[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11134-11136]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUESTS--S. 202 AND S. 91

  Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the 
Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 202, the 
Accountability Through Electronic Verification Act; that the Senate 
proceed to the immediate consideration of the measure; I ask further 
that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the 
motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table, with no 
intervening action or debate.
  For the information of all Senators, S. 202, introduced by Senator 
Grassley and of which I am a cosponsor, amends the Illegal Immigration 
Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to make an E-Verify 
program permanent. This is critical to protecting jobs and wages of 
American workers. It requires the government to at least run a cursory 
computer check to determine whether a person applied for a job is 
legally in this country.
  I renew my unanimous consent request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the request of the 
Senator from Alabama?
  The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, a year ago 
today on the floor of the Senate we passed the comprehensive 
immigration reform bill, and 68 Senators--14 Republicans and all of the 
Democrats--voted for it. We sent it to the House of Representatives. 
Included in that bill was a requirement that all employers use a 
mandatory electronic employment verification system to verify that all 
their employees were legal. Job applicants were required to show 
identifying documents, such as passport, driver's license, biometric 
work authorization card, including a photo ID. Any employer who 
continued to employ undocumented immigrants faced serious penalties. 
That would end the hiring of undocumented workers, which the Senator 
from Alabama has spoken to. E-Verify, though, has to be part of 
comprehensive immigration reform; otherwise, it would devastate the 
economy and hurt innocent workers. This was included in the bill, and 
we said there would be no path to citizenship until we have established 
this as a nationwide standard to verify that workers truly were not 
undocumented.
  That bill came to the floor a year ago. The Senator from Alabama 
voted against it. It passed. It went to the House of Representatives. 
It has languished for 1 solid year. House Speaker John Boehner will not 
call that bill because he knows it will pass. We are not going to take 
that bill apart piece by piece, as the Senator from Alabama suggests.
  I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the able Senator from Illinois 
for his articulate response. I would note that the E-Verify program 
should already have been fully implemented long ago. If it is so good, 
why don't we bring it up and pass it now? Why do we have to pass along 
with it a bill that will double the number of guest workers in the 
country and would increase immigration and also had many other flaws in 
it?
  So I ask unanimous consent--and this will be my last unanimous 
consent request this evening--that the Committee on Finance be 
discharged from further consideration of S. 91, the Child Tax Credit 
Integrity Preservation Act of 2013; that the Senate proceed to the 
immediate consideration of the measure; I ask further that the bill be 
considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to 
reconsider be considered and laid upon the table with no intervening 
action or debate.
  For the information of all Senators, S. 91, introduced by Senator 
Vitter and which I cosponsored, would close a loophole in the law that 
permits illegal aliens to illegally and improperly receive cash tax 
credits from the Internal Revenue Service, according to the Treasury 
Department's own inspector general. The IRS sent illegal aliens $4.2 
billion in additional child tax credit payments in 2010. The cost has 
quadrupled in 5 years. In one instance, four illegal aliens 
fraudulently claimed benefits for 20 children they claimed lived with 
them in the same trailer and received from the IRS $29,000 in refunds.
  So I ask unanimous consent that this bill be passed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the 
circumstance is this: If a person is legally required to pay income 
taxes in America, a person is legally entitled to some deductions and 
credits. One of those credits which a person is entitled to is a child 
tax credit. If a person has a minor child, that person pays less in 
taxes in America.

[[Page 11135]]

