Speech #CREC-2017-12-05-pt1-PgS7834-3_t9

They are the ones who created the situation in the first place. I offered legislation with Senator Perdue earlier this year called the RAISE Act. It had many features in it to replace unskilled and low- skilled immigration with high-skilled immigration, to limit chain migration, to reform our refugee program, and to eliminate our diversity lottery. This Congress needs to take up our legislation and pass it. But today I want to focus on chain migration in particular because chain migration is one of the biggest categories of immigration that bring unskilled and low-skilled workers to this country to compete for jobs and drive down the wages of working Americans. Did you know that once you have legal status in this country, once you have a green card and become a citizen, you can bring to this country not only your spouse and your unmarried minor children but your adult children and their spouses and their children and your adult brother and your adult sister and your parents and their siblings--and it goes on and on and on. That is why it is called chain migration. Our legislation would put a halt to chain migration. It is a kind of downpayment on long-lasting legal immigration reform, in addition to things like strengthening E-Verify, improving security at our border, and Kate's Law, named in honor of Kate Steinle, as we heard Chairman Grassley outline earlier today. We are also pairing those provisions with a bill that Democrats and Republicans should support, the BRIDGE Act. The idea of this bill is simple enough--that everyone who has a DACA card gets 3-year provisional status. That gives them certainty without giving them permanent residency or citizenship, which I think sounds pretty reasonable. I know the Democrats agree with me, too, because earlier this year they were calling for passage of the BRIDGE Act.