[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 37 (Wednesday, March 4, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H1569-H1570]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      DHS FUNDING AND IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the Speaker 
and the Republican majority for coming to their senses and allowing the 
House of Representatives to pass a bill funding the Department of 
Homeland Security for the rest of the fiscal year.
  It seems odd that I would have to come to this well to congratulate 
the majority for funding one of the largest and most important 
departments in the U.S. Government. I cannot congratulate the majority 
alone because the bill funding the Department of Homeland Security was 
passed largely on the strength--yes--of Democratic votes.
  The vote was strong, 257-167, but 182 of those votes came from 
Democrats. In fact, every Democrat who voted voted to keep the 
Department of Homeland Security open and protecting America until the 
end of the fiscal year, 100 percent. Only 75 Republicans supported 
paying our border security and airport security professionals.
  Mr. Speaker, it should never have come to this. On the one hand, it 
should never have come to this because Members of Congress should never 
play around with the paychecks of our fellow government employees and 
threaten them with furloughs in order to score cheap partisan political 
points.
  The real people with real lives who work at O'Hare and Midway and at 
ports, airports, and border crossings, the real people with mortgages, 
car notes, and tuition bills who provide the security our democracy 
depends on do not deserve the way they are treated by this Congress. 
Lurching from funding crisis to shutdown showdown to last-minute votes 
is no way to run the greatest democracy the world has ever known.
  We know there is a sensible, bipartisan majority that is willing to 
compromise and do what has to be done to keep the basic functions of 
government operating. That group voted yesterday, and the leadership 
should find a way to let that sensible majority govern, despite those 
who take every opportunity to make governing next to impossible in this 
body.
  Secondly, it should never have come to this because the premise on 
which this funding and shutdown crisis rested was never logical or 
necessary.
  Those who opposed the President exercising powers granted to him by 
the Congress have filed a lawsuit in Federal court. They picked a 
sympathetic judge and have won a temporary injunction on the 
implementation of the executive actions the President announced last 
November.
  If they really believe in the strength of their case, this threat of 
a partial government shutdown was unnecessary. Clearly, they agree with 
me that their case is weak and that the courts will eventually overturn 
the temporary injunction.
  But the logic was always sideways. The very Presidential actions that 
some in the Republican Party object to are not even funded by the 
appropriations made by Congress. The criminal background checks and the 
adjudication of each person's application is paid for in full by fees 
of $465 for each immigrant, so this was never a logical funding matter.
  With or without funding for the Department of Homeland Security, the 
premise that Congress could force the President to deport low-priority 
deportees who grew up in the United States or who are the parents of 
U.S. citizens never held water.
  Even if people cannot come forward to apply and pass a criminal 
background check and get to the back of the deportation line, the basic 
way the President and the Secretary of Homeland Security prioritized 
deporting criminals, drug dealers, and drunk drivers over moms, dads, 
and DREAMers, that would not change.
  Think about it. It is as if the Republicans were saying they are so 
upset about their obsession with border security and their conviction 
that the President is not doing enough about border security that they 
were willing to defund border security in order to make their point. 
Jon Stewart can't write stuff that good, and he doesn't have to.
  Here is the biggest reason why it didn't have to come to a shutdown 
showdown. Republicans in the House

[[Page H1570]]

could have taken action last year to fix our broken immigration system 
so that we don't have to continue this fiction about deporting 11 
million undocumented workers.
  They could have had a vote to reform our immigration system so that 
people can apply for visas and come legally in the first place rather 
than being forced into the black market where there are smugglers. They 
could have allowed a vote that put E-Verify in place, put serious 
sanctions and jail time for employers in place, and targeted our 
enforcement resources on felons, not families.
  I stood here nearly every week last year and said: If the Republicans 
failed to act, the President would be forced to act within the limits 
of current law to rescue American families and target our enforcement 
resources on criminals. I was right, and for the record, I told you so, 
using a countdown right here on the House floor.
  The coalition to pass reform, which is made up of almost all of the 
Democrats and about a third or more of the Republicans--the same 
coalition that enacted the bill to fund the Department of Homeland 
Security in yesterday's vote--existed then, and it exists today, if our 
leaders are willing to work together to address immigration reform.
  It is not too late, and I predict that the Republican Party will 
continue boxing itself into a corner until it addresses this important 
American priority.

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