Speech #1130112546

This is no way to address a crisis. We must pass the Senates emergency supplemental funding bill introduced by Senate Appropriations Committee chairwoman BARBARA MIKULSKI. This emergency funding bill includes important resources to help stem the current refugee crisis while continuing to treat these refugee children humanely as required by the law. This situation is an emergency. and we need emergency funding. Passing the emergency supplemental would also allow the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice to deploy additional enforcement resources. including immigration judges. Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys. and asylum officers. as well as expanding the use of the alternatives to detention program. Instead of ensuring that we provide these necessary resources to address this crisis on our border. some of our colleagues are actually proposing that the solution is to actually weaken Federal child trafficking law and to roll back protections for unaccompanied child refugees seeking asylum. The proposal introduced by our colleague from Texas Senator CORNYN would weaken the 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act and shortcircuit justice in order to deport refugee children faster and without the due process afforded under our law. According to a poll released Tuesday by the Public Relations Research Institute. 69 percent of those surveyed believe that U.S. authorities should treat the children as refugees and allow them to stay in the country if it is determined it is not safe for them to return to their home country. Some would use this crisis to eliminate crucial child trafficking protection. punish some of our Nations brightest DREAM Act students. and promote a narrow borderenforcementonly agenda. I believe we are a better nation than that. frankly. Lets step back and remember that just 1 year ago the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill that included provisions to further strengthen the border but that would also protect refugee children and crack down on smugglers and transnational criminal organizations. Notably. the bill was widely supported by both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. Public support and good economics have not been enough to convince House Republican leaders to hold a vote on immigration reform. but they cannot turn a blind eye to the current humanitarian crisis along our southern border. The bipartisan Senate bill that passed more than a year ago includes provisions for family reunification and for the protection of children who have been the victims of human trafficking. The bill also includes measures that would address refugee and asylum laws. The public. including faithbased organizations. educators. local elected officials. small businesses. and many others. overwhelmingly supports this balanced approach to immigration reform. However. here we are more than 1 year later. and House Republicans are still unwilling to even hold an upordown vote on the Senates proposal. Each day the House fails to act on serious solutions to our broken immigration system is another day our Nation and our economy suffer. The Congressional Budget Office reported that last years bipartisan immigration reform bill that passed this body would reduce the budget deficit by $197 billionbillion with a "b"over the next decade and about $700 billion in the second decade. In a companion analysis. CBO also estimated that fixing our broken immigration system would increase our countrys GDPour economic outputby 3.3 percent in 10 years and 5.4 percent after 20 years. The evidence is clear. Immigration reform is good for our economy. good for our workforce. and it is good for the future of the American middle class. I am familiar with the promise America represents to its families. My father fled from Nazi Germany in the 1930s as a young boy. As the son of an immigrant. I know how hard immigrants work and how much they believe in this country and how much they are willing to give back to our Nation. Those of us who represent border communities understand the difficult challenges we face. but there are solutions before us that are pragmatic. bipartisan. and that uphold rather than compromise our American values. In the short term we must approve the Senates emergency supplemental bill. and in the longterm we should partner with Honduras. Guatemala. and El Salvador to stabilize their nations and end the cycle of gang violence we see there. A key part of our longterm solution is for House Republicans to finally put the Senates immigration reform bill on the floor for an upordown vote. We in Congress have a historic opportunity to pass comprehensive immigration reform and to address root causes rather than just symptoms for a change. I believe we will have failed if the only immigration legislation we pass as a body in this Congress is to weaken legal protections for refugee children. With this in mind. I will continue to work with my colleagues to ensure that we address this humanitarian crisis and fix our immigration system once and for all. Lets seize this opportunity. Mr.