Speech #1130121422

Mr. President. I have come to the floor to talk about one of the most important issues facing our Nation as we have been hearing for the past 15 minutes. that is. our longstanding. desperate need to finally fix our Nations broken immigration system. Too often in the debate about immigration it is difficult for some people to understand that the millions of undocumented families in our country are already an important part of our communities. Immigrants work hard and they pay their taxes. they send their children to American schools. and they make up a critical part of the fabric of our society. They are Americans in all but name. So when we talk about immigration reform. we are not talking about some vague philosophical issue. This is an issue that impacts families. it impacts our businesses. it impacts our national security. and it impacts what we stand for as Americans. It is not a new issue either. It is something we have been debating and arguing about for more than a decade. but it is something we have never been able to tackle. and that is not for the lack of trying. As everyone here remembers. more than 500 days ago now the Senate did something remarkable. Members from different backgrounds and different States and different parties came together to reach an agreement. and in the Senate we passed a real bipartisan coalition of 68 Republicans and Democrats. a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would finally start to fix our broken immigration system. As we heard from the Senator from New York. it would improve our security. provide businesses with the certainty they need. and provide a real path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants who are forced to live in the shadows. Not only was this bill a step toward fixing our broken immigration system. it was good for our economy. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Senate bill would reduce the deficit by nearly $1 trillion over the next two decades. So we sent the bill to the House of Representatives knowing the path forward there might not be easy. but we heard from Members of the House on both sides of the aisle that they also knew immigration reform had to happen this Congress. Back then. in June of 2013. we knew we had time on our side. Speaker BOEHNER had a full year and a half to do one simple thing. bring the bipartisan Senate bill up for a vote.