[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 30 (Thursday, February 15, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1152-S1155]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today the Senate voted on immigration.
  Immigration is a passionate issue. It affects the lives of people. It 
affects the American creed, which involves the rule of law, which 
involves the fact that we are a nation of immigrants. It goes to the 
heart of our country, and we have very strong opinions about it. All of 
us know that.
  Of course, that is the reason we have a U.S. Senate. This is not an 
issue that the Shreveport City Council or the Nashville Metro Council 
can solve. We can't solve the problem of our Nation's borders. We can't 
solve the problem in our communities about what to do about people who 
were brought here as children illegally through no fault of their own. 
That is our job. That is the job of the President of the United States. 
That is the job of the Senate, and it is the job of the Congress.
  We tried before. We tried in 2007, and we failed. We tried in 2013, 
and this body passed a bill with 68 or 69 votes. I voted for it. If we 
had passed that bill, as for all the issues we debated today, we 
wouldn't have them anymore because we dealt then with border security 
in 2013. We would have added 20,000 border agents, 700 miles of 
fencing, biometric detection at our ports of exit and entry, and E-
Verify for all of the employers in the country. We would have dealt 
with the issue of legal status for people illegally here, people 
overstaying their visas, temporary workers. We would have done all of 
that in 2013, but we did not do it.
  So we are left with this problem of a large number of people living 
in this country--some for a long period of time--who were brought here 
as children through no fault of their own, which is one problem. We 
have another problem on the border, which is that the border isn't 
secure. People coming across the border is one problem, but in my view, 
the drugs coming across the border are the biggest problem. We have had 
a lot of hearings in the HELP Committee about opioid addiction. A lot 
of the heroin and a lot of the illegal drugs that are devastating our 
communities are coming across our southern border. It is just a fact, 
and we need to deal with it.
  So we are dealing with and we voted today on what to do about the 
children brought here illegally by their parents through no fault of 
their own and what to do about border security. The President of the 
United States did his job on this one.
  He did what a President is supposed to do.
  I read a book by George Reedy, who was Lyndon Johnson's Press 
Secretary. He said that a President's job--the Senator from Delaware is 
a former Governor, so he knows about this. He and I had an executive 
job when we were Governors. I did my job this way as Governor. A 
President's job is to see an urgent need, to develop a strategy to meet 
the need, and to persuade at least half the people you are right. That 
is what George Reedy said the President's job was, and I think 
President Trump in this case has done his job. He saw an urgent need. 
He saw a need of the Dreamers, the DACA people who are here. He saw an 
urgent need to deal with the border. He saw an urgent need to deal with 
some other holes in our system of legal immigration. He saw a need to 
deal with the fact that we have kind of slipped into a situation where 
the million people a year who come here legally, unlike most countries 
in the world, are brought here by cousins just because they are 
cousins. They are not brought here because they are part of the 
immediate family or because they add something special to our country, 
either skilled or unskilled, and he sought to change that.
  The President recognized the fact that once we give someone legal 
status in this country, once we say to them: We have decided we want 
you to be here permanently or nearly permanently. We want you at least 
one day to dream of becoming a citizen of the United States--I agree 
with the President on that. I don't want millions of people living in 
this country permanently who are pledging their allegiance to 
Afghanistan and Russia and China and Japan and every other country in 
the world; I want them to stand up in the Federal court or wherever 
they have the naturalization ceremony--or to be able to dream of 
standing there--and take the same oath of allegiance to this country 
that George Washington's soldiers took at Valley Forge, which is the 
same allegiance today that it was then, where you renounce your 
allegiance to any other country and you pledge your allegiance to the 
United States. I want anyone who we have decided deserves legal status 
on a permanent basis to have that in the back of their mind, not the 
pledge of allegiance to Korea or Afghanistan or Bangladesh or Chile or 
any other country in the world.
  I think the President did his job. He made a reasonable proposal. I 
think he did something that most Democrats and many Americans--maybe 
many Republicans--did not expect him to do. He said: Let's take care 
permanently of these 1.8 million children who were brought here through 
no fault of their own. As long as they don't get in trouble and follow 
the law, are law-abiding, let's give them the dream of citizenship 
after 10 or 12 years. Let's deal with merit-based immigration. Let's 
make some changes in our legal system. Let's plug some of the holes in 
the border so these drugs don't come in.
  The President made a very strong proposal. Now we are doing what we 
are supposed to do. We are supposed to

