[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 45 (Wednesday, March 14, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1546-H1547]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              WE NEED A BUDGET THAT INCLUDES THE DREAM ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, on September 5 of last year, the day 
after Labor Day, the temperature was 86 degrees in Washington, D.C., so 
that was a long time ago. On that date, President Trump and his 
henchmen announced that they were killing the DACA program.
  The next day, meeting with my Democratic colleagues, I said I would 
not support any spending or budget bills that didn't include a Dream 
Act or some other serious attempt to put Dreamers with DACA in a safe 
place. That was 6 months ago, and we are right back where we started.
  The Republicans have a bill to cut legal immigration and abandon the 
Dreamers in some semilegal limbo, and the chairman of the Judiciary 
Committee had a press conference about it yesterday and is touting his 
bill as the last chance to get something done about DACA.
  No, this will not resolve DACA. We will not support it in exchange 
for it.
  What the chairman did not mention is that his bill is actually about 
something else: it is about changing the racial makeup of America's 
immigrants so that more of them are White and fewer of them are from 
countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America.
  Analysis by the Center for Global Development of Goodlatte's proposal 
states the following: ``Hispanic and Black immigrants would be roughly 
twice as likely to be barred by the immigration cuts as white 
immigrants.''
  The legal immigration cuts would bar the majority of Muslim and 
Catholic immigrants from coming legally to the United States of 
America.
  While the President keeps saying that he wants a better class of 
immigrants coming to America, the cuts would actually substantially 
reduce the number of university graduate immigrants.
  The Goodlatte bill would expand some work visas, but we would only 
add one university graduate for every seven workers removed by 
eliminating the family visas and diversity visas.
  Now, tell me, how does cutting out hardworking immigrants and 
guaranteeing that the only available avenue to come and work in America 
is an illegal one, how does that protect Dreamers? It doesn't.
  We are once again chasing bad policies down a rabbit hole, because 
the real agenda on the other side of the aisle is to leverage the 
national concern over the plight of Dreamers into a radical reordering 
of legal immigration to make it whiter.
  Sorry. That is not the agenda of my party and, frankly, not the 
agenda of my fellow Americans. So, with more than 80 of my colleagues, 
we will release a letter today at a press conference we wrote to the 
leaders of both parties in the House and the House appropriators. It 
echos what I started saying 6 months ago: we need a budget or spending 
measure that includes the Dream Act, a clean Dream Act, and that is it.
  This week or next week, we all know we need to pass a budget to keep 
the government open, and Democrats are clear: our country, our 
Congress, and our leaders need to figure out how Dreamers get to live 
in the country they grew up in, the country they love, the country that 
has invested so much in them and received so much from them.
  Don't be lulled into a false sense of security. The Federal courts 
didn't settle this or give us a permanent solution. They just gave a 
lot of lawmakers a convenient excuse for inaction.
  I am not buying it and neither should you, because also in the 
spending bill there are likely to be billions of dollars for 
deportation, detention, breaking up families, and breaking down doors 
in neighborhoods across the country. That is why our letter says we do 
not only want a clean Dream Act included in the omnibus, but we want to 
reduce funding appropriated to DHS' detention and deportation machine, 
specifically funding for detention beds, deportation agents operating 
under ICE or CBP, and an end to border militarization.
  We oppose any funding that expands the construction of walls or 
fencing at the southern border. We should, instead, allocate border 
security resources to modernize the infrastructure and technology at 
our ports of entry, which would actually benefit our country and our 
economy.
  Mr. Speaker, 6 months after Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions instigated 
this crisis by proclaiming their desire to deport Dreamers and kicking 
their safety and security in our Nation to this do-nothing Congress, we 
now have what could be the last opportunity to actually take permanent 
legislative action.
  Do not be distracted by the President's nativist agenda or the bills 
in Congress that seek to implement his nationalist view. Do not give up 
on taking action that is serious and will actually protect Dreamers and 
the communities that they live in, and do not allow the deportation and 
family destruction machine to thrive and grow on our watch.
  We must take a stand right here, right now, and stand up for what is 
right and what is beneficial for our Nation. I am proud to stand with 
the majority of Americans and 83 colleagues who have joined me on this 
letter. The time is now.
  Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter from 83 Members to 
House leadership and appropriators.

