[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 8, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H2993-H2994]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   ALLOW A VOTE ON IMMIGRATION REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutieerrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIEERREZ. Mr. Speaker, this is my weekly reminder to House 
Republicans that they have only 30 legislative days before the July 4 
recess. In that time they had better allow a vote for immigration 
reform or the President will take executive action to reform our 
immigration.
  The chance to save the Republican Party from being a regional party 
and not a national one rests on what Republican leaders do during the 
next 30 legislative days. If they deny justice, security, and dignity 
to our brothers and sisters with foreign hands, who work every day in 
American fields to plant and pick our vegetables, the Republican Party 
is giving up on the chance for their brothers and sisters with 
Republican hands to pick and plant vegetables in the White House's 
vegetable garden any time soon.
  Tomorrow, Wednesday, the Hispanic Congressional Caucus will have a 
special meeting with Secretary of Homeland Security Johnson. We will 
present him with a memo that lays out options the Obama administration 
has under current law to protect more immigrants from a deportation 
along the lines of deferred action for DREAMers.
  The important phrase here is ``under current law.'' In February 2011, 
we delivered a memo to the President outlining specific actions he 
could take within existing law to keep families together, spare 
military families, and, yes, spare those who would qualify for the 
DREAM Act; protecting them temporarily on a case-by-case basis from 
deportation using tools in the law like deferred action, parole, and 
hardship waivers.
  Our position was strengthened in April of that year by a paper called 
``Executive Branch Authority Regarding Implementation of Immigration 
Law and Policies.'' The report was written by Bo Cooper, who served as 
general counsel at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and by 
Paul Virtue, who was also general counsel at the Immigration and 
Naturalization Service.
  The report said:

       The executive branch, through the Secretary of Homeland 
     Security, can exercise discretion not to prosecute a case by 
     granting ``deferred action'' to an otherwise removable or 
     deportable immigrant.

  Only a month before deferred action for DREAMers was announced, a 
letter signed with footnotes and citations was sent to the President 
from almost 100 law professors at our top law schools and universities 
outlining the power the President has to spare immigrants from 
deportation.
  Legal scholars and research are not always enough to persuade my 
friends in the Republican Conference. Almost every single one of them 
voted for the King amendment defunding deferred action last year and 
voted this year to sue the President over immigration enforcement. They 
are rejecting these arguments as some kind of academic hoax.
  So, as I have done in the past, I ask you not to just take my word 
for it, or the word of legal experts, or hundreds of law professors. I 
ask you to take the word of your former Judiciary chairman--three of 
them--when it comes to immigration and deportation.
  Here is the letter from November 1999 where at least 28 Republicans 
and Democrats called on President Clinton to exercise prosecutorial 
discretion when it comes to deportation and immigration enforcement. It 
is in this letter:

       There has been widespread agreement that some deportations 
     were unfair and resulted in unjustifiable hardship.
       The principle of prosecutorial discretion is well 
     established.

  It is in the letter:

       Optimally, removal proceedings should be initiated or 
     terminated only upon specific instruction from authorized INS 
     officials, issued in occurrence with agency guidelines.

  They go on to urge that those guidelines--it is in there--they urge 
those guidelines should be issued from headquarters, just as the 
Hispanic Congressional Caucus is going to urge the President to issue 
guidelines for initiation and termination of deportation proceedings 
tomorrow.
  Let's see, here is Lamar Smith, and James Sensenbrenner signed it, 
and Henry Hyde. Three Republican chairmen of the Judiciary Committee 
signed

[[Page H2994]]

this letter, stating that the President had broad discretion. Mr. 
Speaker, three former chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee, the 
legal foundation upon which this opinion rests, is as rock solid as 
their conservative credentials are.
  Yet, to this day, the Republican Conference has not come up with an 
immigration bill or a series of bills of their own. The American people 
are still waiting for Republicans to write their own immigration bills 
or amend the ones that were sent to us by a two-thirds bipartisan 
majority in the Senate.
  I am here to remind my friends in the Republican Conference that the 
time is running out. If you don't take action, the President will take 
action to permit millions upon millions of undocumented immigrants to 
be able to live safely in the United States of America. It is your 
choice.

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