[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 4 (Monday, January 8, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S62-S63]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  DACA

  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, over the past couple of months, we have 
seen a lot of effort with regard to immigration reform and in 
particular to address the situation of the so-called DACA kids, the 
Dreamers who were brought here through no fault of their own and are 
now protected--many of them--through the DACA Program. But those 
protections will run out on March 5. In fact, some have lost their 
protections already. So there is a great impetus and urgency to deal 
with this program.
  I have said from the beginning that in order to establish a long-term 
resolution and to provide regulatory certainty, a true DACA fix must be 
a bipartisan solution. Over the past year, the two big items this 
Chamber and the Congress have dealt with--healthcare reform and tax 
policy--have been done under rules of reconciliation, meaning that if 
we could get a bare majority of Republican votes, that would be enough, 
if we could keep all the Republicans together. That is no longer the 
case with our approach to DACA. We are not under rules of 
reconciliation. It will require 60 votes, meaning that only a 
bipartisan solution will do. That is why I have been working on such a 
measure with my Republican and Democratic colleagues in Congress, as 
well as the White House.
  As I have said repeatedly, on this issue, I believe that the 
President's instincts are better than some of the advice that he gets. 
I truly believe that he does want a solution for these young 
immigrants. I hope we can get there. We will have a meeting tomorrow at 
the White House--a bipartisan meeting--to try to get a little farther 
down the road.
  Let me stress that a lot of words that are highly charged are thrown 
around this immigration debate. No word is perhaps more highly charged 
than the word ``amnesty.'' That has been thrown around by a number of 
my colleagues. I would suggest that is not the case here with the DACA 
kids. Amnesty, by definition, is an unconditional pardon for a breach 
of law. I don't think a child who was brought across the border by the 
parents has committed a violation of the law--not the child; certainly 
the parents but not the child. To provide relief for those kids and to 
allow them to stay in the only country they know I don't think should 
be called amnesty. Yet that highly charged word is often used. To 
suggest that anyone pursuing a bipartisan solution is proposing amnesty 
I think is misleading, and it sets back the cause of trying to fix the 
situation.
  A proposal that we are drafting--this bipartisan group--offers a 
pathway to citizenship for only a specific group of young immigrants--
as I mentioned, those who were brought here through no fault of their 
own. These are immigrants who are serving in the military, who are 
seeking education, who are holding good jobs. They will be required to 
continue to do so before they

[[Page S63]]

can have a chance to earn citizenship. As for the parents of these 
young immigrants, nobody can deny the fact that they did break the law, 
and any bipartisan proposal on DACA cannot and will not reward them for 
this behavior.
  I agree with the President when he said that dealing with DACA is a 
very difficult subject but that we must do so with heart. I believe 
that has been the case for those in this Chamber who have tried for 16 
years to get a solution for these kids.
  We have to prioritize border security measures, obviously, to 
determine which ones are sensible to include in a DACA measure. We will 
go beyond simply dealing with these DACA kids with some border security 
measures, but we have to find out which ones are sensible and make 
sense to include in this limited measure and table those that should be 
considered for the future.
  I have been part of comprehensive immigration reform efforts in the 
past. I look forward to being part of comprehensive immigration reform 
efforts later this year, but this is not that. We have a very specific 
purpose to achieve before the 5th of March. The commitment we got was 
to have a bipartisan bill on the Senate floor by January 31. I believe 
we need to have that in order to have enough runway to get this done by 
March 5.
  The White House, after much urging on our part, finally sent a list 
over as to what should be considered part of the border security plan. 
As I mentioned, many of these items need to be addressed. Maybe all of 
the items need to be addressed, but they need to be addressed as part 
of a larger, more comprehensive effort, not the limited fix we are 
going to do before March 5. I am all in when it comes to comprehensive 
immigration reform. I look forward to that debate. But we have to 
understand that we can't do it all before March 5 if we are going to 
protect these kids.
  Some will say: Well, we get to March 5, if we can't do it, then we 
just kick the can down the road again with some other protection.
  I think the courts have made it clear that what was done prior to 
this--the DACA Program itself--was not constitutional, and should we 
simply say we are going to extend that program now, it would be found 
unconstitutional by the courts. This is a real deadline, and we have to 
meet it. We have to focus specifically on protecting these DACA 
recipients. I think Republicans, Democrats, and the President all want 
this. The question is, Are we going to, just over the next couple of 
weeks, talk about bigger, broader issues that need to be dealt with but 
have no chance of being part of legislation?
  In 2013, I participated in what was called the Gang of 8. We 
negotiated for 7 straight months nearly every night. We were in 
Washington. We as Members negotiated--and our staffs did as well--much 
longer hours and into the weekends. Then we brought that piece of 
legislation to the Judiciary Committee, where we debated it for a 
couple of weeks. I think we amended it more than 100 times. Then we 
brought it to the House floor for another couple of weeks and amended 
it several more times before passing it by a vote of 68 to 32. That was 
a long process--hard-fought compromises in that legislation. To suggest 
that we can go through a similar effort in the next couple of weeks--it 
simply isn't going to happen. The list the White House brought forward 
is simply something that we ought to consider for comprehensive reform 
but not for this specific fix.
  With regard to the border itself, we all know that we need additional 
infrastructure on the border. I represent Arizona. We have some 375 
miles of border. Some of the border has good barriers in terms of 
fences. The closest thing we have approximating a wall is these old 
landing strips from World War II that we put on their end and cemented 
in. They are opaque. You can't really see through them. We have them in 
a number of the communities along the border. We have been taking them 
out because they are not very effective and putting fences in place of 
them because we need to have visibility to the other side of the 
border.
  Most of what the President is talking about along the southern border 
is a fence. We do need more fences. In the Gang of 8 bill, I think we 
authorized 700 miles of additional and improved fencing. Nobody is 
suggesting we don't need additional infrastructure or barriers on the 
border. The question is, How much do we provide for it in this 
legislation?
  The President has made a request in the budget for about $1.6 billion 
for the coming year. I think that will result in about 74 miles of 
fence between Texas and California. I think that is a good place to 
start. How much we authorize going forward will be very much in debate.
  I know that during the campaign, the President talked long and hard 
about building a wall, but every time he mentioned building a wall, he 
talked about Mexico paying for it. We all know--and many of us knew at 
the time--Mexico was not going to pay for that wall. They are not. That 
is why the President is asking for $18 billion of U.S. taxpayer money 
to fund that wall. To suggest that the President hasn't changed his 
position and that we are dealing with a proposal that we have known was 
coming from the White House simply isn't true. It has changed. The 
President initially said that Mexico would pay for it. That is not the 
case. The U.S. taxpayers are going to pay for any infrastructure on the 
border. That is as it should be. If we are putting up the border fence, 
we ought to pay for it. To suggest that nobody has changed their 
position is simply not true.
  Deals like this where you need 60 votes necessarily involve 
compromise. No party, no individual is going to get everything they 
want. The White House will not get everything they want. The Democrats 
in Congress will not, and neither will the Republicans. This will be a 
compromise.
  I am simply suggesting tonight--let's get real about the time 
involved between now and when we have to fix this and not think that we 
can simply kick the can down the road and put in some temporary fix, 
some kind of bridge later that will protect these kids. Those 
protections will run out on March 5 and may be done at that point. 
Let's get serious. Let's all get serious, Republicans and Democrats, 
and not come to the table with unrealistic expectations about what can 
be done and what can be part of this legislation. Let's have something 
that we can put on the Senate floor by the end of the month to leave 
sufficient time to get this fixed by March 5. I hope we can all work 
together on this, Republicans and Democrats.

  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.