[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 122 (Tuesday, July 13, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4846-S4848]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Latin America Codel

  Madam President, I did just return from a bipartisan trip to the 
area. I went with Senators Tim Kaine, John Hoeven, Ben Ray Lujan, Mike 
Crapo, and Chris Coons to Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, and Guatemala.
  I want to talk a bit about what we learned and a bit about some of 
the ways forward to help these countries and, frankly, to help 
ourselves here in America more by changing some of our policies--not 
just asking them to change what they do but changing some things we do.
  It was an opportunity to show our support for these countries. These 
are our neighbors in Latin America. All of them are allies. I 
understand this is the first major congressional delegation trip since 
the COVID-19 crisis began to abate, and we chose Latin America. They 
are our neighbors. They are at our front door, in fact.
  I did find when we were down there that there was a lot of 
appreciation for the fact that we were showing up and talking about 
America's role in the region and, frankly, the role of China and even 
Russia and Iran and other countries--at least in the Venezuelan area 
with regard to Russia and Iran and Cuba. It has been increasing at a 
time when sometimes the U.S. presence is not felt as acutely. So it is 
important for us to be there as a country that is still a beacon of 
hope and opportunity for those who seek democracy and freedom and human 
rights. That is our role, in my view, is to continue to be that model 
but also to provide assistance, more trade, to provide a way for these 
countries to be able to see more prosperity and peace themselves. So I 
thought it was an important trip and an important opportunity to be 
there.
  We had the opportunity to meet with the President of each of these 
four countries. In fact, none of our meetings with the respective 
Presidents went for less than 2 hours. These were very honest 
dialogues. We got into some depth into the issues.
  We were able to discuss the COVID-19 crisis. Each President was 
appreciative of the fact that the American taxpayer has helped to 
provide some vaccines to these countries. It is not everything they 
want, of course. They still need a lot more vaccines because their 
vaccine rates are far lower than ours. But each of these countries has 
suffered in terms of the impact of COVID-19, and each of these 
countries is eager to get back on their feet, to get the economy 
working again, to get their people back to work, back to school, back 
to a more normal life just like in this country.
  We talked about the surge of migration to the United States and the 
pressure on our southern border but also here in America, in the 
interior, what is happening with regards to more and more migrants 
surging at the border. We are looking at 170,000, even 180,000 per 
month now in the months of April, May, and June. So we do have to deal 
with that issue.
  Many of these countries are sending their young people and others to 
our borders. By the way, the Presidents of these countries all said the 
same thing. They want their people to stay in their country. They want 
their people to stay there to be part of the future of their country, 
to be able to help develop the economy and the prosperity that they 
seek in their democracies.
  Sometimes that is not understood even by American policymakers, who 
think, with all great intentions--who are opening up more in the sense 
of providing a magnet, really, pulling people to the north.
  That treacherous journey north is also something that many of these 
Presidents commented on. Ecuador, as an example--you might not think of 
it as one of the countries that send a lot of migrants to the United 
States. You think of Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala. My understanding 
is, they surpassed Honduras last month in the number of migrants they 
are sending to our border from Ecuador. They want those people to stay 
in Ecuador and be citizens there and help contribute to that country's 
growth.
  Unfortunately, the impact with COVID-19 has made things more 
difficult in each of these countries. So their economies have been 
weakened just as ours was weakened. They were hit even harder and even 
longer, again, with the lack of vaccines. Again, we are helping them 
with that. I support that. I think it is very important.
  By the way, the Chinese are also selling a lot of vaccines throughout 
Latin America and trying very hard to influence what is going on in 
this part of the world, which is our hemisphere. The United States 
needs to be there for many reasons, and that is one.
  We also talked about the need for the continued battle against 
corruption in these countries and throughout Latin America and to 
ensure that you do have more transparency and a governing environment 
that is driven by the rule of law so there can be more investment from 
the United States and more trade between us.
  In Ecuador in particular, we talked about the need for a new trade 
agreement, which I support, which would really help to strengthen our 
ties with Ecuador at a critical time in their history but also would be 
good economically for both countries' mutual benefit.
  With regard to Colombia, Guatemala, and, of course, Mexico, we have 
trade agreements, but we talked about how to improve those trade 
agreements--how they operate and are implemented on the ground. I am a 
former U.S. Trade Representative. I helped to negotiate the Colombia 
trade agreement. I also helped with regard to the CAFTA agreement, 
which included Guatemala. Those agreements were helpful at the time. 
