[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6741-6742]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              LITTLE MOUSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.

[[Page 6742]]


  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, later today, the House will consider 
amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. That is the bill 
that tells the military what to do with all the money we give them.
  In the committee of jurisdiction over the military, the Democrats and 
Republicans whose job it is to examine these issues voted to include 
two studies of how immigrants are or are not included in military 
recruitment.
  Republicans are in the majority, so on the Republican-led Republican 
majority committee these two amendments won their votes and were added 
to the bill. The Gallego and Veasey amendments were included.
  But no matter how many times Republican leaders have appeased the 
hard-liners on the fringes of their right flank--to disastrous 
consequences, I might add--they have chosen to capitulate one more time 
and ruled last night that amendments can be stripped from the bill 
today, these two reasonable amendments.
  It is another glaring example of why the Republicans, from their 
Presidential nominee all the way down to their local government 
candidates, are in very, very deep trouble when it comes to the 
immigration issue.
  One amendment simply asked the Secretary of Defense to study the 
impact of letting immigrants who grew up for years in the United 
States, who have passed a criminal background check, and who have a 
legal work permit to be in the United States; it asked the Secretary to 
study whether including them in military recruitment would help 
diversify our military. A study.
  The second did not call for any action or any study at all. It simply 
said it is a sense of Congress that the Secretary review whether 
recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals be allowed to 
serve in the military. It is kind of telling the top brass: This is 
what we think you might want to do. That is the program where 700,000 
young immigrants came forward, got right with the law, and got a work 
permit after they passed a criminal background check.
  But do you know what the Secretary of Defense ``reviewing'' something 
is, when it comes to the hard-liners? Do you know what ``studying'' 
something related to immigrants who have deferred action is to the 
nativists? Do you know what the contingent of hardcore anti-immigration 
guys in the Republican Conference started shouting? You guessed it? The 
A word. Amnesty.
  I have the language right here:
  ``It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the Secretary 
of Defense should review section 504 of title 10.''
  And they yelled: Amnesty, amnesty, amnesty.
  Members of Congress from Alabama to Iowa to Texas began throwing 
around the amnesty attack. It is a backdoor amnesty, they said. We 
shouldn't ``reward'' illegal aliens who want to risk their lives to 
defend their adopted country when we have red-blooded Americans who 
want to fight and die.
  Breitbart, in one article a couple of days ago, used the word 
``amnesty'' 20 times in less than 1,400 words while ticking off the 
Members of the House of Representatives who might lose elections to 
more anti-immigrant candidates if the two studies are allowed to be 
included in the defense bill.
  This all reminds me of the story of the Little Mouse. I used to read 
it to my grandson, Luisito--the same story you probably read to your 
kids and grandkids.
  It goes like this. If you give a mouse a cookie, he is going to ask 
you for a glass of milk. And if you give him a glass of milk, he is 
going to ask for a straw. Anything you give the little mouse is going 
to lead to a newer and bigger request. That is what it must feel like 
to Speaker of the House Boehner with his nativist wing of his party.
  If you give them 30,000 more border patrol guards, Mr. Speaker, they 
are going to ask you for more deportation. If you give them a record 
number of deportations, they are going to ask the Speaker for a vote to 
more quickly deport vulnerable children. If you give them the vote for 
quicker deportation of children, they will demand a vote to deport all 
DREAMers who have permission to work in the United States legally--
700,000. And if you give them a vote on deporting DREAMers, they will 
ask for a hearing on amending the Constitution to eliminate birthright 
citizenship.
  That is what the mouse will do. He will change the Constitution of 
the United States. And then at some point they will demand that every 
single reference to anything related to immigrants without papers, even 
a research project, be declared an amnesty and stripped from 
legislation.
  If you give a mouse a cookie, he is going to want some milk, Mr. 
Speaker. And if you give the restrictionists a vote or hearing on every 
crazy idea they come up with, you will be relegated as a party to being 
a provincial party with power in the House of Representatives, and 
maybe from time to time being able to run the Senate, but you will 
never win the White House and you will never run the Supreme Court.
  At some point, I respectfully suggest you cut off the mouse's supply 
of cookies.

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