[[Page S1153]]

react to that. Well, we did today. Senator Grassley offered the 
President's proposal, and it got 39 votes. A bipartisan group offered a 
narrower version of what the President wanted, and it only included the 
border security part--$25 billion--and a permanent fix for the DACA or 
Dreamers, who are here because of that provision in the law. It got 54 
votes. But neither got 60. Neither got to 60, which we need.
  Why do we need 60 votes? Because we are the U.S. Senate. The House of 
Representatives only needs a majority. We get 60 because we want a 
consensus. Why do we need a consensus? When we take on a big, 
difficult, passionate issue like this, we want the people of this 
country to accept it. We want them to turn around and look--well, if 
that many Democrats and that many Republicans thought it was a good 
idea, then maybe I should rethink my own view and think it is a good 
idea.
  That is why President Trump has a chance to be Nixon to China on the 
immigration issue. He won his election to a large extent because he 
promised a wall and he talked about immigration. Now he is saying: Here 
is a solution that has to do with border security, citizenship, and the 
DACA children, and people will pay attention to that. And they will pay 
attention to us if we get more than a bare majority to vote for some 
version of what the President has recommended. Well, we are up to 54.
  I can give you an example of what I just said. In the late 1960s, the 
debate was civil rights. Everett Dirksen was the minority leader of the 
Senate; he was the Republican leader. Lyndon Johnson was the President; 
he was a Democratic President. They worked together to get 68 votes for 
the civil rights bill of 1968. It was opposed by Senator Richard 
Russell of Georgia, but when Senator Russell lost, he flew back to 
Atlanta and said: It is the law, and we should follow it.
  That is what we did with civil rights. That is what we did with 
Social Security. That is what we did with Medicare. That is what we did 
more recently with fixing No Child Left Behind. That is what we did 
with 21st Century Cures. When we take on a tough, complicated issue and 
we talk about it long enough and we get enough of us on both sides of 
the aisle to agree on it, we get a consensus, the country accepts it, 
and you don't have to worry about the next Congress coming in and 
passing it, repealing it, and changing it.

