[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 140 (Monday, November 17, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6006-S6007]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMMIGRATION
Mr. CORNYN. Only a few years ago a prominent Democrat firmly and
unequivocally rejected the idea that the President of the United States
could singlehandedly enact an amnesty for millions of immigrants who
entered the country without legal authorization. In 2011, for example,
this same person reminded us that ``there are laws on the books that
Congress has passed'' and that therefore it should not be permissible
for the President to ``suspend deportations through executive order.''
Then in 2013 this same individual noted that granting a unilateral
amnesty for adults who came to the United States illegally was ``not an
option'' because it would amount to ``ignoring the law.'' A few months
later this same individual was speaking at an immigration event and was
interrupted by a heckler who urged him to stop the deportations by
Executive fiat. In response, he said:
If in fact I could solve all of these problems without
passing laws in Congress, then I would do so. But we are also
a nation of laws. That is part of our tradition.
Of course, you might have guessed who that person was. It was
President Barack Obama on numerous different occasions in the past few
years saying he did not have the authority to issue a unilateral
Executive order granting, in effect, a right to waive the law with
regard to illegal immigration. I have to say that our President has a
preternatural ability to say one thing and then do another--the
opposite.
Now the President is threatening to authorize exactly the type of
action he previously said he did not have the authority to order, and
he is threatening to do so even after his go-it-alone approach on
immigration and so many other issues was so roundly repudiated in this
most recent election on November 4. In other words, he is showing
contempt for the Constitution, for the voters, and basically anyone who
disagrees with him. It is the classic ``my way or the highway''
approach.
According to press reports, he will act as early as this week and he
will unilaterally grant work permits. Under what authority--I have no
idea how he can legislate authority to grant work permits for people
who illegally entered the country, but he said, apparently, he is going
to try. These are the kinds of maneuvers we would expect to see from
tin-pot dictators and banana republics, not from the Commander in Chief
and the Chief Executive of the world's greatest democracy.
Apparently the President now thinks that he and, I assume by
precedent, any future President can simply ignore the laws that he
finds inconvenient, that ``if Congress hasn't passed the law, that is a
good enough excuse for me to go it alone and do it my way,'' go around
it, go against the will of Congress and the American people. This is a
dangerous precedent, I hope the President recognizes. If after the next
election a President of the other party--my party--is elected, won't
this be viewed as a precedent which has been established by this
President which could be used on everything from taxes, to regulation,
to ObamaCare--you name it. But that is not how our Constitution is
written. That is not what the separation of powers doctrine--which is
an essential element of our Constitution--provides. Even the Washington
Post--not known as being a bastion of conservative thought--has said
that failing to get his way in Congress does not ``grant the president
license to tear up the Constitution.''
Unfortunately, the President has shown that he has very little
patience with constitutional safeguards, especially when they hamper
his agenda or complicate his political needs. After all, this is the
same President who has unilaterally rewritten ObamaCare by granting
extensions, waivers, and the like and who has unilaterally gutted
welfare reform and who has made blatantly unconstitutional appointments
to the Federal bureaucracy and to the Federal judiciary, only to be
corrected by the courts.
For that matter, the President has already made a number of
unilateral changes in U.S. immigration policy with disastrous results.
We have seen literally thousands of convicted criminals released from
U.S. custody, including those with violent records. And, of course, it
wasn't that long ago that we saw what had been called a genuine
humanitarian crisis unfold along the southern border in my State as
tens of thousands of Central American children made a treacherous
journey in order to cross illegally into the United States and take
advantage of a loophole in a 2008 law that we tried to correct but
couldn't even get a vote on it in the Senate.
At the height of the crisis in early June, the New York Times told
the story of a 13-year-old Honduran boy who was detained in Mexico
while trying to reach the U.S. border, and his story was pretty typical
of what we heard from many people. The Department of Homeland Security
conducted interviews with many of the immigrants who came across at
that time. ``Like so many others across Central America,'' the Times
reported, this boy ``said his mother believed that the Obama
administration had quietly changed its policy regarding unaccompanied
minors and that if he made it across, he would have a better shot at
staying.''
In other words, the impression that we are not going to enforce our
law is a magnet.
I have no idea how this unilateral action by the President will be
interpreted--granting legal status presumably to millions of people by
the swipe of his pen. Will that be viewed as a green light for people
who want to come to the United States from all around the world,
saying: Well, if I can just get to the United States, President Obama
will let me stay too.
[[Page S6007]]
About 1 week later the Washington Post confirmed that the influx of
unaccompanied Central American children is ``being driven in large part
by the perception they will be allowed to stay under the Obama
administration's immigration policies.''
I mention these stories because they highlight the all-to-predictable
consequences of failing to enforce U.S. immigration law.
