[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 129 (Wednesday, September 10, 2014)]
[House]
[Page H7392]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, my press secretary has kept me pretty 
busy the last few days, talking about the President's decision to delay 
executive action on immigration, in two languages. I made it clear that 
from a political standpoint, in the short run and the long run, I think 
the President should have taken action before election day in order to 
be more transparent with the American people about the policy we all 
know is coming.
  It makes the job harder for me to generate enthusiasm among Americans 
to vote at all, let alone enthusiasm for voting for Democrats when 
there are members of my own party asking the President to hold his pen 
and his phone in abeyance until after the voters vote.
  From a policy standpoint, every week we delay is bad for our country. 
From a humanitarian perspective, deporting the parents of U.S. citizens 
is not in our national interest. Making it impossible for spouses of 
legal immigrants and citizens of the United States to pick up the visas 
that have already been issued to them is not in our national interest.
  Keeping the fear of deportation hovering over immigrant communities, 
like Pilsen and Little Village in my district in Chicago, has a 
damaging impact on the fabric of our community. It dampens the economy 
along commercial thoroughfares, like 26th Street, a key engine of the 
Chicago economy and tax base.
  Perhaps more important to those living outside of immigrant 
communities is to know that when the President acts, he will announce a 
tough but fair solution for millions of immigrants who do not have 
visas or any way of getting visas, but who have lived and worked here 
peacefully for years, even decades.
  It would work something like this: if they come forward, if they 
submit their fingerprints at their own expense to the FBI, and if they 
pass a rigorous criminal background check and meet other requirements, 
we will issue them a biometric identification card that says that they 
are not a priority for deportation.
  Not only do we get them in the system and on the books, but now they 
are in a program that needs to be renewed periodically with strict 
rules. This creates a huge incentive not to violate the rules of the 
program or the rules of our society.
  I know the President has heard all of these arguments, and I don't 
think I will convince him to change his mind again and move forward 
with key improvements to our deportation policies before November 4, 
but let us be clear, I think he has already made two important 
decisions.
  Number one, there is no longer any question that the President of the 
United States has the legal authority to act on immigration and 
deportations under current law. Even Republicans who have hired the 
best lawyers at taxpayers' expense to prepare their lawsuits against 
the President agreed and didn't include immigration in their farfetched 
list of Presidential ``overreaches.''
  This is settled law, and despite the shouts of talk radio and a few 
on the Republican side, there is no real serious debate about the rock-
solid legal ground from which the President can act and has already 
acted.
  Secondly, I know the President has decided going big, going broad, 
going generous, and going quickly after the election is the right 
decision because he and Secretary Jeh Johnson have to set enforcement 
priorities about which people they will deport first and which people 
they will deport last based on national security and economic interests 
of this country.
  He will act up to the limits of current law, and believe me, I can 
hear the cries from the other side, ``He can't act because we, 
Republicans, may try to do something on immigration in the lameduck. 
The President can't act because we, Republicans, are going to put the 
bipartisan coalition back together again in the new 114th Congress, and 
we will get reform passed in both Houses; or, you know, we were just 
kidding when we said all that stuff about immigration after our defeat 
on election day in 2012.''
  They will say, ``This time, we really mean it because 2016 and the 
electoral college are staring us in the face''--but no, I know the 
President and the Democrats will not fall for that again.
  I don't see the President saying he will act if you don't act, as we 
have been saying for 2 years. This time, I see the President acting 
first, acting broadly, and acting generously, laying out a broad array 
of executive actions to mitigate the damage that is being done to our 
country by congressional inaction on immigration reform.
  If the Republicans are so inclined, they can take legislative action. 
It is what we have been begging them to do for two decades on this 
issue. We may even work with you if you are serious about it, but it 
will no longer be accepted as a delaying tactic for action by the 
executive branch of government. It will be a response to Presidential 
action.
  I think the President will have the courage to act, and then it is 
Congress' chance to act.

                          ____________________