American Dream and Promise Act of 2019
Floor Speech
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I rise today in opposition to H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act of 2019.
Last week, I went to El Paso to see what was going on on our southern border. I can tell my colleagues today that our border is an utter disaster.
Last month, Customs and Border Protection apprehended an average of 4,500 people every day. During the first 7 months of the fiscal year, CBP has apprehended more individuals than in any full fiscal year since 2009.
While I was in El Paso, a single group of more than 1,000 aliens illegally walked across the border from Juarez. A group of migrants the size of a high school strolled right into downtown El Paso and surrendered to Border Patrol. I personally witnessed hundreds of others in smaller groups do the same thing.
The number of family unit members and unaccompanied alien minors apprehended in April set records, and May numbers eclipsed those records. The number of single-adult apprehensions has now reached a 5- year high.
So far this year, Border Patrol has encountered over 180 large groups, those with over 100 people. With so many people entering illegally, it is no wonder Border Patrol processing centers are far beyond capacity and ICE detention facilities are full.
Even the NGOs providing shelter and other aid to migrants are completely overwhelmed by the unending surge of people who have learned we are rewarding those who break our laws and endangering vulnerable men, women, and children in the process.
Perhaps the worst part of this humanitarian crisis is the toll it takes on children. CBP has identified over 3,000 potentially fraudulent family units arriving at the border. As unbelievable as it may sound, aliens admitted that they have ``borrowed,'' ``rented,'' or ``bought,'' yes, ``bought'' a child because they know showing up with a child at the border all but guarantees release into America's interior.
It is a crisis. One of the overworked, overwhelmed agents that I met last week told me, after I thanked him for doing his work and being there, he looked at me and he said: ``I'm doing my job; now y'all go do yours.''
I took that to heart. I believe that the surge of migrants can be all but ended by enacting a legislation to fix the Flores settlement, which the Obama administration agreed with me on; amend the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and raise the credible fear standard of asylum.
But what are my Democratic colleagues going to do to address this situation? Nothing.
Democrats have the chance to help the overworked DHS heroes, overwhelmed NGOs, and the American people who believe in our country's sovereignty.
Sadly, the Democrats are making us consider a bill that will worsen, give a green light to the border crisis, incentivizing more people to cross our borders illegally in hopes of getting a piece of the amnesty pie.
No doubt, at this very minute, the smuggling cartels are getting the word out--just as we heard from migrants walking across our border, they were told it's open--that there's availability, to come across. They are telling them Congress is going to legalize millions. Just get there. They will do it for you.
I have repeatedly implored my committee chairman to give us a bill legalizing some of the illegal immigrant population and include enforcement measures to secure our border and enforce our laws inside our country.
Sadly, Democrats refuse. They had a chance to show they are serious about an immigration solution for DACA recipients and perhaps even for the Dreamers they have talked about protecting for years. Instead, today, we are considering a political messaging bill. The message is that America won't enforce its laws or protect its people.
H.R. 6 provides a special path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants as well as hundreds of thousands of TPS and DED, or deferred enforced departure, recipients. It places the interests of those who have violated our laws before those people who have waited patiently for green cards to become available. Because the bill provides that same path to some legal nonimmigrants and even people living outside America, the number of potential beneficiaries is completely unknown.
H.R. 6 allows criminal aliens and those who have committed immigration fraud to receive green cards. It rewards with green cards and eventual citizenship the parents who knowingly brought children to the U.S. illegally. It incentives fraud through lax documentation requirements, allowing affidavits to show compliance with some of those requirements and allowing people to withdraw an application at any time without prejudice.
H.R. 6 pretends to prevent alien gang members from getting green cards, but the prohibition is so deliberately narrow, it is virtually unworkable.
H.R. 6 actually provides U.S. taxpayer funds to NGOs, in the form of grant programs, to help illegal aliens apply for green cards.
It has been said by my colleagues across the aisle to not worry, that the Department of Homeland Security Secretary will have the nondelegable ability to review these. I am not sure what my colleagues across the aisle believe the Secretary does all day except review these applications. It is the most amazing thought and statement I have ever heard.
If enacted, H.R. 6 would overwhelm U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to the point where adjudicators will be pulled off of processing legal immigration benefits to process the millions of applications resulting from this bill. There will be several million applications for amnesty because H.R. 6 has no consequence for filing a false or frivolous application.
Hear me clearly: A person could file a false or frivolous application, and there is no consequence to it.
CBO has estimated that over the 2020 to 2029 period, the two bills combined to make H.R. 6 would cost $26.3 billion and $8.3 billion respectively, and that is, frankly, I believe, an underestimate.
