Immigration Reform
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am grateful for the strong and eloquent words that were said by my colleague Senator Boxer. I am grateful to so many of my colleagues on this side of the aisle for supporting the President as he considers Executive action that would essentially enforce the law on immigration more rationally and effectively, which is what prosecutorial discretion means.
As a former U.S. attorney as well as the State attorney general in my own State for 20 years, I know about prosecutorial discretion. I know that in exercising his discretion, the President is aware that there is simply no way every undocumented person in the United States of America can be deported tomorrow, let alone this year--probably ever.
There are 11.5 million undocumented people who live in the shadows, and the question is, How do we use the resources of the Federal Government most rationally and effectively to serve the public interest and uphold the rule of law?
The question is, essentially, How should law enforcement use its resources? That question arises every day in the United States when there is a Federal or State prosecution. It arises every day on our borders when the agents of our Federal administrative law enforcement apparatus make decisions about law enforcement. As I have learned from my experience in law enforcement, it best serves citizens when it uses those resources efficiently, effectively, and humanely in a concerted effort to address a direct threat to public safety. Law enforcement has a job to do, and it can't do everything all the time everywhere.
Decisions are necessary in the real world in practical circumstances to preserve public order and protect public safety, and that is what the President is doing by issuing an Executive order which, in effect, directs Federal resources to deport undocumented immigrants who represent a threat to this country by virtue of their criminal activity or criminal background or other circumstances that justify that rational and selective approach to law enforcement.
This approach is hardly novel, and it is highly unoriginal. In fact, President Obama's authority to direct how Federal immigration resources will be marshaled in the service of protecting public safety is very much in the tradition and history of this office. Every President since Dwight Eisenhower, whether Democratic or Republican, has done exactly what President Obama is doing in this Executive order.
In 1990 President George H.W. Bush took Executive action to defer removal and grant work permits to roughly 1.5 million undocumented individuals--nearly half the undocumented population at the time. Think about that for a moment. Out of 3 million people, President Bush decided that 1.5 million of them should, in effect, not be prosecuted. He set law enforcement priorities. That was his job, and that is President Obama's job.
Many of us--and I am very much in this camp--would prefer to address this situation through legislation. I worked hard, along with the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee and Members on both sides of the aisle of the Judiciary Committee and of this body, to approve legislation. It was resolved and written up after several days of detailed and painstaking markup. I was told that is the way legislation used to be routinely done in this body--Members trading ideas, exchanging views and perspectives, drilling down on facts, and arriving at a bipartisan solution that eventually was approved by 68 Members of this body from both sides of the aisle. That is a matter of history.
My hope was and still is that we have legislation along the lines of what was approved by the Senate. That legislation was far from perfect. In my view, it was way short of the ideal immigration reform I would favor, but the good cannot be the enemy of the perfect and the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. What we need now is a practical approach to this problem through legislation. The House refused to take up the Senate bill. It didn't even consider it and never voted on it.
The President has a responsibility, and his job is to take actions that are within his legal authority to address a system that is broken and takes a toll on human lives that is intolerable. It threatens to divide families, to put people out of work--not just undocumented immigrants out of work but citizens of this country because they work for businesses that are owned and operated by those immigrants who might be deported. I have seen that firsthand in Connecticut, and I know it is true around the country.
This measure is not only good for human lives, it is good for our economy. It is essential to make sure our immigration system--a broken, failed system--is at least prepared in the short term while we work toward legislation that is absolutely necessary to comprehensively revise and reform that system.
Every day that the Federal Government fails to act on immigration reform, people in this country are forced to live in fear and the anxiety and apprehension that children suffer when they are afraid they will lose their parents and siblings. Connecticut citizens live in fear of losing their neighbors and their employers, their congregates in church, and members of their immediate and extended families. Millions of immigrants who have lived in this country for years--5 or 10 years or longer--and are working hard, paying taxes, abiding by the law, and contributing and giving back to their communities are forced to live in fear that they will have to leave everything they have worked so hard to build and everything that means so much to them--their families, their homes, and the country they have come to love. They appreciate the freedoms of this country and the opportunities it offers in ways we routinely take for granted. For them, this country is a beacon of hope and opportunity which they appreciate so deeply and fervently that they are willing to lay down their lives for it and, in fact, sometimes do as members of our armed services.
The lack of action on immigration reform hurts everyone. When businesses employ workers under the table, our economy and our Nation are deprived of their taxes. They are often ducking regulations and taxes, which in turn drives down wages for every working American.
Immigrants should be able to come out of the shadows not just for their sake but for the Nation's sake. They are a resource that can be used so much more fully to the benefit of our Nation. When they come out of the shadows, they should be forced to undergo background checks, obtain work permits and proof that they are abiding by the law. That is necessary to show they are not a threat to public safety.
When immigrants live in fear, law enforcement can't know who lives in the communities they police. Immigrants who live in fear are simply not going to be as willing to report individuals living near them and represent a real threat to public safety because they feel uncomfortable reporting crimes and cooperating with authority when they feel they may then be the object of enforcement. Getting more people who are already living in this country into the system will allow law enforcement to go after the truly bad actors--serious criminals, serious national security threats, and people who seriously should not be in this country.
As the American people wait for legislative action and wait for the House to act on the Senate bill and perhaps wait on the Senate to act again, President Obama has both the authority and the moral responsibility to institute these reforms. These reforms are crucial. He has the authority under law to exercise his discretion. He has the moral responsibility to fix this broken system as long and as well as he can using that responsibility.
I am encouraged to hear that the President intends to focus his authority on serious criminals, not law-abiding individuals. At a minimum, my hope is that he will ease the minds of children and put to rest the anxiety children feel when they fear they may lose their parents. Whether they are DREAMers or U.S. citizens, they should be spared that apprehension and anxiety that interferes with everything they do in school or work.
My hope is that he will exercise that authority on behalf of the parents of those children--U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and DREAMers.
My hope is that he will ease some of the arbitrary restrictions that prevent the DOCA program from achieving its full purpose--restrictions like the cutoff age.
As he acts to exercise his prosecutorial discretion with respect to deportation, he should also consider his administration's policies with respect to detention.
As I wrote to the President earlier this year, along with my colleague and friend Chairman Leahy, I believe the administration's decision to dramatically expand the detention of whole families, many of whom have shown a credible fear of being returned to dangerous situations in their home countries, is counterproductive and harmful. Migrants must be given an adequate opportunity to show they have a valid claim as refugees.
The policy of indiscriminately holding families in enormous, privately run facilities leads to inhumane living conditions. Violence against women and children and simply inefficient use of resources are more the rule than the exception. Warehousing young children in complexes that are little more than jails is deeply incompatible with our national values and it serves none of the goals of an effective immigration system.
Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Faith leaders and community members from around the country will be doing vigils and telling the stories of children and mothers who are spending this holiday season behind bars. Yes, in the greatest country in the history of the world, children and their moms will be spending Thanksgiving behind bars.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. These families are not flight risks and they are not dangerous. We owe it to them to do better. I am proud of standing with my colleagues on calling on the President to keep families together, target resources effectively, and run an immigration system that reflects America's values and builds a stronger future.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source