[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 146 (Monday, September 12, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4531-S4533]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Immigration

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, like you, I am proud to represent the 
city of Chicago. On Friday, returning back home to Chicago, I had a 
chance to see the best of that great city. I traveled to the Salvation 
Army Freedom Center in Humboldt Park, in the city of Chicago, where 
residents from around our city have come together to welcome the 
families who are seeking refuge in America.
  Our city's agencies, State agencies, members of the faith community, 
and kind families have stepped up to provide supplies--the basics: 
clothing and such--and a safe place to sleep for many of these people 
who have come to America. These modest acts of generosity have changed 
everything for the families who have arrived at that Salvation Army 
Freedom Center because, for the first time in months, they feel safe 
and secure. And that is exactly why they left their home in the first 
place: to survive.
  In Chicago, we are honored to offer a warm, welcoming hand to these 
families escaping unimaginable circumstances because in them we see 
ourselves, we see America, we see our history as a nation. And for me, 
personally, I see my own family.
  Back in 1911, a young Lithuanian woman set sail for America. She 
carried two things with her: her Catholic prayer book, published the 
year before the Czars outlawed it in the nation of Lithuania; and her 
2-year-old daughter Ona, my mother.
  More than a century stands between my mother's arrival in America and 
the arrival of families I met Friday, but in many ways it is the same 
story. America opened its doors to my family all those years ago and 
gave us a chance to find a place for a new land of opportunity. Today, 
it is our responsibility to welcome families fleeing violence and 
persecution, families seeking nothing more than safety and a fair shot. 
This is fundamental to who we are as Americans, but, sadly, it seems 
that some in politics think otherwise.
  You see, there is a reason these families arrived in Chicago, and it 
is not because they booked a bus on their own accord. It is because the 
Governor of Texas has chosen to exploit this humanitarian challenge to 
score political points. When these families arrived at our Nation's 
border seeking asylum, what did the Governor of Texas do? He didn't 
help. He took advantage of the fear and confusion. He rounded these 
families up, boarded them onto a bus, and shipped them to cities like 
Chicago and New York without even telling them where they were headed 
and without any consultation with their destination States. This is 
cruelty of the highest degree.
  The Governor of Texas didn't provide any notice to Illinois or 
Chicago. He bused them to our Union Station downtown, nearly 1,500 
miles away from their Texas border, without sending as much as a text 
message in advance. No logic. No rationale. Just plain meanness.
  Look, we can have reasonable disagreements about how to address the 
situation at our Nation's border, but there is no excuse for playing 
games with human lives. It is not the first time. Sadly, it is the 
playbook for many of the other party. You will recall when President 
Trump, the nominee or candidate, stood up and said they are all 
murderers and rapists coming in from Mexico, or do you remember when 
more than a thousand children--infants and toddlers--were separated 
from their parents at the border? Some of them are still adrift, never 
being reunited with their families.
  One of the people I met on Friday was a man named Carlos. He and his 
wife are from Venezuela, a country with an economic and political 
crisis so severe that their family feared persecution and was on the 
brink of starvation, even though Carlos was a hard worker, always 
looking for a job.
  So on May 15--May 15--Carlos and his wife did what they needed to do. 
Imagine this, if you will. They picked up their two children--a 5-year-
old little girl and a 1-year-old infant--and set out on a trip to the 
United States. They set out on foot to reach the Texas-Mexico border. 
Their journey was a nightmare: violence, theft, and exploitation.
  Carlos told me that at one point he thought he would die, with his 
wife and kids forced to spend nine nights in a Panamanian jungle. They 
were finally rescued by a local military force, but they had lost all 
their money, their cell phones. Everything had been stolen.
  They didn't quit. They were determined, slowly making their way 
across Central America, primarily on foot, stopping from time to time. 
Carlos said: I would take any work they would give me. I would sell 
things on the street--whatever it was--to feed my family.