  When we don't do that, it is like ObamaCare. It passes with a 
partisan vote, and then we have a permanent political battle trying to 
repeal it or replace it. That has been going on for 8 years. We are 
still not through it yet. We hope to be, but we are not through it yet.
  So we need 60 votes for a solution for the DACA children who were 
brought here and the border security position. Actually, I would 
suggest our goal should be 70, not 60. We are not going to get there 
with a situation that has 47 or 48 Democrats and 8 or 9 Republicans--
that doesn't make 60 in the public schools of Tennessee--and we won't 
get it with almost all the Republicans and just a few Democrats. That 
is not a majority. That is not a consensus. That is not going to 
persuade the people of this country that we have come up with something 
lasting that most people can accept. I have no doubt we can get there.
  There were 36 Senators of both parties who came to a meeting 3 weeks 
ago at which we said to our two whips--Senators Durbin and Cornyn, on 
each side--we would like for the two of you to help us find a consensus 
on this. There were 36 of us. There have been 20 or 25 meetings--about 
equal number in both parties--trying to find some solution here. I 
think we are making some pretty good progress. We just didn't get there 
today.
  I am glad the majority leader said that this is not the end of it. It 
can't be the end of it. We can't just leave this here. I can't go back 
to Tennessee and tell Memphis or Nashville or Knoxville: Sorry, we 
can't do it, so the mayor or the city council will now decide what to 
do about these children who are illegally here and about the drugs 
coming across the southern border and about legal immigration. I can't 
do that.
  I need to say: I am going to go back. The President has done his job. 
The Senate worked on it for a week. We got up to 54 votes. We need 70. 
We need 70.
  So my hope is that the President will continue to advocate; do his 
job; see an urgent need--he did; recommend a strategy to deal with the 
need--he did; and try to persuade at least half the people he is right. 
He is a good persuader. And then we will do our job, and that is not to 
stand in the corners and throw things at each other. Let's see where we 
can agree and do what we did on civil rights and fixing No Child Left 
Behind. This is not any harder than those issues. We ought to be able 
to do it; otherwise, we shouldn't be here.
  I tell my colleagues often that it is pretty hard to be a Senator. It 
is hard to get here. It is hard to stay here. And while you are here, 
you might as well amount to something, and amounting to something means 
getting a result. We didn't get a result today, but I am convinced that 
we can.
  In conclusion--and then I will go to my friend from Delaware--how do 
we get to 70? Well, I came up here years ago and worked for a Senator 
named Howard Baker. He was very successful in this body. He ended up as 
the majority leader. He stood right over there next to Senator Byrd 
when he was the Democratic leader. They had great differences of 
opinion, but they ran this body very well. Howard Baker had a saying. 
He said that it helped to be an eloquent listener, and he said that you 
have to remember that sometimes the other fellow might be right.
  I would like to say to my Democratic friends that in this case the 
other fellow might be named Trump. They might not like that. They may 
not like it, but I think we should give the President credit for seeing 
an urgent need, recommending a strategy, and doing his best to persuade 
half of the Americans that he is right about that.
  I think we need some Members on the other side to do what eight of us 
on the Republican side did this day, which is move the other direction, 
recognize that the other fellow might be right, come to a conclusion, 
and do our job. I think we made a start this week, but we are not there 
yet. I look forward to the opportunity to finish the job, and 
remembering Howard Baker's advice that the other fellow might be right 
might be a good way to start.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor to my distinguished colleague, the 
Senator from Delaware.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I am grateful to my colleague from 
Tennessee for yielding to me.
  One of the reasons Howard Baker was one of the great leaders in this 
place is he had good staff, and one of those folks, who was maybe the 
senior member of his staff lo those many years ago, was Lamar 
Alexander, now Senator Alexander. Howard Baker would be very proud of 
the kind of Senator he has become--a great Governor, Secretary of 
Education. He is someone who speaks, more often than not, with great 
wisdom. He and I agree on not everything but pretty much everything.
  I am mister glass half full. My wife says to me that I need to be 
more of a realist. She says I am too much of an optimist. I am not an 
optimist today. I feel like we leave here--get on a train, go home--
feeling like we have not done our job.
  The Senator from Tennessee has said that the President did his job, 
but I just don't agree. I just don't agree. He served as Governor; I 
served as Governor. if we had an impasse on a difficult issue in 
Delaware--we are lucky; we are a small state--we can pull people 
together to resolve just about anything and figure out what we call the 
four c's. One of those is close to Delaware. No. 1 is communicate. No. 
2 is compromise. No. 3 is collaborate. No. 4 is civility. Those are the 
four c's. That is the reason why we had some success in our State.

  I am not sure we really demonstrated enough of those today. I am not 
sure the President did as much as he could have done and should have 
done. We have a Bible study that meets here on Thursdays, as the 
Senator from Tennessee knows. Seven or eight of us that need the most 
help meet with the Chaplain of the Senate, Barry Black, retired rear 
admiral and chief of chaplains for the Navy and Marine Corps.
  Today in our Bible study, he mentioned the golden rules: Treat people 
the way we want to be treated. Love

[[Page S1154]]