They could be even more helpful if they could be improved in certain 
respects, and we talked specifically about that.
  Each President basically said the same thing: They would prefer trade 
to aid. They are not against U.S. assistance. They appreciate it, and 
we do assist those countries in a number of different ways. Yet what 
they really want is the ability to have more commerce, more U.S. 
investment, more jobs--therefore, more economic growth and more 
opportunities for their young people so they will stay in those 
countries. Continued support from the United States is crucial in all 
of these matters.
  With regard to COVID, we can supply more personal protective gear. 
They still need it. Certainly, the donations of vaccines have been very 
helpful. When we were in Guatemala, the Biden administration announced 
it was delivering 1.2 million doses of vaccines, approximately doubling 
the number of Guatemalans who can now be vaccinated. Now, I will tell 
you that is still only something like 10 or 12 percent, so it is still 
relatively low. This is a first good step, and we need to try to

[[Page S4847]]

do more. As was the case in the United States, once these populations 
are vaccinated, they will be able to get their economies back on their 
feet.
  Our trip also allowed us to see firsthand the problems associated 
with the surge of migration that has been playing out on our southern 
border for so many months. In many cases, families in Latin America 
leave their homes for economic opportunities so that they can find a 
better way for their kids and their grandkids in the United States. 
Yet, while we were impacted here, so were the countries the migrants 
passed through, and each of them told us this. Our allies to the 
south--and we were there with them--are overwhelmed sometimes in 
providing shelters and services for those who are migrating through 
their countries, even in the case of Guatemala having a number of 
migrants there from Honduras and El Salvador and Ecuador to whom they 
are providing shelter.
  We visited some of these migrant shelters, one in Ecuador and one in 
Guatemala. We saw some of the very good work that nongovernmental 
organizations are doing there, including those supported by USAID. They 
provide housing, counseling, and education to migrant families. We 
mostly saw young women and young mothers with young children, and many 
of these women had been trafficked. In other words, they had been 
promised the ability to go north, but, in effect, their traffickers had 
put them in situations wherein they had been abused. Therefore, these 
shelters are there to try to protect them as much as anything else. It 
was very emotional. Their stories were heartbreaking.
  Again, I would just say that, in terms of the role the United States 
plays here, there are a number of policies we have in place that allow 
these coyotes, as they call the human smugglers, to go to a family in a 
poor country in Latin America and say: ``Pay me a lot of money,'' say 
$10,000, which for a family in a poor part of Honduras is their life 
savings and their mortgage on their home and is probably money they 
have to borrow, ``and we will take your kids to the United States. 
Because the United States allows those children to come in as long as 
they claim asylum, we will commit to you that we can get those kids 
into the United States, and they will go to school, and everything will 
be good, and maybe they can bring you up later.'' The coyotes can say 
that because of our policies.
  By the way, it is not good for many of these children or for many of 
these women, in particular, for what happens on that dangerous journey 
north is something that would break your heart when you hear the 
stories. Many are assaulted. Some are left in the desert, and others 
are mistreated in other ways.
  The point is that U.S. policy contributes to this. I know this is a 
hard truth, and it may be that my colleagues and I can never figure 
this out, but it seems to me that we should not have an asylum policy 
that encourages people to come to the north and then to come into the 
country pending approval of their asylum cases when, in fact, only 
about 15 percent--that is one, five--of these migrants will ever 
receive asylum claims. Yet virtually all of them stay in the United 
States. In 2019, which was the last time we had a big surge like this, 
it was mostly children and unaccompanied minors, even though only 15 
percent of them, on average, have had successful claims. What does that 
mean? That means that the United States, as I said earlier, is a 
magnet. We are pulling people north
  These countries don't want to lose their people. Many of these 
migrants are being mistreated along the way, including children who are 
placed by U.S. Agencies into sponsor families who sometimes mistreat 
them. We have done studies on this. We have done two studies in the 
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and bipartisan studies wherein 
we have concluded that we do not have effective ways to place these 
children who are, again, brought to the U.S. border and allowed into 
the United States because of our policies.
  I know this is a tough issue, and our hearts go out to these 
migrants--they really do--but we have to have a policy that makes sense 
and a policy that allows people to come legally to the United States in 
an orderly way, in a humane way, and not continue this policy that 
effectively gives the coyote, the human smuggler, a pretty good 
narrative--a pretty credible one--that, if you pay me, I will get you 
into the interior, into Ohio, where I am from, or into some other 
State.
