Speech #CREC-2017-06-29-pt1-PgH5333_t50

They live in families with children, and their children are citizens of the United States just like you and me and our children. They have mortgages and car notes. The problems these moms and dads are trying to solve is if they get deported, how do I make sure my kids are safe in the country in which they were born, the United States? How do I keep a roof over their head and get them ready for school? How do I keep my business open or my career continuing in the U.S. where I have lived, in some cases, for decades? That is the problem they have, and guess what, they come back after they are deported. That person, to me, is not a felon, never committed a crime. That person is not a hardened criminal, never killed anyone. That is a parent fighting for their family. So in painting a picture of all immigrants as resembling a career criminal, like the guy who killed Kate Steinle, Republicans are doing the old bait and switch. The people we are hitting with this bill come back to the lives they have built over decades by the only means we have made available, and now we are going to add a felony and 15 years to that. Let's give moms and dads different alternatives. The people who would go to jail if this bill were enacted would rather have come with a visa. They would get in line for hours to get legal if there were a line to get in, but there isn't, and most Americans believe we should create such a line for them. They would come back legally if they could, but they can't. We should be looking at how to solve that problem. We should be looking at ways to eliminate illegal immigration, and stop hoping that our strategy of the last 30 years of deportation, more restriction, and more criminalization would somehow miraculously start working. It hasn't. It won't. It is time for us to enact comprehensive immigration reform in the Congress and to fulfill our responsibility to the Nation. Look, the question today isn't whether or not this bill is going to pass. It is going to pass.