[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 35 (Tuesday, February 27, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1270-H1271]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         VOTING ON IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, when we left Washington before the 
Presidents Day recess, we watched our colleagues in the Senate vote on 
a series of bills to address immigration. Only one bill received 60 
votes, but it was 60 votes against the bill offered by Senator 
Grassley, the bill that most closely matches the President's hatred for 
immigrants.
  So a supermajority in the Senate opposes the President's plan for 
massive cuts to legal immigration and massive deportations.

                              {time}  1015

  Then, yesterday, President Trump's campaign against immigrants 
received another blow. The Supreme Court declined to take a case from 
California

[[Page H1271]]

and declined to lift an injunction requiring the Department of Homeland 
Security to continue to process renewals for the DACA program, which 
means that those who signed up for DACA over the past 5 years can renew 
their DACA now, and the arbitrary deadline the President set for 
kicking 1,000 people per day out of the program beginning next Monday 
has, like so much of what Trump does, been stopped for now.
  Just take a moment to appreciate what happened. The Attorney General 
and the President, without offering any evidence, told the American 
people that they had to end the DACA program because it was illegal and 
the courts would strike it down, they said.
  As it turns out, the truth is almost the exact opposite of what the 
President and the Attorney General have told the country. No court has 
ever found DACA illegal or even legally suspect. Their actions to kill 
the DACA program have been found highly questionable by the courts.
  But let me be clear, Mr. Speaker, just because the courts have taken 
no action and the Senate failed to take action does not mean that the 
House and Republicans are off the hook for DACA. The President still 
plans to kill DACA and make hundreds of thousands of immigrants, who 
are currently documented and known to our government, into undocumented 
immigrants forced underground--vulnerable, exploitable, and deportable.
  The House has an opportunity--indeed, a responsibility--to step up to 
the occasion and craft a permanent solution. The good news is that the 
solution is supported by 8 out of 10 voters in the United States: a 
pathway to citizenship.
  Can we, as a body, rise to the occasion to do something Americans 
want us to do? Can we set aside questions of who wins and who loses 
politically long enough to do what is right? We won't know unless we 
try.
  Many on the other side say there should be only one option: leave or 
be deported, but that is not what we do to American children. And let's 
be clear, these are American children. We do not force American 
children to live in exile for 10, 20, 30 years. We do not educate and 
acculturate our youth and then force them out of the country.
  If you are an American patriot, the last thing you want is for the 
world to see us deporting our own Americans. Just ask your donors, the 
Koch brothers, who know that saving the Dreamers is what they call 
something demanded as patriots.
  So, Mr. Speaker, the ball is in our court. We need to take action 
now. If we can draft a compromise to protect Dreamers and allow them to 
live in their home country, America, if both sides concede something to 
the other, we may get to a solution. That is what leaders must do. A 
compromise will likely be painful for all. We need to show the country 
that we are willing to take the heat and that we are ready to 
legislate.
  The President set us on this course. He pulled the legal rug from 
underneath the Dreamers and then cloaked his position on immigration in 
an ethnocentric, pro-European, pro-White agenda that will hurt America.
  But the racists--and we must call them out for what they are--the 
racists who are driving immigration policy in the White House are 
defining the agenda for every House Republican and are shaping the 
brand of the Republican Party not just as the party opposed to illegal 
immigration, but, now, as the party opposed to legal immigration; not 
just as the party who doesn't want poor or Latin American immigrants, 
but doesn't want Brown or Black or anyone who isn't White in this 
country. If that is how my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
define themselves and want to be remembered, then they should do 
nothing.
  But I have a greater faith in this institution and in the ability of 
this Congress to rise above racism and to do something the American 
people want us to do without regard to race, religion, or national 
origin. I am a Democrat who will work with Republicans if Republicans 
are serious about reaching a solution, but it must start with my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle saying: ``Yes, we want to 
solve the problem, and we want to rise above the racism emanating from 
the White House today.''
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
engaging in personalities toward the President of the United States.

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