Speech #CREC-2018-01-17-pt1-PgS256-3_t11

To my Republican colleagues who say this bill isn't tough enough, I encourage you to take a closer look. Look at the hard choices I had to make as the most senior Hispanic American in the U.S. Congress, as the son of immigrants whose parents' thirst for freedom brought them to these shores, as the senior Senator for New Jersey, one of the most racially and ethnically diverse States in the Nation. Never could I have imagined, for instance, accepting fundamental changes to the Diversity Visa Program because diversity, in my view, is one of America's great strengths, and New Jersey is living proof. In my State, it is hard to find any community that hasn't been touched in a positive way by the Diversity Visa Program. I remind my colleagues, every night in the darkest corners of the world, there are people who pray with all of their might for the opportunity to win a diversity visa--which, by the way, you have to pass all of the background checks, criminal and otherwise, in order to still come to this country. It isn't a grab bag. You still have to go through a series of background checks. They aren't even looking to win $1 million, but they want to win a one-in-a-million chance to come to America. I have never supported building a wall at our southern border--any type--even when the President told us that Mexico was going to pay for it, but the President must know this proposal includes billions of dollars for his border security priorities, from barrier construction and development to southwest border technology acquisition. Then, of course, there are the restrictions on family reunification. I don't believe in this chain migration. When you want to dehumanize people, you talk about chain migration, family reunification, but whatever you call it, the restrictions of family reunification are what our Republican counterparts insisted upon--new limits on what some divisively call chain migration. For example, legal permanent residents in the United States will no longer be able to sponsor their adult children to join them in America. That is a big deal. For me, this was a tough decision as it imposes a limitation on our legal system of family immigration, one I only accepted after we secured other measures to streamline reunification for spouses and young children. That is not the only hard choice we had to make when it came to family. Yes, this legislation gives Dreamers the opportunity to earn a 12-year path to citizenship, but the price we pay for that earned pathway to citizenship is that we provide no such path for the parents who brought the Dreamers here illegally. As a result, Dreamers will not be able to petition for their parents, but their parents will be eligible for temporary legal status and work permits. That is an incredibly difficult choice for me, but we did it. Ultimately, I accepted it because it keeps families together, which I have always thought both parties were always about--family values, the family unit, the family as the center of American life. So this proposal protects parents from deportation. It leaves open the possibility to fight another day to provide a pathway for parents to earn citizenship. The President spoke of taking heat for a compromise on Dreamers. Let me tell you this, as the most senior Hispanic American in Congress, I will get a whole lot--and have already--of heat on these concessions, but I will gladly take that heat in order to protect Dreamers who deserve to stay in the only home--the only home--and the only country they have ever known. Look, we all know there will be voices on the far left and voices on the far right that say this deal makes too many compromises. To my friends in the immigration advocacy community as well as my Democratic colleagues, I remind you that legislating is the art of the possible-- something I know we don't necessarily always get into our psyche, and hopefully it will not be for much longer, but we are in the minority in both Chambers of Congress. The opposing party occupies the White House. We may not enjoy that reality--I certainly don't--but it is the reality nonetheless.