[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15638]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           WAITING FOR CONGRESS TO TAKE ACTION ON IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, we have not been back in D.C. for a full 
24 hours and the immigration shenanigans have already begun.
  Republicans, even a few unhelpful Democrats, have been saying the 
President should not take executive action on immigration and should 
not act yet, as if his intention to use his executive power under 
existing law is a surprise.
  David Axelrod, safe in the confines of the University of Chicago, has 
no sense of urgency because none of his family members or neighbors are 
facing deportation. But it is a little different on my side of Chicago, 
where people live in nearly constant fear that a loved one or a friend 
will be detained and then strapped into an airplane for deportation.
  My Chicagoans have been waiting for the Congress to act and take 
action for over a decade. Polish, Ukrainian, Irish, and Mexican have 
been waiting, Jamaicans and Filipinos. They have been waiting for 
family members to get visas in backlogs that stretch to 20 years 
because Congress refuses to act. They have been heartbroken by laws 
that say, on the other hand, they can apply for a green card because 
they are married to a U.S. citizen, but, on the other hand, they must 
wait in exile outside the country, away from their husband or wife, 
their loved one, for 10 years in order to get that green card.
  Two hundred thousand, 300,000, 400,000 deportations a year. These 
statistics represent people, people disappearing from their churches, 
from their kitchen tables, from parent-teacher conferences. Why? 
Because Congress is doing nothing to make it stop or make any progress 
towards an immigration system based in reality and common sense, where 
people come legally with visas rather than smugglers.
  Now the GOP Conference in the House is saying, after a decade of 
delay, a decade of defying the American people, and a decade of 
demonizing immigrants, that they are so anxious to work on immigration 
reform. But there is just one thing stopping them: the President. The 
one thing preventing Republicans from taking action, they say, is that 
the President may also take action to keep families together and 
address the destructive nature of the deportation.
  But here is how one commentator in Atlantic magazine described it: 
``Boehner's effort to hold congressional immigration reform hostage if 
Obama acts unilaterally is so absurd. Boehner killed the hostage long 
ago. Now he's hoping that if he pretends it's still alive no one will 
notice the corpse lying on the floor.''
  To put it another way, it is a little late for the mayor of Chernobyl 
to say he is worried about someone poisoning the well.
  The President stood right there and said that if this Congress failed 
to act on important national priorities, he will use his pen and phone 
within current law to do so. Republicans heard him just as well as I 
did. Republicans had more than 2 years to address the bill and a year 
to schedule a vote on the Senate bill. I do not see one scheduled 
today, tomorrow, or next week. I doubt before this Congress expires 
will we see a bill scheduled.

                              {time}  1015

  Let's just look at the record. Republicans said we can't do 
immigration unless it is done piecemeal; we can't do immigration unless 
people are denied citizenship; or, we need more border security 
spending; we need a parole officer assigned to each immigrant who gets 
to stay and work. And every Democrat, from the President of the United 
States on down, all the way to me, said, ``Yes, yes, and yes. 
Compromise and progress are more important than gridlock and making 
every Democratic constituency happy.''
  Governing means when Democrats say ``yes'' to Republican demands, 
Republicans actually move forward and we work together. But none of 
that happened, despite the door being open, the table being set, and 
Democrats saying, in effect, Republicans can order anything off the 
menu. And yet here we are with no action, no vote, and the Republicans 
threatening to double down on no action if the President, acting within 
the letter and spirit of the laws passed by this Congress, takes action 
to help the Nation.
  The President will act as he should--boldly, broadly, and soon--to 
help people. And when he acts, tens of millions of our fellow American 
citizens will support him. Why? Because they care more about justice 
and practicality than they do about partisan politics and the blame 
game. Because a policy based on driving out 10 million immigrants is 
neither a sensible one nor one that we should be spending billions of 
dollars on.
  The President will act because Presidents before him have acted to 
solve immigration problems when Congress acted too slowly. The 
President will act because he believes, as the American people do, that 
families are more important and children should be raised without the 
government coming along and ripping their mommy and daddy away from 
them.
  I am tired of the manufactured excuses for inaction. The U.S. 
Congress can still debate, vote, and pass an immigration law if it 
wants to, and the best way to get it done will be if leaders on both 
sides of the aisle work together. If you don't like it, then do 
something. There is nothing in your way but yourselves.

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