[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 86 (Wednesday, June 4, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3391-S3392]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise to point out it has now been 342 
days since the Senate passed bipartisan, comprehensive immigration 
reform that would secure our border, turbocharge America's economic 
growth and provide a chance to heal America's broken families who are 
being separated by our dysfunctional immigration system.
  Here is what we know: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office 
told us that had we passed the bill this last year, we could have 
already seen up to $80 billion of economic growth, $20 billion of 
deficit reduction, 50,000 new jobs, $50 billion more in the Social 
Security trust fund, $2 billion of revenue for State and local 
governments, and 40,000 more brilliant STEM--science, technology, 
engineering, and mathematics--graduates stay in the United States 
instead of being told to go home.
  Instead, we have not been able to achieve any of these important 
gains. Why is that? It is because the House has refused to do 
anything--underline anything--to try and fix our broken immigration 
system. To be clear, the

[[Page S3392]]

real problem is not that there is a difference of opinion between a 
House bill and a Senate bill on immigration that cannot be reconciled. 
The problem is there is no House bill.
  We are happy to meet our colleagues in the House part of the way. We 
would love to sit down and negotiate, but there is no House bill. So 
the problem is not that the two sides are irreconcilable, it is that 
one side has refused to do anything. The problem is that House 
Republicans have completely abdicated their responsibility to address 
important issues such as fixing our broken immigration system.
  For the last few weeks I have explained the reason the House has done 
nothing on immigration is because the House Republican leadership has 
handed the gavel of leadership on immigration to far-right extremists 
such as Congressman Steve King. He is truly extreme on this issue. 
Steven King says to do nothing--absolutely nothing--and the House does 
nothing, absolutely nothing.
  Well, not only has this point not been refuted by anyone in the 
Republican Party, it has actually been even further confirmed in the 
last few days.
  Let's start with Steve King himself. Last week King filed an 
amendment to the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill 
that would require the Department of Justice to ``investigate'' the 
Department of Homeland Security's use of prosecutorial discretion 
toward certain immigrants, including beneficiaries of the Deferred 
Action for Childhood Arrivals, or the DACA Program, that the Obama 
administration announced in June of 2012.
  When discussing his amendment, Steve King--listen to this--
pejoratively referred to the DACA Program as ``Deferred Action for 
Criminal Aliens.'' That is what he thinks. He thinks that every 
immigrant is a criminal. When describing this program, Steve King said:

       For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out 
     there who weigh 130 pounds--and they've got calves the size 
     of cantaloupes because they have been hauling 75 pounds of 
     marijuana across the border.

  Was King criticized for these comments? Was he chastised and told he 
has no place in a modern Republican Party? Was King's amendment at 
least ignored in the same way every other immigration bill has been 
ignored?
  Unfortunately, the answer to all of these questions is no. For the 
second time in a year, the House Republican leadership actually 
rewarded King and handed him the gavel yet again by giving him another 
vote on another politically motivated appropriations amendment. The 
amendment to investigate the DACA Program is what received a vote last 
week. Just as before, the House passed yet another inflammatory King 
appropriations amendment along partisan lines. His previous amendment 
was to defund the DACA Program.
  This is a man who just last week compared immigrants to Santa Ana's 
army. He compared immigrants to a foreign invading army. It is a 
comparison that implies that an immigrant's goal is to harm the 
interest of the United States when they desperately want to be here and 
participate in the freedom--both economic and political--we love and 
enjoy. Yet again, after he said something like this, the Republican 
leadership hands him the gavel on immigration. That is why we continue 
to see nothing out of the House other than inflammatory, rhetorical 
amendment show votes. The score is clear: Steve King is still 
undefeated, and he is increasing his margin of victory every day.
  Well, it doesn't have to be that way. Steve King doesn't represent 
the vast number of voters in either the Republican Party or even the 
tea party. Steve King does not represent Republicans in this House. 
When we joined together on a moderate bipartisan bill that would do so 
much good for America, it was supported by traditional Republican 
groups--the business community, the high-tech community, the 
agricultural growers, the Catholic Church, the evangelical Protestant 
church, supported this bipartisan bill. Some on the left thought it was 
too conservative.
  It doesn't have to be this way. Steve King doesn't have to write into 
law whatever the House does. Poll after poll is clear that even 
Republican voters--conservative Republican voters--want to fix our 
broken immigration system in a manner that secures our borders, fixes 
our legal immigration system, and allows those in the undocumented 
status to get right with the law after a long path, including paying 
fines, paying back taxes, learning English, having to work, and going 
to the back of the line and waiting.
  Steve King is much like the Wizard of Oz when it comes to 
immigration. He is pulling the levers behind the screen to make it seem 
he has the power, but the Republican Party will learn sooner or later--
as Dorothy did in the ``Wizard of Oz''--that King actually works by 
fear, and he doesn't have the power and the wizard's power is 
overstated. He can't really do very much. The only way to get back home 
and do something real is in ourselves, not in that man behind the 
screen--the Wizard of Oz, Steve King. Where are the leaders in the 
Republican Party with the courage to stand up to Steve King and the far 
right and say: Enough is enough, we will not let our authority be 
hijacked by extremists whose xenophobia causes them to prefer 
maintaining a broken immigration system, where hundreds of thousands 
still cross the border illegally, instead of achieving a fair, tough, 
and practical long-term solution?
  Make no mistake, immigration reform will either pass this year with 
bipartisan support and a bipartisan imprint or it will pass in a future 
year with only Democratic support and a Democratic imprint because 
Democrats control Congress and the White House. Some Democrats argue it 
is better for us politically if the latter occurs, and many 
Republicans, in their hearts, know that is true. But we don't want 
that. We want to fix our country's problems. We want our GDP to grow 
3.5 percent as the GPO said it would if we pass this bill. We want to 
secure our borders once and for all. We want a fair path to citizenship 
so that people who work and pay taxes can get right with the law.
  Time is running out. We have less than 8 weeks to go to get something 
passed. There is still no serious proposal from Republicans. If the 
House fails to act during this window, the President would be more than 
justified in acting anytime after the summer is over to make whatever 
changes he feels are necessary to make our immigration system work 
better for those who are unfairly burdened by our broken laws, but that 
is not the preferable way to go. The preferable way to go is to go the 
way the Senate did where Democrats and Republicans banded together to 
create a moderate, thoughtful, comprehensive bill that fixes our broken 
immigration system once and for all.
  In conclusion, I hope the immigration reform bill passes this year 
because our economy, our broken families, and our country so badly need 
it. Let's hope the House finally stops talking and finally stops paying 
obeisance to their Wizard of Oz on immigration, Steve King, and starts 
acting.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from Wyoming.

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