So much of law enforcement is the deterrent value--in other words,
stopping people from breaking the law in the first instance, not just
catching them after they actually break it. And sending the message
``Get here if you can, and you might too be one of the ones who win the
lucky immigration lottery and get to stay in the United States'' is a
huge magnet for illegal immigration and it undermines--indeed, it guts
the deterrent value of enforcing the law. And for what? The President
reportedly, unless he rethinks this misguided strategy, will provide
some form of temporary relief that will not even be able to be
implemented before he leaves office in 2 years, with uncertainty for
these immigrants and their families as to what is going to happen
beyond.
How he is drawing the line is beyond me. I read that apparently the
reports that have been dribbled out in the press--and, of course, this
town is famous for intentional leaks to sort of issue trial balloons to
see how people are going to react. Well, if the trial balloons are
correct, if the stories are correct, the President's order will cover
roughly 40 percent of the people here in violation of our immigration
laws--40 percent. So why did he decide to stop at 40 percent and not do
60 percent or 80 percent or 100 percent? What about the people who have
been waiting patiently in line, complying with our immigration laws? To
have these other millions of people jump ahead of them and be given
some form of legal status is not fair to them, and it certainly doesn't
encourage people's compliance with the rules or the law.
Then we have to look at who benefits the most. And I am not talking
about the immigrants; I am talking about the criminal organizations.
This is part of how they operate and their business model. Such
criminal organizations will be the biggest beneficiaries of the
President's Executive order, which would make it even harder for our
friends in Mexico to reduce violence and uphold the rule of law. It
would be like a pipeline of additional money and resources into the
cartels. And the cartels don't care whether they traffic in children,
whether they traffic in drugs or weapons. That is how they make money.
That is why they exist. That is what they do. And this ill-advised
action by the President would do nothing but ensure that a pipeline of
money will continue to flow into these criminal organizations.
Time magazine reported:
Cartels control most of Mexico's smuggling networks through
which victims are moved, while they also take money from
pimps and brothels operating in their territories.
Yet, again, President Obama just doesn't seem to care.
He also doesn't seem to care that his Executive action would harm our
opportunity to reform our broken legal immigration system. Republicans
and Democrats alike have ideas for how to reform our immigration
system, and many of them have bipartisan support. We do know that a
comprehensive bill--we have tried to pass one of those for 10 years,
and it hasn't worked, so it makes sense to me to try to break it down
into smaller pieces and try to build consensus for those, get them
across the floor of the House and the Senate and on the President's
desk--even on a controversial subject such as immigration. Yet the
President has now appeared to decide to trample the normal legislative
process and to do immigration policy by fiat.
What about the 60 percent who won't be covered by his Executive
order? They don't get any relief under his Executive order. They are
going to need to look to Congress to know what the rules are.
So in the President's desperate attempt to placate some very vocal
activist groups and to make up for years of hollow promises, he has
decided to flout the rule of law and end up making real immigration
reform that much harder to pass.
I saw a Congressman from South Carolina, Trey Gowdy, who said: During
the first 2 years the President had 60 Democrats in the Senate and
controlled the House of Representatives. If immigration reform was such
a priority for the President, why didn't he do that?
Well, don't just take my word for it that this will make our job much
more difficult.
The junior Senator from Maine, an Independent but a Member of the
Democratic caucus, said of the President's Executive amnesty: I think
it will create a backlash in the country that could actually set the
cause back and inflame our politics in a way that I don't think will be
conducive to solving the problem.
I mentioned a moment ago that the results of this anticipated action
are all too predictable. So I would ask the President: Why in the world
would you want to encourage children to make one of the most dangerous
journeys from Central America through Mexico and be subject to the
tender mercies of these cartels, which care nothing about them? Why on
Earth would you want to establish yet another big incentive for people
to enter our country illegally? And why on Earth would you want to help
contribute to yet another humanitarian crisis on the Texas-Mexico
border?
I would urge the President, in the strongest of terms, to respect the
rule of law and the democratic process and to give the new Congress
that will convene in January a chance to do our job. I don't
underestimate the difficulty of dealing with our broken immigration
system, but I don't think we have a choice. We do not have a choice. We
must. And it will not be something I will like 100 percent; it won't be
something any Senator or Congressman will like 100 percent. But that
shouldn't cause us to shrink from our duty.
If the President is actually interested in having his last 2 years in
office be more productive than simply a lameduck session, he needs to
work with the Congress rather than go around Congress. I urge him to
put the Constitution ahead of his campaign promises and to consider the
likely human cost in Mexico and elsewhere of such a lawless policy
change.
Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hirono). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, a parliamentary inquiry: What is the
pending business?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is in morning business.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I wish to speak on a legislative
matter on which we will be voting later on this evening. I yield myself
10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized.
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