thy neighbor as thyself. And ask the question: Who is our neighbor? He 
told the parable about the Good Samaritan. Oftentimes, he mentioned 
Matthew 25, which deals with the least of these. When I was hungry, did 
you feed me? When I was naked, did you clothe me? When I was thirsty, 
did you give me a drink? When I was sick and in prison, did you visit 
me? When I was a stranger in your land, did you welcome me?
  I think there is a moral imperative here. In the case where young 
people were brought here when they were very young from another country 
by their parents, have grown up here, were educated here, and are 
working here in all kinds of jobs--jobs that need to be filled--to say 
by our actions today that sometime in March--maybe March 5--a lot of 
them will be facing the prospect of being rounded up and sent back to 
where they were born, I think, there is a moral imperative that says 
that is not right.
  In Delaware State University, we have any number of Dreamers who are 
students there. They are the most impressive young people I have met in 
my life. They are smart. They work hard. They are good students. They 
are going to go off and be great employees. They are going to start 
businesses of their own. For us to say that there is a good chance that 
you will be sent back to where you were born, doesn't make a whole lot 
of sense to me. I think it is morally wrong.
  I think it is also economically wrong. Today, a bunch of folks in the 
landscaping business came to see me. They wanted to talk about the 
problems they have getting people to come to work for their firms, to 
work for their companies, and to do landscaping work. It is not easy 
work. It is hard to find people to do it. In many cases, the folks that 
will do it come day after day--a day's work for a day's pay. They are 
people who have come here from other countries. The landscapers today--
I don't know if they are Democrats or Republicans--are frustrated 
because they have a good business and customers need their work to be 
done, and they have a hard time getting Americans born and raised here 
to do the work.
  Earlier this week, on Monday, I was in Georgetown, DE. We raise more 
chickens in Sussex County, DE, than anywhere in America. There are 400 
chickens for every person who lives in my State. Poultry is a big 
business. We met with folks from the Delmarva Peninsula who are very 
much involved in the poultry industry. They said basically the same 
thing we heard today from the landscapers: We have a hard time finding 
people who will work in poultry plants. We have done a lot of things we 
can to enhance the pay and the benefits. We have wellness centers. We 
provide incentives for people who want to improve themselves, go on, 
and have a chance to move up the ladder of success.
  But there was one lady who said that she is from a major poultry 
company. I think it was Perdue. She said: We are trying to fill 
positions. We have 100 people who offer to come in for an interview. 
She said that out of the 100, they actually have 20 that reach the 
second step because they can pass the blood test and meet other 
challenges they have, or obstacles, in order to reach the next rung on 
the ladder for an interview. They start with 100 and are down to 20 
almost like that. Out of those 20, she said, eventually 5 will be able 
to pass the drug test and have the work experience and the willingness 
to work. She said they end up with five to hire. Out of those five they 
hire, a number of them stop coming to work a month later. She said that 
is what they face; that is reality. And then she said: Please help us. 
In fact, all the poultry industry people we met on Monday said: Please 
help us with this.
  As it turns out, it is not just landscaping businesses that need 
people to work. It is not just food processors--poultry in this case. 
When we received the monthly jobs report earlier this month for the 
month of January, we were told that the unemployment rate is about 4.1 
percent--steady where it was. We are still under way with the longest 
running economic expansion. I think we are past 8 years now. When 
people went to work today, there were about 2 to 3 million jobs that 
were not filled. When folks went to work in this country today across 
America, for about 2 to 3 million jobs, nobody showed up to do the job. 
It makes no sense to me that we face the prospect of 700,000, 800,000 
people who were raised here, were educated here, work here, want to 
work here, and want to contribute, could do those jobs, and they may 
not get a chance to do them.
  Employers have risen up with one voice, from the U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Business 
Roundtable, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, and the 
Farm Bureau--you name it--to say: We have a problem on the human 
resources side with getting people to come to work.
  I think it is economic insanity for us to say that for 700,000 or 
800,000 people and maybe a couple hundred thousand people that came 
here from El Salvador: We are going to send you home.
  It makes no sense.
  I hope my friend is right. I hope we leave here, come back in a week 
or so, and say: How do we get to an agreement?
  The last thing I will say is this. Border security is really 
important. I was chairman of the Homeland Security Committee for a 
while. I am still the senior Democrat on the committee. If you compare 
border security in this country today to what it was 10, 20 years ago, 
it is a more secure border. It should be. We spent a fortune. We have 
20,000 people down in border security. We are doing a lot of smarter 
things.
  I will conclude with this point. Included in the proposal today that, 
I think, got the most votes--54 votes--was the Collins, King, et al. 
Included in that package were a number of what I call force 
multipliers. They would actually make the border more secure. There is 
someplace along the border where a wall makes sense, like in San Diego. 
I was stationed in the Navy in San Diego. There are some places there, 
and there are other places where a wall makes sense. I heard more than 
a few times: If you build a 15-foot wall, someone will come along with 
an 18-foot ladder, or come along with a tunnel to go under it.
  There are a lot of things we can do to assist the 20,000 Border 
Patrol men and women we have. We are having a hard time filling those 
20,000 positions. We have hundreds of those jobs vacant today.