                                Congress of the United States,

                                   Washington, DC, March 13, 2018.
     Hon. Paul Ryan,
     Speaker of the House, House of Representatives,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Nancy Pelosi,
     Democratic Leader, House of Representatives,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Rodney Frelinghuysen,
     Chairman, Committee on Appropriations,
     House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Nita Lowey,
     Ranking Member, Committee on Appropriations,
     House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
       Dear Speaker Ryan, Leader Pelosi, Chairman Frelinghuysen, 
     and Ranking Member Lowey: With the newest government funding 
     deadline on March 23, 2018 looming, tens of thousands of 
     Dreamers continue to lose their protection from deportation 
     since President Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for 
     Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on September 5, 2017. And 
     while numerous stopgap measures to fund the government have 
     been enacted since September of last year, zero legislative 
     action has been taken to protect Dreamers permanently. 
     Congress is long overdue in acting on this issue, and the 
     failure to pass the Dream Act has resulted in countless lives 
     put in peril. Meanwhile the Department of Homeland Security 
     (DHS) tears families apart by targeting Dreamers, long-term 
     residents, asylum-seekers, families and children for 
     detention and deportation. As the negotiations for the Fiscal 
     Year (FY) 2018 Omnibus Appropriations bill are ongoing, we 
     urge you to:
       (1) include the bipartisan Dream Act;
       (2) reduce funding appropriated to DHS's detention and 
     deportation machine, specifically funding for detention beds, 
     deportation agents operating under Immigration and Customs 
     Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 
     and border militarization; and
       (3) oppose any funding that expands the construction of 
     walls or fencing at the southern border, and to instead 
     allocate border security resources to modernize the 
     infrastructure and technology at our ports of entry.
       The appropriations for ICE and CBP have come at 
     significant, detrimental cost to our communities throughout 
     the country because all immigrants are in the crosshairs of 
     the Trump Administration's mass deportation agenda. When 
     agents for both ICE and CBP operate without any discretion or 
     regard to length of residence in the U.S. and deep ties in 
     our communities, the fear and mistrust in our neighborhoods 
     is heightened. It is an abuse of ICE and CBP funds to rip 
     fathers from U.S. citizen children and tear severely ill 
     children or young infants from their parents' arms. Now more 
     than ever, we cannot fund the detention and deportation of 
     valued members of our communities on the border and in the 
     interior and vulnerable individuals and families seeking 
     refuge in our country, especially when the key components of 
     DHS that enforce our nation's immigration laws operate with 
     negligible oversight.
       As Congressional leaders, we must exercise our powers 
     responsibly to protect the

[[Page H1547]]

     Dreamers through legislative action and to wield our power of 
     the purse to ensure that the Department of Homeland Security 
     does not make immigrant families and communities casualties 
     of a reckless, indiscriminate detention and deportation 
     machine.
           Sincerely,
       Luis V. Gutierrez; Adriano Espaillat; Raul M. Grijalva; 
     Jerrold Nadler; Zoe Lofgren; Michelle Lujan Grisham; Judy 
     Chu; Joe Crowley; Jan Schakowsky; Jose E. Serrano; Steve 
     Cohen; Eliot L. Engel; Ted Deutch; Dina Titus; Nydia M. 
     Velazquez; Lloyd Doggett; Carolyn B. Maloney; Linda T. 
     Sanchez; Gene Green; Paul D. Tonko; Alcee L. Hastings.
       Al Green; Albio Sires; Peter Welch; Barbara Lee; Adam 
     Smith; Keith Ellison; Gwen Moore; Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, 
     Jr.; Ben Ray Lujan; Maxine Waters; Bobby L. Rush; Elijah 
     Cummings; Danny K. Davis; Eleanor Holmes Norton; Yvette D. 
     Clarke; Robert A. Brady; Hakeem S. Jeffries; Grace F. 
     Napolitano; Jared Polis; Norma J. Torres; Juan Vargas; 
     Bonnie Watson Coleman.
       Donald Norcross; Tony Cardenas; Kathleen M. Rice; Mark 
     Pocan; Mark Takano; Darren Soto; Michael E. Capuano; Ed 
     Perlmutter; Nanette Diaz Barragan; Grace Meng; Robin L. 
     Kelly; Jimmy Gomez; Bill Foster; Joaquin Castro; Ruben 
     Gallego; Brenda L. Lawrence; Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott; 
     Brendan F. Boyle; Donald S. Beyer, Jr.; Earl Blumenauer; 
     Dwight Evans.
       J. Luis Correa; Pramila Jayapal; Ro Khanna; Suzanne 
     Bonamici; James P. McGovern; Joseph P. Kennedy, III; Jamie 
     Raskin; Colleen Hanabusa; Jacky Rosen; John Lewis; Mark 
     DeSaulnier; Val Butler Demings; Frank Pallone, Jr.; Ted W. 
     Lieu; Alma S. Adams, Ph.D.; Salud O. Carbajal; Donald M. 
     Payne, Jr.; John Yarmuth; Alan Lowenthal.

     

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