[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 150 (Wednesday, December 10, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H8934-H8935]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, as The New York Times said in an 
editorial last week, there is an immigration crisis looming next year, 
but it has nothing to do with the border. Rather, it is the huge effort 
that will be needed to fulfill the President's executive actions and 
get millions--millions--of American families out of harm's way by 
protecting them from deportation and destruction.
  Sure, we are celebrating the series of executive actions taken by the 
President, but we are also rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. 
So I want to talk just a little bit about what we are doing in the city 
of Chicago and what I am hoping my colleagues here in Congress and my 
colleagues across the country in community-based organizations, the 
legal community, and immigrant and Latino neighborhoods in every State 
will do to help with getting people ready to sign up when the window to 
submit applications opens in 180 days and the government's review of 
cases begins.

[[Page H8935]]

  This coming Saturday, the 13th, at 9:30 in the morning I will be at 
Rebano Church on the north side of Chicago, and more than 500 families 
have already preregistered for an orientation. We will go over what the 
President's announcement means for individual immigrants and their 
families. Then those who have preregistered will have an opportunity 
for a one-on-one preliminary evaluation of their eligibility from 
people we are calling family defenders.
  We are already scheduling follow-up events this month and into the 
new year, and we will be ready to accommodate the huge demand for 
accurate and trustworthy information.
  Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been my consistent and outstanding partner in 
the effort, and we are both committed to making Chicago the model for 
the rest of the country; and for the advocates, the legal community, 
the business community, the public sector, we are all working together 
to make that a reality.
  That is right. New York. Listen up, L.A. Get ready, Miami, Houston, 
and Dallas. We are going to work to protect as many families as we 
possibly can in the city of Chicago, and we are challenging you to keep 
up.
  But it is not just the major immigrant gateway cities where we need 
to organize to protect American families. As the President showed us 
yesterday, cities in the South like Nashville are leading the way to 
integrate and assimilate immigrant populations. The spirit of inclusion 
is of utmost importance as we help families come forward, register with 
the government, submit their paperwork and fingerprints, and get ready 
and into the system.
  I have told my House colleagues that I plan to be on the road a lot 
at the start of next year, traveling anywhere they need me to travel to 
help them conduct outreach and educate immigrant communities where they 
live. But it is not just the blue districts where we must support our 
immigrant communities and make sure they register. It will be necessary 
in red districts, too; States like South Carolina, Arizona, and 
Alabama, States that tried unsuccessfully to push their immigrant 
community farther underground. I will accept invitation from those 
States, too, to get the word out and educate the community in whatever 
way I can.
  I can't tell you how many people have come up to me and said: 
Congressman, I don't know if this will help my family, my dad, my mom, 
my neighbor, or my parishioner, but I hope they will not still have to 
live in fear of deportation.
  There are millions who will not be able to come forward and sign up 
because their cases cannot be reviewed under the President's 
guidelines. I tell them that what the President has announced is bold, 
it is broad, and it is extremely generous and helpful to the United 
States and our immigrants who have no other way to get in the system 
and on the books; but it cannot go as far and it does not replace the 
need for congressional action and legislation.
  But let us all remember that, by the end of this week, the clock is 
going to have run out on the best chance the House has had in decades 
to address immigration in a bipartisan and measured manner. The Senate 
did half the work by giving us more than a year to craft a bipartisan 
answer to their proposal, and we tried in many, many different ways to 
help this House rise to the occasion, to get out of the partisan ditch 
we have dug for ourselves and to put the country on a path to a safe, 
legal, orderly immigration system that protects the country and its 
people by welcoming its strivers and innovators from around the world.
  In the end, the House was asleep at the switch and let the country 
down. But even as I work with people across the country to protect as 
many American families as possible, I pledge to my colleagues in both 
parties in the most sincere way possible, please work with us to solve 
the immigration issue so that we can move forward as a nation.

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