  It took 4 long months for them to reach our Nation's border, and they 
had no destination in mind when they arrived, no contacts. They simply 
followed instructions, and then they were placed on a bus by the 
Governor of Texas that took them to the city of Chicago.
  Carlos had no intention of ending up in this great city when he and 
his family arrived in America, but he told me,

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with real gratitude, that he wanted to stay in Chicago. I warned him to 
get ready for the winter. They have been amazed by the welcome they 
have received from the Salvation Army and from so many others--Catholic 
Charities and other groups--that stepped up to help.
  That is a similar sentiment I heard expressed by another man I met on 
Friday, William. William is 42 years old. He sat down next to me as I 
was talking to this family. I thought he was a translator. He happily 
listened to the conversation back-and-forth. Finally, I turned to him 
and said: So what is your story? Again, he left Venezuela, left his 
family behind, and is hoping to get some work here so he can send some 
money back to his family.
  We talked about what he would do, and it was literally anything; he 
would take any job. I asked him if he had any family or friends in the 
United States. You know what he told me? He said: ``I have you.''
  Before I left on Friday, both Carlos and William had something else 
to say to me. They both asked me the same question: When can I go to 
work? It should be a simple answer because the reality is they are 
legally in the country now awaiting a hearing on their ultimate status. 
That hearing could be a matter of months or years. And there are no 
shortage of work opportunities in Chicago and all across the country. 
Plenty of businesses--restaurants, entertainment venues, nursing homes, 
landscaping--all of them would be happy to hire them, but under the 
law, currently, they cannot do that because asylum seekers like Carlos 
and William could be years away from the final determination of their 
status in America.
  They are at least prohibited for the first 6 months from taking any 
kind of legal employment in the United States. How did that happen? We 
let them in the country. Yet we wouldn't even allow them to work to 
feed their families.
  Well, you won't be surprised to know that was a decision by the Trump 
administration. This administration of President Biden is trying to 
change it, but, in the meantime, they are faced with a horrible 
dilemma, a Jean Valjean moment if there ever was one--when they are 
trying to find some way to feed their families, but if they take a job 
and are paid for it in any way, they risk deportation. This is yet 
another example of a broken immigration system.
  The system has failed not just these families but our Nation's 
economy as well. We have 10 million unfilled jobs in this country. We 
have 5 million unemployed Americans. There are jobs in every direction. 
A leading restauranteur in Chicago, whom the Presiding Officer knows 
very well, said to me: If you took the undocumented workers out of the 
restaurants in Chicago, you would turn out the lights.
  Behind those swinging doors in each of those restaurants are 
undocumented people doing the hard work: the dishwashing, the food prep 
and cleanup that is part of being a restaurant. And the same thing is 
true when we talk about other areas.
  I had a visit from the Farm Bureau of Illinois, and they told me just 
pointblank: We are desperate for workers, for migrant workers, to pick 
the crops at Alto Pass orchards in Southern Illinois, to work in the 
dairy farms and dairy operations in Northwestern Illinois.
  In every direction, they need these workers, and they need them now--
farm workers, ag workers. And it isn't just in the Midwest. It is 
across the Nation, and yet we don't have a system that allows for these 
people to come to this country and to legally work. It doesn't make any 
sense.
  Now, of course, there are standards we ought to apply. They shouldn't 
be offered any job that hasn't been offered first to an American. That 
is our first obligation. I get it. And we ought to make sure that if 
they are going to be here, they are good people.
  I don't believe we should knowingly allow any dangerous person to 
come into this country or to stay. If they are guilty of crimes while 
they are here, they should be punished and deported, period. The 
standards we should establish should keep our country safe, first and 
foremost.
  But, secondly, we have seen over the past 4 years, under the previous 
President, a complete downturn in the immigrants coming into this 
country to work, and that is why there are so many shortages in our 
current workforce. We can do better, and we should do better.
  And there is a problem we have that is very fundamental. Our Nation's 
birth rate is not keeping up with our demands for new workers. We have 
to accept that reality, particularly when it comes to entry level 
positions.
