[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11489-11490]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            RECOGNIZING GRANDPARENTS AS CLOSE FAMILY MEMBERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, I think the President has a lot to learn 
about families. In my opinion, families should be protected and 
families should remain intact wherever possible, but it is clear the 
President has other notions.
  In the President's world, families can and should be cut off from 
healthcare coverage. So he is working with Republicans to take coverage 
away from 20 to 30 million Americans so they can say they made good on 
a campaign promise, regardless of the consequences in real people's 
lives.
  In the President's world, children, especially his children, don't 
have to be honest when they apply for security clearances or disclose 
all their meetings they had with the Russians.
  In the President's world, children and grandchildren can be 
convenient political props, like when a 6-year-old granddaughter is 
sent into the Oval Office to interrupt an interview with The New York 
Times, especially when the interview isn't going well for him.
  But grandchildren and grandparents in the President's world do not 
have a ``bona fide'' family connection when it comes to being refugees. 
In the latest incarnation of his Muslim and refugee ban, the President 
excluded grandparents from the category of those close family members--
only in the Republicans' mind.
  Well, let me tell you something. If the President can be interrupted 
by his grandchild to shake up an interview that isn't going so well, I 
can ask my grandson to help me make a point here in Congress.
  Here is Luis Andres. Luis Andres is my grandson. You see, in the 
Gutierrez family, grandparents and grandchildren are pretty close 
family members and have a bona fide family connection. In fact, Luis 
Andres lives downstairs from me with his mom and

[[Page 11490]]

dad in the ground floor unit of a two-flat in Portage Park in Chicago, 
and growing up with Grandma and Grandpa upstairs has distinct 
advantages. There is always someone to feed you, watch you, help you 
study, or just joke around.
  Throughout much of the world and throughout American history until 
fairly recently, the idea that families do not include grandparents is 
laughable. Multiple generations live together or very nearby, and 
grandparents, even great-grandparents, are an integral part of the 
family unit and share child rearing responsibilities.
  So when you are in Syria or Yemen, Central Africa or Central America, 
places where surviving day to day without being killed by gunmen, 
government, or gangs is not easy, extended, multigenerational families 
not only live together and support each other, occasionally they have 
to flee to safety together.
  But not if Donald Trump has his way they don't, or at least not when 
it comes to coming here to America.
  Thankfully, the American court system disagrees with our President on 
this. Hawaii sued the President again and won an injunction again, and 
the Supreme Court, which would ultimately determine the fate of 
America's commitment to refugees and religious tolerance will determine 
the case later this year.
  But in the meantime, over the objections of the President, 
grandparents are officially part of the family and have a bona fide 
relationship that allows them, under the law, to bypass the President's 
attempt to keep them out.
  Thank you, courts, for recognizing and defending families and giving 
our President a lesson in the obvious.
  Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, I learned about a tragedy in San Antonio 
where a truck packed with immigrants was discovered and at least 10 
people were killed. The truck had no ventilation or air-conditioning. 
There was no water for those inside who had paid a lot of money to risk 
their lives to live in America--10 dead and another 20 near death, some 
of them children, under the hot Texas sun in an apparent smuggling 
operation.
  You see, if you cut off legal immigration channels and make people 
wait decades for a visa, if they are eligible to apply at all, it 
strengthens the hands of smugglers. If you turn asylum seekers around, 
in violation of our own laws and international law, those seeking 
freedom are driven into the arms of smugglers.
  If, by going through our legal system in requesting asylum, your 
entire family becomes vulnerable to deportation, being sent back to a 
place you fled because death was a certainty, then people will pay 
smugglers to go around our system because there are no ways to go 
through it.
  A border wall like the one Republicans will slip into the military 
spending bill this week in the House will not help matters, but only 
make them worse. Forcing people to enter the black market because there 
is no way to go through our visa system will undoubtedly increase the 
number of times we hear about tragedies like the one in Texas and the 
number of parents, grandparents, and children who lose everything 
because we have failed to create and maintain a functioning immigration 
system.
  When Luis Andres turns 18 and is able to vote, just like a million 
young Latinos like him every year are eligible, I know he will remember 
which party stood for and stood by families and which ones did not. 
Grandparents, they are part of the American family even if the 
Republicans don't seem to think so.

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