a good immigration system.

  We have heard it said that undocumented immigrants drive down wages 
for American citizens at the low end of the economic scale. According 
to this argument, undocumented immigrants are so desperate to work for 
the minimum wage or less, they will tolerate harsh, unsafe working 
conditions. Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to that argument. So 
what is the answer, kick them out? No. The answer is to bring them out 
of the shadows. If they are given documentation and legal status, then 
employers will have to pay them a decent wage and treat them fairly. 
This will raise the floor. It will raise wages at the bottom rungs of 
the ladder, and this will benefit all American workers.
  There is another huge cost and danger to allowing the status quo to 
continue. The current system has driven undocumented workers deep 
underground. We are not able to document, track, or control who is 
within our borders. This is the ideal environment for al-Qaida and 
others who aim to penetrate our society. Because of our preoccupation 
with chasing down undocumented immigrants, we are diverting scarce 
resources from addressing the real threats to our national security, 
and this needs to change. Instead, we are tracking down gardeners and 
dishwashers, let's focus on those who really want to do us harm.
  Throughout America's history, the subject of immigration has lent 
itself to fearmongering, demagoguery, and simplistic so-called 
solutions. But to our credit--and to America's great social and 
economic benefit--we have listened to the better angels of our nature. 
We have refused to slam the door. We have been true to our tradition as 
a nation of immigrants.
  Today, once again, we are challenged to rise above fear and prejudice 
and to do the right thing. Legally or illegally, immigrants will 
continue to come to America as they have for four centuries. We need 
smart immigration reform, reform that will protect our borders, crack 
down on employers who hire those who are unauthorized to work, while 
creating a guest worker program that gives immigrants the opportunity 
to earn legalization and to have family reunification.
  In closing, I commend the Judiciary Committee for sending to the 
floor a bipartisan bill that would accomplish these important things. 
It would bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows so we know 
who they are, where they live, where they are from, and so we can 
identify any who could be a threat to our homeland security. It would 
allow earned legalization for those who pass security background 
checks.
  It is going to take more than 10 years for an undocumented immigrant 
to demonstrate that he or she is a person of good moral standing, is 
paying taxes, learning English, and has paid the necessary fines. These 
people will not jump ahead of anyone who is already in line for 
citizenship. I want to stress that point. There is a thought: Oh, they 
will get in front of everybody. That is not true, not under the bill 
from the Judiciary Committee. They would work 6 years before they could 
apply for legal permanent residency or green card status, and after 
that they would work for another 5 years before they could apply for 
citizenship. During this process, they would have to pay a fine, and 
with those fines would help pay for this system.
  Last, we don't need a wall around our borders. We can use unmanned 
aerial vehicles, sensors, guard posts. We can do this without building 
a wall, and we can protect our borders much better than we are doing 
now. That is what is in the Judiciary bill. It is an excellent starting 
point.
  Again, I commend Senator Specter and the committee. They have done a 
great service to the Senate and to our country. I hope this Senate will 
do the right thing in passing that bill.
  I yield the floor.

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