  Do you know where we could put people to work on the border? At ports 
of entry, where hundreds of millions of dollars of commerce are coming 
through every week--coming up from Mexico and going down into Mexico. 
There is a crying need for 3,000 people to work as Customs officers at 
the ports of entry.
  My colleague talks, as he should, about concern about drugs coming 
into our country. Right now, the biggest threat is from China. They are 
coming over here ordered by the internet. There is stuff coming in by 
the mail service. Senator Portman and I are working to do a much 
tighter job in that regard to stop the importation of fentanyl through 
the Postal Service.
  There are a bunch of things that we can do on the border that were 
included in the bipartisan proposal today. I will mention a couple of 
them. It is not just enough to have drones. You have to have drones 
that you can fly. You have to have good surveillance systems. You have 
to have people who maintain them. And they don't just fly 8 hours out 
of every 24. They are able to be up in the sky throughout the day and 
throughout the week with the kind of surveillance systems that are 
needed.
  It is not just enough to have a couple of helicopters that can fly 
every day, but they have to be able to go 24/7 and have the same kind 
of surveillance systems that are good. With fixed-wing aircraft, the 
same is true. I was a naval flight officer of a P-3 air mission 
command. We did a lot of surface surveillance and chased submarines all 
over the world. They would send us out in the ocean to look for 
somebody's ship that had sunken or a sailboat that had sunken. 
Sometimes all we would have in the middle of the ocean was a pair of 
binoculars--good luck finding anybody.
  We don't have to just use binoculars on the border, with drones, 
fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, fixed-wing towers, or mobile towers. 
We have surveillance systems that can enable us to see 15, 20, 25 miles 
into Mexico. We should use them and make sure they are maintained and 
that people are trained to operate them.
  When you have hundreds of miles of river, building a wall there 
doesn't

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make sense. Boats do and boat ramps make sense. In places where the 
wall may not make sense, a fence may make sense. Roads along the fence 
may make sense. In some places, Border Patrol on horses makes sense. In 
some places, we have high grasses. Put a Border Patrol officer up on a 
horse and he can see for miles and miles. That makes sense.
  This and more was included in the proposal that drew 54 votes. It is 
the kind of thing we ought to do. It doesn't cost $25 billion, but it 
will be cost-effective and make our border more secure.
  I have great affection for our colleague from Tennessee. I appreciate 
his encouraging tone that this is not the end. What did Churchill say 
when he got bounced out of office at end of World War II? He was asked 
6 months after the war, when he really carried Britain through on his 
back. The war is over. He gets beaten. He is asked by a reporter after 
he lost: For you, Mr. Churchill, is this the end?
  He said: It is not the end. It is not the beginning of the end. It is 
the end of the beginning.
  I hope this is the end of the beginning--maybe with the help of God 
and maybe with a little bit better leadership from the folks down at 
1600.
  The last thing is this. The Department of Homeland Security--which I 
worked for years to strengthen, to make something we can all be proud 
of--apparently has put out a statement today. I asked to read it. I am 
told by all kinds of people that it is riddled with inaccuracies and 
falsehoods. I am going to read it tonight on the way going home. I hope 
that is not true. What we need to operate here is the truth.
  I will close with the words of Thomas Jefferson: If the people know 
the truth, we will not make a mistake. I heard that what the Department 
of Homeland Security put out today was not truthful. It is hard, with 
that kind of information, to do the right thing.
  I wish to thank my colleague for giving me this much time and for 
being so patient with me. We will be back here in 10 days or so, and we 
will have a chance to reconnect and see if we can pull a victory out of 
the jaws of defeat.
  I thank the Senator for yielding.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Delaware for 
his remarks and his comments. I certainly hope that when we come back, 
we can get a result. That is what the job is about. I cosponsored and 
voted for the President's legislation. I cosponsored and voted for the 
bipartisan legislation. My hope is that I have a chance to cosponsor 
and vote for legislation that gets 65 or 70 votes and solves the 
problem.

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