[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4853-4854]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Colorado (Mr. Polis) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POLIS. I come before this body today, Madam Speaker, to address 
the urgent need for passing immigration reform and finally replacing 
our broken immigration system with one that secures the rule of law, 
that secures our Nation's borders, and that ensures that we fix this 
problem and issue going forward.
  Look, nobody is happy with how things are today with regards to 
immigration. Why should we be? We should, in fact, be ashamed as a 
country to look ourselves in the face and say: We are a country in 
which we don't even know who is here. There could be 10 million people 
or 15 million people here illegally. We don't enforce the law at 
workplaces. There is no mandatory workplace authentication. We are not 
serious about border security. These are the things that the Senate 
bill and H.R. 15 would remedy.
  We have an unprecedented level of investment in border security. We 
make sure that businesses verify every employee who goes to work in 
order to ensure that one is there legally to work. We make sure the 
people we need in our economy to work and have jobs are able to get the 
permission to go to work the next day. H.R. 15 would create over 
150,000 jobs for American citizens. It would reduce our budget deficit 
by $200 billion. It would secure our border, reflect our values as a 
nation of immigrants and as a nation of laws with an immigration system 
that makes sense for our country, that makes sense for American 
citizens, that makes sense for reducing our budget deficit, and that 
works--fundamentally works--to help make America more competitive.
  That is why there is an unprecedented coalition around H.R. 15, our 
comprehensive bipartisan immigration reform bill. It is a coalition so 
strong that, if this bill were placed on the floor of the House 
tomorrow, it would pass.
  It is a coalition that unites business and labor, a coalition that 
unites the agriculture industry with farmers and with farmworkers, a 
coalition that includes members of the faith-based community, from the 
evangelical traditions, to the Catholic tradition, to the Jewish 
tradition, to the Muslim tradition. The full diversity of faith in our 
country supports this bill and this approach to immigration reform.
  It is a coalition that includes the technology community and that 
includes the innovators of tomorrow's economy. H.R. 15 includes 
entrepreneurship visas. It includes a route where high-skilled workers 
who are trained at our universities with Ph.D.'s in engineering and 
math are able to stay in our country to deploy their talents here 
rather than our route of current dysfunction of an immigration system 
that forces them back to overseas countries where the jobs follow them.

                              {time}  1100

  We want that talent here to make our country stronger. H.R. 15 does 
that.
  We call upon the Speaker to move forward with bringing this bill to 
the floor. There has not been a single immigration bill considered by 
this House, and that is why moments from now my colleagues will be 
launching a discharge petition to bring H.R. 15, immigration reform, to 
the floor of this House.
  Madam Speaker, you may ask, What is a discharge petition?
  A discharge petition is a way that the membership of this body, the 
435 fine men and women who make up the United States Congress, can go 
around a Speaker who is unwilling to schedule a bill for a vote, and we 
ourselves can schedule the bill for a vote.
  Normally, the Speaker decides what bills are considered on this 
floor. But if 218 of 435 Members--that is half of this body, a majority 
of this body--sign a discharge petition, that bill will immediately 
come to the floor of the House for an up-or-down vote. And that is all 
we are asking, Madam Speaker.
  We know that there are people in this body who might have heartfelt 
convictions against fixing our immigration system. They can vote their 
conscience, just as we vote ours. But when we have a majority of this 
body ready to act in concert with the Senate, in concert with the 
President, in harmony with over 75 percent of the American people who 
support fixing our immigration system, it is time to act.
  No Speaker, no majority leader, should stand in the way of 
overwhelming opinion both inside this body and outside this body. The 
time for finally fixing our broken immigration system, replacing chaos 
with order, replacing unruliness with the rule of law, replacing a lack 
of certainty with security and certainty, and an investment in our 
future, is now.
  I call upon all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, in the 
face of the failure of this body to act, to sign the discharge 
petition, take back control of this Chamber for a solid, commonsense 
majority of Democrats and Republicans who want immigration reform to 
pass now. We can do that simply by signing on the dotted line on the 
discharge petition, as I intend to do moments from now.
  I call upon all my colleagues to sign the discharge petition and 
finally fix our broken immigration system.

[[Page 4854]]



                          ____________________