As evidenced by the two floor votes last year, Republicans want to provide legal status for DACA recipients. We want to do it the right way, to minimize fraud, to ensure criminals cannot get legal status, and to bolster border security. Without these commonsense measures and compassionate measures, we will find ourselves repeating this conversation a few years from now.
Madam Speaker, H.R. 6 does none of these things, so I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume.
Madam Speaker, just quickly, if their criminality keeps them simply ineligible, then why does the bill have an entire section devoted to the Secretary's provisional authority of those who conduct a public safety determination?
By the way, again, going to the Secretary of Homeland Security, I am not sure what they believe that person does, but it is definitely not to review these every day.
Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Rogers), the ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Buck), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Reschenthaler), another member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs), another committee member.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I would remind the gentlewoman from Texas that, as Americans, we also have rule of law. We stand for that and have wanted to fix the DACA situation, not just give a green light to continue a problem on the border that we are continually seeing.
There are problems with this bill. It is not a perfect bill and doesn't fit, in many ways. We are pointing that out. The pride that we take in that is not that we are seeing something broken. It is the pride that we need to fix something in this. We want to see these recipients be here and be able to participate in a legal fashion.
The legal immigration system is being overwhelmed by the illegal population coming across, which we are not fixing, and don't say that we are because we are not. Nothing has come to this floor, and it happens every day.
Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cline), another member of the Judiciary Committee.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman, the speaker, Mr. Cicilline. I agree with him that we need to fix this, but this is not the way to fix this. There is a bipartisan way to fix this, and this simply just gives a green light.
It is a powerful symbol. This bill is a very powerful symbol to those who want to come here and know that there will be no consequence for coming and will continue to overload our border. That is the symbolism that comes from this bill today.
Mr. Speaker, I always appreciate the majority leader coming down. It is amazing to me, though, that as we come down and talk about this bill, if there really was a desire to have a bipartisan bill, then maybe we would have brought the bill that actually did get close, as the gentleman did bring up last Congress, and actually ask some of those cosponsors on the Republican side who were sponsoring it last time to be a part, who have said they have been froze out.
Let's face reality. So spare me the discussion on getting a bipartisan bill and the disdain for it and saying that this bill actually helps.
This is a bill written for a promise, as was just said. Let's, at least, be honest about why it was written and the fact that it will not help the situation on the border and, frankly, is not going to help us get a bill passed, because this will not pass because, as the President has said, he wants to see some security attached to this, so that we have a safe and secure legal immigration system.
Mr. Speaker, I would agree with him. Spare me those discussions because that didn't happen here, as is painfully obvious.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I inquire how much time is remaining for both sides.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, derogatory statements toward the President; also, that was impugning the integrity of the President. I think that is much more beyond what was actually warned about, and I would ask the Parliamentarian for a ruling on that.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, further parliamentary inquiry.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary inquiry would say that that statement, as quoted, ``a racist rant'' is an attack on the President, implying he is a racist. Is that not true? Which is contrary--
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, further parliamentary inquiry.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, is it not true that this House is run on parliamentary language that is not consistent with what was just used?
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia continues that parliamentary inquiry, then, because it is an issue that needs to be addressed. It should not have been said on this floor.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, here we go again. Now, it may not matter to anyone else here, but the Members who wear pins understand that parliamentary language is important and what rules this floor. ``Xenophobic'' is another word being used on this floor about the President's character. Please advise how that is parliamentary language.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time each side has remaining.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Lofgren) and the ability to close.
Mr. Speaker, there is a saying sometimes, and it is ``everything has been said, just not everybody has said it.'' I think we sort of went through that today.
But some of the things that have been said today need to be brought out and, I think, continue to be brought out, and it may be that we don't talk about them.
What we have found here is that, today, my colleagues clearly do not care--as we have seen--about rule of law. They don't even seem to care about the rules of the House today, and they had to actually waive the paygo rules in order to bring this bill to the floor.
The estimate on this was $35 billion. They have waived that. They said: We don't care. We have got a bill that is going nowhere, a bill that is not going to be signed. So I guess, just to make our point, we are just going to waive that.
But let's talk a little bit about some of the other stuff that is not in this bill, that is not with DACA recipients, or DACA, or the Dreamers--however, it is described today--that many of us would like to have seen.
I think it was very telling when the majority leader came down here and brought up a bill which I acknowledged was very close to coming bipartisanly and passing last year, but didn't. If you wanted a bipartisan bill, that is where you would have started, and you would have had an opportunity to actually then put something with it with security and actually get something passed.
But that was not what my friends across the aisle wanted. They wanted, it seems to me, a political bill, a statement bill, something that will not get passed but simply continue to use this population, seemingly, in a way that furthers political goals and not a real solution.