  What the Senator from Alabama and this bill try to do is restrict the 
availability of this child tax credit to some workers in America. I 
think they have gone too far. I want to make sure working families with 
small children have the helping hand of our Tax Code. I want to stop 
any fraud in any program in our Tax Code, but I don't believe this bill 
is a balanced approach to solving the problem, and I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator 
from Illinois. I would have to say that the inspector general of 
President Obama's own U.S. Treasury Department has said this is a clear 
abuse. They have written a detailed letter on why it ought to be 
closed. I am flabbergasted and amazed that we would sit by and allow $4 
billion in child tax credit payments to go out that are not justified. 
We have been told this. Why is it that we won't even respond to this 
little problem?
  It is one reason I brought it up today--because I want the American 
people to know this Congress, this Democratic majority is not willing 
to take any steps to confront the problems we have with regard to 
immigration unless they get a massive increase that satisfies activist 
groups, business interests, and their own political interests.
  It is not in the interests of the American people. We need to do the 
right thing for our country based on law, on principles, on fairness. 
That is what we need to do. People who come to the country illegally 
aren't entitled to get child tax credits. I would think certainly not 
for children who don't exist. Nobody is going out and checking to see 
if children are in the home. They are just claiming this. The numbers 
have surged in recent years. The inspector general expressed great 
concern about that--how it went from $1 billion to $4 billion. That is 
a lot of money, $4 billion in 1 year, subsidizing, encouraging further 
illegal entry into America.
  The first thing any country ought to do to control its borders, its 
sovereignty, its legal integrity, is not to provide financial benefit 
to people who violate the law and then give them benefits that are 
unlawful. That is beyond comprehension.
  I want to say to my colleagues, the last few weeks it is becoming 
more and more clear that we have chaos at the border--all a direct 
result of the President and his administrative officials who have told 
the world we have no intention, basically, of deporting people who 
enter the country unlawfully, particularly the young people. And has 
that been heard? Have people around the world heard what has been said? 
Yes. And they are coming in unbelievable numbers, creating a 
humanitarian crisis, creating a crisis of law for America, and creating 
a financial crisis. The President's Fiscal Year 2015 Budget request 
$868 million for the Unaccompanied Alien Children program at HHS. Now 
that cost is expected to be $2.28 billion, based on the numbers today. 
In 2011 there were 6,000 apprehended children trying to come into 
America illegally. This year they say it could reach 90,000 or higher. 
90,000 from 6,000? It is a direct result of the unwillingness of 
President Obama to look the American people in the eye, tell the people 
throughout the entire world: We believe in immigration. We have a 
lawful system of immigration. Please apply. Wait your turn. If you 
qualify, you will be able to come to America, and we are going to do it 
fairly and objectively and treat everybody with respect, but do not 
come unlawfully. Do not give money to some smuggler. Do not attempt to 
sneak over our border across the desert and place your lives at risk 
because it is against our law, and we will apprehend you and we will 
promptly deport you and you will lose all the money you have invested 
in this effort. Just do not do it.
  They refuse to say that with clarity. Secretary Johnson was before 
the Judiciary Committee and I asked him about it. He almost refused to 
say: Don't come to America because it is against our law. He said: 
Don't come because it is dangerous. That is not the kind of message we 
need to hear from our leaders. The first thing a law enforcement 
officer should do--and the President is the chief law enforcement 
officer--but the Secretary of Homeland Security has the Border Patrol, 
he has Immigration and Customs enforcement officers, he has the 
Citizenship and Immigration Service. That is who is supposed to be 
enforcing our immigration law. He will not say that with clarity and he 
will not communicate it with clarity.
  Vice President Biden supposedly made a statement in Central America 
about it. It was weak. It just was not strong. What is it? Do they want 
the illegality to continue? Do they believe in open borders? This 
Congress, this Senate is about to recess having done not one thing 
about it, and the humanitarian crisis continues on the border.
  These children, some of them are young. Some of them are 16, 17, 18, 
19, 20, 21, and they claim to be 17. Who knows. They are not carrying 
birth certificates with them. It is creating an incredible crisis. One 
reporter said the Border Patrol, instead of enforcing the law, are 
changing diapers. This is a very dangerous situation. Our entire legal 
system is crumbling about us, and the chief law enforcement officer in 
America--the President--alone is the one who can bring order to it.
  The Secretary of Homeland Security works for the President. If he 
does not get on it, he needs to be out of there. The President needs to 
say: Get this thing under control. What are we paying you for?
  What about the officers and agents? What do they think? Our officers 
and agents are stunned. There is report after report of senior officers 
saying they have never seen anything like this. It is a direct result 
of the inconsistent message we are sending. They are saying a message 
is only part of the solution. It has to be backed up with words.
  So how is it happening today? A child and an adult cross the border. 
What are they doing today? They are going straight up--this is, I know, 
hard to believe--they go straight to the Border Patrol officer and turn 
themselves in. What does the Immigration officer do? He takes them into 
custody. If they have a child, the adult has to stay with the child, 
and then they put them in a shelter. Then they give them a hearing 
date. The hearing date is down the road. They have a backlog. So what 
do they do then? They release them. They allow them to go someplace 
where somebody will take them in, which is what they desire to begin 
with. Then they are told to appear at court at some given date in the 
future.
  Nobody is going to investigate if they do not show up, or to see 
where they are, and there is nobody to investigate it. We are talking 
about a huge increase--by tens of thousands--of people coming into the 
country, in addition to the 11 million who are already here. So this is 
a guaranteed failure. That is what everybody has been telling us who 
knows anything about it.
  The ICE officers, the Immigration and Customs enforcement officers--
their association went so far two years ago to file a lawsuit in 
Federal court. What did they say? They said this administration is 
violating the laws of America and the Constitution by directing them 
not to enforce the laws they had sworn to uphold. The Federal judge was 
very sympathetic with them. He eventually ruled there was not standing 
for this lawsuit to proceed, but he was very sympathetic with the 
merits of their claim because that is exactly what has happened.
  We have a situation where the President of the United States, based 
on the DREAM Act--the idea that we would provide legal status to 
everybody who was brought here under, I think, 18, that we would 
provide basically a legal status and a pathway to citizenship--that 
bill came up before the Senate and has been voted down three times by 
the Senate.
  So what did the President do? He directed that the law not be 
enforced as to them, even though the law remains on the books. That is 
part of the message that was heard in Central America, and that is 
encouraging people to come unlawfully to America.

[[Page 11136]]

  So we are not against immigration. We do need a certain number of 
farmworkers. We do need and will accept validated people who come with 
skills who are ready to go to work. We should do that, and we have a 
generous policy, but we should not be doubling it, as the Gang of 8 
bill did. We just do not have the jobs for them. If we had low 
unemployment, rising wages, and a shortage of workers, I think we could 
justify a generous immigration policy perhaps but not now. Canada is 
not doing this. England is not doing this. They are reducing, right 
now, the number of people who are allowed into their countries. They 
feel an obligation to see that their people get the jobs first.
  The whole matter is disturbing to me, that we are at a point where 
the law is not being enforced properly in this country.

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