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Immigration
The last point I want to make is this. Madam President, there was a decision made by the Governor of Texas, Governor Abbott, several weeks ago to start transporting people who were legally in the United States but had just arrived from foreign countries on buses to various places around the country. Thousands of them were brought to Washington; thousands were brought to New York; and hundreds were brought to my city of Chicago that I represent.
These were people who came to our borders and asked if they could be admitted as legal immigrants to the United States, and they passed the threshold test. But let me quickly add, it is a threshold test as to whether they have credible fear for their own personal safety. They still have to face an adjudication, and the majority of them are not likely to win that adjudication. The problem we face is very obvious: It is a long time before that adjudication takes place. What are these families supposed to do when they are here waiting?
I went over to the Salvation Army rescue shelter on the West Side of Chicago to meet with some of these families and individuals who had been bused to Chicago by the Governor of Texas. I met one man, Carlos, and his family--his wife, his 5-year-old daughter, and his 8-month-old daughter as well. Through the translators, they told me their story. They are from Venezuela.
Venezuela is in a disaster situation. It is so dangerous that the United States warns travelers not to go to Venezuela, and the economy is so weak that the cost of living has gone up dramatically. Inflation there is even dramatically larger than the United States.
Carlos reached a point that, even working as hard as he could, he couldn't feed his family. So on May 15, he and his wife decided to pick up their children and try to make it to the border of the United States to try to find work. It took them 5 months, and they went through everything you can imagine; much of it on foot, and what travel they could find, they took advantage of. They were robbed, beaten up. They were pushed into a jungle situation in Panama where Carlos said,
``I didn't think we were going to live through the night.'' It was that dangerous. They did survive, and they finally made it, and now they are here in Chicago.
I asked him what he wanted. He said, ``I just want to go to work. I will take any job.''
What we are finding--and the front page story in the New York Times confirmed it--is that many of these people are needed. Yes, we have unemployment of 5 million in America, but we have 11 million jobs that need to be filled. Many of them are entry-level jobs, and it is hard to get anyone to take them.
Last week, as well, I had the Illinois Farm Bureau come and see me. They started talking about their need for immigrant labor on the farms of America.
Madam President, you probably know this from your own home State, but currently half of the agricultural workers in America who are working on the dairy farms, picking crops, doing things that are pretty hard work, half of them are undocumented. We don't think twice about eating the fruits and vegetables that are the bounty of their work, but that is the reality.
Our immigration system, at this point in time, is badly broken. We need to have legal immigration into the United States--controlled legal immigration into the United States for work purposes. Many of these people who are arriving are desperately needed for jobs that Americans won't fill. They don't want to work picking crops, for example, or on a dairy farm. A friend of mine who is a restaurateur in Chicago told me, if you removed all of the undocumented workers from the restaurants of Chicago, you would just start closing them right and left. Behind that screen door in your favorite restaurant are people working hard every single day who are undocumented.
We have to reach the point where we sit down in a bipartisan basis and do something about it. It was 8 years ago when we put together a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Democrats, Durbin, Schumer--and I want to salute Michael Bennet, who time and again has been able to come up with a good bipartisan approach to ag workers--and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, we were on the Democratic part of the team of 8. On the Republican part, we had Senator McCain, Senator Graham, Senator Rubio, and then Senator Flake.
We worked for months, put together a comprehensive bill, brought it to the floor of the Senate, and passed it with 14 Republicans joining us. There were 68 votes on the floor of the U.S. Senate for a bill that would have addressed the very issues we are facing today. The bill was then sent over, after it passed the Senate, to the House of Representatives, and the Republican leader refused to take up it or even call it.
We had a chance, and we have to create that chance again--
comprehensive immigration reform. We shouldn't do it at the expense of a poor family like Carlos's family who came from Venezuela. I would say what the Governors of Arizona and Texas and Florida are doing now is to jeopardize the safety and the health of these families. That is not fair to them. It is not American. Putting them on buses and promising them, at the end of the journey, that there are going to be jobs waiting for them, for example, is just to mislead them.
In addition, if these Governors were transporting these people in good faith to Chicago or New York or Washington, they would have the decency to tell us who is coming and when. They don't. They put the buses on the road, and they stop at a train station and turn them all loose. Many of these people know no one in those cities. We found recent evidence that some of them are in a position where they are taken away from where they are supposed to report--legally report--in this country and sent hundreds and thousands of miles away by these Governors for political reasons I can't explain. That is not who we are.
I do want to commend the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, many of the charities in our area.
WBEZ is our public radio station in Chicago. This was on their website:
Chicago agencies and local groups tell migrants ``We are so glad you are here.''
They are getting an American welcome. They are being treated decently. They are being treated with respect.
Now, as we debate the politics of why they are here and whether they can stay, we shouldn't do it at the expense of demonstrating clear American values of humanity and caring. That is who we are. We are not going to allow these kids to reach a situation like they have before and be the victims of our political debate. We don't want kids in cages. We don't want kids forcibly removed from their parents. We don't want them to suffer on these bus rides, not knowing where they are going to end up and what is going to happen to them next. We are better than that as Americans, and we are better than that as a nation of immigrants.
I have said it on the floor many times, and I am proud to say it again: I am the son of an immigrant to this country. My mother came here at the age of 2 from Lithuania, brought with her the good luck that I could live my life and be part of the U.S. Senate and the governance of this Nation. We shouldn't look beyond that.
I will say the Presiding Officer holds a special place in the history of the Senate with her immigration status as well.
If you look in any direction, you are going to find immigrants, sons and daughters of immigrants, who really have made America what it is today. Let's get this right on a bipartisan basis. Let's not waste any time.
In the meantime, let us treat these people who are coming to our country and are now legally in the country with dignity and respect.
I yield the floor.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 168, No. 150
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