An interesting part of this bill which has not been talked about as much--it has been mentioned, but it also needs to be recognized. We have a serious issue with this temporary protected status, TPS. There is no T anymore. T is not available in this. Temporary does exist.
When we talk about this--and it is supposed to be for those who are in dire need. I agree with the concept of TPS, that it should be there for those areas and times when we need to allow people to come in, and that should be a part, and it should not be natural disasters and other things. But I want you to think for just a second--and this was actually brought out in Rules last night by my colleague from California, whom I respect highly about this.
But understand, the TPS was granted to El Salvador in March 2001; Haiti, 2010; Honduras, 1999--these were earthquakes, hurricanes--Nepal, 2015, an earthquake; Hurricane Mitch in 1999, with Nicaragua. Others were armed conflicts, which we can understand.
But temporary after a hurricane, we are looking at 15, almost 20 years and we are still dealing with this, because all we did in this body and all the administration did was simply kick the can down the road.
I feel for those who came here on a temporary status but did not go home, and then they got left. Yes, this has become their home because we did not obey the law.
Now, there has been a lot said also about--and there is no need to continue on it because there is the ability for criminal elements to get green cards--the discussion about having the Secretary of Homeland Security being able to take these up; and an individual, a nondelegable authority, to actually take these individual items up is a farce. They don't have that time or ability.
They will never get that far because, actually, amazingly, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary is a busy person, both female or male. Whoever serves in it, under Republican or Democrat, does not have time to do this. So the very narrow exemption will never get used. So, yes, it does open that possibility up.
But I think the interesting thing here is, it was shown by some of the discussion in this debate, it was beyond the political rhetoric of a bill that is going nowhere and a bill that should and could find solutions.
It goes back to the problem that we see right now that this is, frankly, another green light to those who want to come here seeking freedom from the place that they currently are, which I sympathize with. I understand. But either we have a way to get into our country legally or we don't. Either we have a way that you should come properly to our country or we don't.
It is not an in-between item here. It is not saying that we want you to come but, yet, at the same point, don't worry about our rules and laws if you can come.
As I said earlier in my statement today, they are borrowing, renting, and begging for children to walk across the border because they know that, once they do, they are free. Within 48 to 72 hours, they can get to an NGO and be on a plane somewhere, even when we have found over 3,000 cases of fraudulent, unaccompanied minors and family units. But we don't address that here.
In other words, we don't talk about what is happening in combination with this, which many of us could have actually gotten on board with. We simply put another green light, Mr. Speaker, on the fact that we are not helping.
If either side, both Republicans or Democrats, could look at a Border Patrol agent or an ICE agent or one who works in our immigration and port authority and actually look at them and tell them while they are doing their job upholding the law, which is all they can do--it is not their job to make laws. That is this body's job: to make laws or to help them or to send them aid.
Then how can we look them in the eye when they are staying 15 and 20 hours away from their families each day, when their own families are falling apart, because we are overcrowding our Border Patrol offices because they can't hide them?
How do we explain to those who come here properly on asylum from Cuba and other places where they have been told, as one told me, looked at me and said: ``If I was to go back to Cuba, they would disappear me,'' how can we sit there and look at them while they are held for 60 or 90 days or longer, while unaccompanied family members and unaccompanied minors and family units are being passed over within 24 to 48 hours as they are sitting there legitimately trying to get into this country through an honest asylum claim?
But we sit them there to the side. We don't want to discuss them. We want to make a political statement today.
So this will be a partisan vote. There will be some bipartisan vote. There may be some who will vote for it, and that is okay. But at the end of the day, we are not getting what we asked for. We are not getting what we wanted. If we did, we probably would have taken the bill from last Congress. They did have bipartisan votes, what the majority leader spoke of. But that is not what we did.
Until we get serious about this issue, until we get serious about wanting to fix this and not simply use debate time to bash the administration or the President and to find solutions here, then we will continue down this path.
And you can celebrate if you pass this--which you will because the majority has the numbers--but how hollow a celebration is something when you look and say: This will not do anything because this will not become law.
The powerful symbol spoken of by one of my colleagues earlier is this. The powerful symbol is not that you can pass a bill on the floor that has nothing of support from either side or actually has the hope of becoming law, or giving false hope to anyone who is watching today, what actually has the ability to do is that why would we do this if we are not dealing with the issues that we have as we go forward? Why would we take the flaws in this bill, bringing it to the floor in a closed rule?
Why? Because I believe the majority didn't want to have to deal with the honest problems in this bill with amendments, so they closed the rule. They didn't want it to happen.
Mr. Speaker, but as this is our time, this our place, I would urge a ``no'' vote on this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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