  We are a nation desperate for workers, particularly young, able-
bodied people like those two men that I met. But we can't put them to 
work under the law as it stands today. How does that make any sense?
  It is the same story for millions of people living throughout our 
hemisphere. Even though American employers should be willing to sponsor 
them, there are few, viable legal immigration pathways to bring them to 
America, and, as a result, the arduous journey to the Mexican-American 
border is the only option they have.
  I will be the first to agree with my colleagues on the other side in 
saying we need an orderly process at the border, and we do not have it 
today.
  I am chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. We have the 
responsibility of writing the laws on immigration. And you say to 
yourself: Well, Senator, why haven't you done it?
  And I can tell you why: Because our committee is evenly divided--11 
Democrats, 11 Republicans, as is the Senate, 50-50--making it extremely 
difficult to pass anything controversial.
  It was 7 or 8 years ago when we put together a group of 8 Senators--4 
Democrats, 4 Republicans. I was glad to be part of forming that group. 
John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, and Jeff Flake were on the 
Republican side; and on the Democratic side: myself, Chuck Schumer, Bob 
Menendez, and Michael Bennet. We put together a comprehensive 
immigration bill and called it on the floor of the Senate here, and it 
passed with 68 votes. We were elated. We finally found that sweet spot, 
that agreement.
  Oh, we said to President Trump: We will build some more of your wall. 
And I had second thoughts about that. But if that is what it took, we 
had an agreement for a comprehensive bill.
  We passed it in the Senate and sent it over to the House of 
Representatives, and under Paul Ryan's Republican leadership, they 
refused to call it or consider it. It died, and nothing--nothing--has 
been done ever since. In fact, nothing has been done for 30 years, when 
it comes to the immigration laws of this country.
  Is it any wonder the problems we face?
  We need an orderly process. We need to make sure that no dangerous 
person is going to come into this process and do our level best to keep 
them out. And we need to accept one reality, and that is that we cannot 
accept everyone in the world who wants to come to America tomorrow.
  The numbers are overwhelming. We have to have an orderly process and 
bring those people in that help us grow as a nation.
  Imagine, if you will--I thought about it from time to time in my own 
family--sitting down in a small town--a small village then--in 
Lithuania. Jurbarkas was the name of the village. I can't imagine what 
it was like over 100 years ago, when my grandfather sat down with my 
grandmother and said: We are leaving for America. We are going to the 
land of opportunity. We are going to a place called East St. Louis, 
IL--which is where I was born.
  Imagine that decision--leaving your home, your church, your 
relatives, everything behind, and going to a land where you don't speak 
the language. It sounds like an incredible decision on their part, and 
I marvel today that they even did it. A lot of the people around them 
in their same village must have said: Oh, that family, the Kutkaite 
family, they will be back.
  They weren't. They came here. They endured, and because of that 
endurance and determination, I am standing here today.
  That kind of spirit in the DNA of people who are willing to sacrifice 
everything to be part of America is something we should not dismiss. 
This is not a selfish decision on the part of the heads of those 
families. This is a selfless decision. For their family, they are 
willing to risk everything to come to this country.

[[Page S4533]]

  Now, we need an orderly process to bring them into this country, as 
needed, in the right fashion, and I believe we can achieve that. But, 
unfortunately, politically, we are stopped at the moment. I am going to 
continue to work to try to find some bipartisan approach to this which 
will solve this problem.
  Our Nation's immigration system should reward hard work and the 
determination that these people have to be in America. Instead of 
exploiting families who are fleeing for their lives, we should all work 
together to create a system that reflects the best values of America.
  We are a nation of immigrants. Our diversity is our strength. Those 
who say we need some kind of ethnic purity are aspiring to a goal which 
does not serve us well. We have done just the opposite. We have taken 
people from different sections of the world and brought them together 
into the American family, and that is what is important for our future 
as well.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.