Speech #1130114320

I say to my colleaguesRepublicans. Democratsthis is more than a dispute over who should enter and what kind of amnesty we should have. if any. it is a challenge to the integrity of our constitutional order and a challenge to this Senate. If the President persists in his plan. anyone ICE officers come into contact with will simply assert protections and eligibility under this new Executive action. Now. get this. So we are going to give amnesty to 5 million or 6 million people. Well. if there are 11 million. 12 million people here today. what happens to the other 5 million to 6 million? If any ICE officer comes into contact with them. those individuals will assert they are entitled to protections and eligibility under the new Executive action. New illegal immigrants will flood across. as they did after the Presidents Executive amnesty for people under the age of 30 because they will believe correctly. it appears to me that if they can get into the country unlawfully. they will never be deported. They will wait until the President this President or the next President or some other President gives them work privileges in the United States to take jobs that Americans need to be doing at a time of extraordinarily high unemployment. at a time when we have the lowest workplace participation rate since the 1970s. Illegal immigrants wont even have to wait for Congress to pass amnesty if this goes through. So I ask: What immigration law will be left? The President has simply decidedon his own. without Congress or legal authoritythat the immigration laws protecting the jobs and wages of U.S. workers wont exist anymore. The President has taken it upon himself to decide who can enter the United States and who can work in the United Statesby the millionsregardless of what laws have been passed. The President often talks of justice. but one of the gravest injustices that has been done is to deny the American people the protections of their laws.