  Again, the way our system works, because there is a backlog of about 
1.2 million people for these cases and because only 15 percent at the 
end of the day, on average, are going to get their asylum claims 
approved, these people tend to stay in the community. I don't blame 
them for coming. I really don't. Every family I have talked to along 
the border, when I have been there or down there when I was in these 
four countries over the last week, tells me the same thing: They want 
more opportunity.
  Some truly do have a fear of persecution in their countries, and they 
should be given asylum. Again, that is about 15 percent. The vast 
majority, of course, will live lives that are lives of poverty. They 
want more opportunity, and we want to provide that opportunity. This is 
why there isn't an issue right now with regard to this: How does the 
United States best help in their home countries?
  We talked about the pull factor, which is U.S. policy. By the way, 
when title 42 ends, which is a provision that is in place now with 
regard to adults to say: You can't come into America because of COVID-
19--when title 42 ends, which will happen at the end of the healthcare 
emergency, the administration needs to be prepared for a further surge 
of individuals coming to America--this time adults. Already, for kids, 
title 42 has been ended by the Biden administration. Therefore, we have 
seen what has happened. Already, for most families, now title 42 has 
been ended, and we have seen what has happened. We have seen these 
surges of 170,000 to 180,000 people a month.
  When it has ended for adults, it will be even more difficult. At a 
minimum, I would urge the Biden administration to be prepared as it 
wasn't last time. You will remember the huge influx and the children 
who were left in Border Patrol detention facilities for far longer than 
they were legally allowed to be there under U.S. law and living side by 
side on the floor, on pads, at the time of COVID but without having any 
COVID tests. That was wrong, just as it will be wrong if we don't 
prepare for the adults. My view is we should keep title 42 in place for 
now. We still do have a COVID issue, and countries to the south have an 
even larger COVID issue that is much more pronounced than ours.
  We should put in place sensible policies to allow people to come in 
legally in higher numbers. I support that. Temporary worker programs, 
in my view, are good for both sides right now. We have a work shortage. 
We also have a need to ensure that these people are coming in a legal 
way, through proper means. We should also have rules that work and laws 
that mean something. People who wait in line for years in these 
countries to come legally are looking and saying: Why should I wait 
when my neighbor can just walk up to the border and come to Columbus, 
OH?
  So I do think there is an opportunity here, in having been down there 
and having talked to these countries, for us to do a better job in 
helping these countries to develop their own economies and to provide 
opportunities for people in those countries. This avoids the so-called 
push factor
  Now, getting it through Congress is not going to be easy, and it is 
not going to be done quickly. I know that many are saying that $4 
billion that the Biden administration has promised to these countries 
is going to make all of the difference. It will start, and that is 
good, but we have to acknowledge that we also need to change the pull 
side. It is going to take time--decades, in fact--to allow people in 
these countries to have close to the kind of economic opportunities 
that they would have in coming across the border. The United States is 
a country where there is still opportunity for everyone, including 
these migrants, and that is a great thing. Yet we have to be sure there 
is also a system that is orderly and legal to allow them to come here 
in a safe and humane way. So that is one thing we talked about a lot 
down there.
  The other thing we talked about a lot, as you can imagine, is the 
issue of Venezuela. I mentioned earlier what was going on in Cuba, and 
Cuba influences Venezuela greatly. The fact that

[[Page S4848]]

the Maduro regime in Venezuela can survive is because of Cuba and some 
other help, by the way, from the Russians and others. There is a 
problem, which is that the country is a basket case right now 
economically. Therefore, people are leaving. They are surging out of 
the country as fast as they can. There are 1.7 million Venezuelan 
refugees in the country of Colombia. Think about that. Colombia, to its 
credit, has said: We are going to take care of these people. It has 
given them temporary protected status. It has given them places to live 
and shelter, and Colombia is taking them in as refugees. I also saw 
this in Ecuador, where they have hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan 
refugees.
  This is impacting not just Venezuela, but is impacting our allies in 
the region, who are required--again, I commend them for this--to be 
able to help in this crisis. It is one reason we need to be sure that 
we deal with these issues in Cuba and in Venezuela to try to give 
people the ability to live in a free and open society, with a 
democracy, because then they will tend to stay home and develop their 
economies, compared to what we are seeing in the streets of the cities 
of Cuba today and seeing the misery that we see in Venezuela. We talked 
about that a lot as you can imagine.
  Finally, we talked a lot about the illegal narcotics issue because 
the narcotics trade is devastating these countries, not just because 
people are using in those countries, which they are, by the way, in 
increasing numbers, but more because of the transit going through these 
countries and the corruption that results from the huge amount of money 
that is involved in the drug trade.
  In a place like Colombia, unfortunately, the cocaine production is 
up. During COVID, they increased the production of cocaine, not 
decreased it, as you might think. And where is this cocaine going? I 
pushed and pushed on the data here with the U.S. Embassy and with our 
Colombian counterparts. Roughly, 90 percent of this cocaine, they 
believe, is coming to the United States of America.
  Are we helping these countries? Certainly not by our drug policies. I 
mentioned the immigration policies earlier that are not helping these 
countries. How about the drug policies? If we can't do a better job of 
reducing demand in America, it is hard to see how these countries in 
Latin America can, all of which are affected.
  The transit through Ecuador is their big issue and the corruption 
that results. In Mexico, of course, the drug cartels control parts of 
the Mexican countryside right now. There is terrible violence in Mexico 
because of the cartels, because of the drug trade.
  I was impressed with every President I met with, including President 
Lopez Obrador, who is doing his best in a very difficult situation. 
What would be helpful to him is to have, in his case, less of a crystal 
meth, heroin, and fentanyl demand in the United States, because that is 
coming into his country and then going up north. It is creating huge 
problems in his country, including, again, a higher usage in each of 
these countries as well. They are impacted also by the deadly nature of 
these drugs. Fentanyl, as you know, is killing more people by overdose 
deaths than any other drug right now.
  Our overdose deaths in the United States of America are increasing to 
the point that, over the last 12 months and from every data point we 
have, it looks like we had the worst year in the history of our country 
in terms of overdose deaths.
  Before the pandemic, we were making progress. We were actually 
reducing use, reducing overdoses, reducing overdose deaths. What we did 
here was make a difference with the, roughly, $5 billion of additional 
spending this Chamber approved in the Comprehensive Addiction and 
Recovery Act and also in other legislation to help the States be able 
to provide better prevention, better treatment options, and more long-
term recovery.
  We were actually making progress, and then the pandemic hit. We have 
to get back to it, folks. We have to redouble our efforts, and we have 
the legislation to do that. Senator Whitehouse and I have legislation 
called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act 3.0, the third 
version of it.
  We need to be smarter on telehealth options. We need to be smarter on 
encouraging what works in terms of prevention because that is good for 
us as a country but also, again, because of the devastation that it is 
causing in every country that I was in--in every one of them. They want 
us to do a better job here so that they won't have to suffer the 
consequences there.
  When I talked to President Duque in Colombia, whose commitment to 
fighting the narcotraffickers is absolutely critical--and we appreciate 
him so much for what he is doing--he had to tell me: The real issue is 
the demand in your country. It is harder for me to solve the problem 
here.
  He is absolutely right. So we can, and I think we will, as a 
Congress, begin to refocus on this issue, I hope, post-COVID and get 
back to a situation where we are seeing progress in reducing use and 
reducing overdoses and overdose deaths and, in fact, helping these 
countries be able to get back on their feet.
  Finally, in terms of trade, not aid and commerce, it is a great 
opportunity for us right now. Certainly, China thinks so. It is 
investing in these countries, and we should be too. We should be 
looking at these countries not just as neighbors but as true allies who 
have been with us on democracy-building, on human rights; who have been 
with us on international issues and as neighbors who really care about 
the relationship between our countries.
  My hope is that our trip, as small as it was with just six Senators 
and just a few days in the region, was helpful to ensure those ties are 
deepened, to establish new ties, and to, perhaps, with some of the 
followup we are going to do, encourage more investment, more trade, and 
more commerce with these countries. But also, I hope that it was an 
eye-opener for all of us that we have got our role to do here. We need 
an immigration policy that makes sense, not just for us, but for these 
countries as well. We need to have a policy with regard to drugs where 
we are doing a better job at reducing the demand side of the equation, 
not that we shouldn't stop on the eradication of crops and the 
interdiction of drugs.

  It all helps to reduce the issue, because the price of the drug will 
go up if there is less supply, and that is important for fentanyl which 
is so inexpensive and so deadly and so powerful. But the most important 
thing by far is to allow people to get into treatment--understanding 
this is a disease--to allow people to have longer-term recovery options 
and to come up with more effective ways to prevent the use of the drug 
in the first place and to ensure that we are working together with our 
Latin neighbors and with our communities here in this country to do 
just that.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The Senator from Utah.