Bring Jobs Back Home Act -- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

Mr. REID. Mr. President, following my remarks and those of the Republican leader, the Senate will be in a period of morning business until 5:30 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled in the usual form.

At 5:30 p.m. the Senate will proceed to executive session and vote on confirmation of the following nominations: Julie E. Carnes to be U.S. circuit judge for the Eleventh Circuit; Michael Lawson to be Ambassador on the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization; and Eunice Reddick to be Ambassador to the Republic of Niger. We expect a rollcall vote on the Carnes nomination and voice votes on the Lawson and Reddick nominations.

It is such a shame that we have had to go through this stalling on Michael Lawson for the International Civil Aviation Organization. A terrible tragedy has taken place in the world--the shooting down of the Malaysian airplane with 290 totally innocent people on board, killing every one of them. That is his job. We tried to get him confirmed last week. No, they could not do that. We have tried to get him confirmed for months. They have held him up every step of the way. It is untoward that this is happening. They are holding up these nominations out of spite. That is too bad. This is a perfect example.

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are facing a humanitarian crisis on our southern border. Thousands of migrants--the vast majority of them are children--fled to our border and other countries in the region to escape the growing violence in Central America. Most of these boys and girls come from three countries--Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala--where crime and lawlessness have resulted in chaos and anarchy. Honduras is the murder capital of the world, with more murders per capita than any nation on the planet. El Salvador and Guatemala are right behind. These statistics are stunning. In fact, we know that virtually all the homicides in these countries take place in the same cities these kids are leaving. Migration has spiked in the neighboring countries, not just the United States, as people try to escape this untoward violence.

Citizens of these three nations, though, are also imperiled by high rates of human trafficking, drug trafficking, sexual assaults, and widespread corruption. It is an understatement to say these are not safe places in which to live or to survive. Here is an article out of the New York Times, written by a woman by the name of Sonia Nazario, July 11--a new article. Here are just a few of the things she said:

Cristian Reyes, an 11-year-old sixth grader in the neighborhood of Neuva Suyapa, on the outskirts of [the capital], tells me he has to get out of Honduras soon--``no matter what.''

He is an 11-year-old boy.

In March, his father was robbed and murdered by gangs while working as a security guard protecting a pastry truck. His mother used the life insurance payout to hire smugglers to take her to Florida. She promised to send for him quickly, but she has not.

Three people he knows were murdered this year. Four others were gunned down on a nearby corner in the span of two weeks at the beginning of this year. A girl his age resisted being robbed of $5. She was clubbed over the head and dragged off by two men who cut a hole in her throat, stuffed her panties in it, and left her body in a ravine across the street from Cristian's house.

``I'm going this year,'' he said.

Think about what this woman wrote. Think about what this boy said. After hearing this, can anyone blame these boys and girls and their families for doing everything they can to stay alive? One of the easiest ways to stay alive, even though it is really hard, is to leave.

One can imagine how bad things are in these squalid homes and neighborhoods if these children and their families are willing to trek across dangerous terrain with little food, little water, putting themselves at the mercy of bandits, thieves, coyotes, and cartels.

These kids are so desperate that when they reach our border, they immediately surrender themselves to the first person they encounter. They are not sneaking over the border. They are getting there for safety. They are desperate.

The truth is that we have taken steps to secure our border. So regardless of what the American people may hear from the Republicans, this is not an issue about bigger walls or more barbed wire or more drones or more helicopters or more personnel on the ground or National Guardsmen. We have doubled the number of Border Patrol agents. We have drones patrolling the air--I think there are six of them. We are catching undocumented immigrants and drug traffickers in record numbers.

After visiting the Rio Grande Valley, one FOX News reporter--FOX--said: ``There is some evidence that border security, as it stands now, is actually working pretty good, pretty well.'' This is FOX, not a friend of President Obama's. They never give him the benefit of the doubt. But they said it is working pretty well, pretty good.

But if you do not want to take FOX News's word for it, just this past weekend two Democratic Senators and a Republican Senator went down to look around, to see the crisis firsthand. One Senator asked a senior Border Patrol official, ``Is it true that border security is better than ever?'' That is a quote. He responded, ``It is true.''

How does this assessment compare to what we have heard from the Republican Congress? This morning the Republican leader disagreed with our border enforcement official, claiming that the current crisis further illustrates how insecure the border is.

I repeat: These children are not sneaking over the border. They look to the border for safety. So whom would one believe--our Border Patrol officials out their on the frontlines, a FOX News reporter who was there on the frontlines, or the Republican leader? It is pretty clear where the weight of evidence is.

Finally, our border security is working so much better, but our Border Patrol infrastructure is not equipped to care for tens of thousands of children. Barbed wire does not do that. High fences do not do that. Virtual fences do not do that. Drones do not do that. Helicopters do not do that. What we need now are resources to temporarily house and feed those children, administer deportation or asylum proceedings, and give border agents the necessary tools to keep our borders secure. They need to be temporarily taken care of until a decision is made on what should happen to them. It has to be done in a humane fashion.

Our challenge is to treat these children as children should be treated, consistent with American values. The White House emergency supplemental request does just that. If the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services do not get these resources, they are going to run out of money in a few weeks--out of money.

All we hear from the Republican Congress is blame. It is all the fault of Barack Obama. It is his fault. It is his fault these kids are coming. It is his fault the border, I guess, is secure. They are coming and turning themselves in.

Congressional Republicans are suggesting that the thousands of young migrants have come to America as a result of President Obama's 2012 deferred action plan. They are saying that is the reason for all of this trouble. But that is nonsense. This article I held up--a long article--does not mention a word from anybody she interviewed that they are coming because of deferred action. They are coming because of fathers being robbed and murdered by gangs while they are working as security officers and the other vile things that are happening to human beings.

We need the resources to temporarily house and feed these children, to legally administer whatever proceedings are necessary, and give border agents the necessary tools to keep our borders secure. I repeat: If they do not get the resources, they are going to be out of money. Then what are we going to do? I guess the Republicans will blame Obama. It is our job--our job. He cannot do it alone.

We have 45 obstinate Republicans who are not letting us get anything done about anything, certainly not anything dealing with immigration.

Cristian, the boy from this New York Times article, as I said, does not mention DACA at all. He does not mention DREAMers. He talks about the violence he sees as a boy--with his eyes. These kids are fleeing Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala and are heading anywhere they can to escape the violence. They are not just fleeing to the United States; they are going anyplace they can.

They are heading to Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Belize. In those countries I have just mentioned, asylum claims have spiked 712 percent over the past several years. Think of all the children who don't make it.

This crisis--the humanitarian crisis on our border--has nothing to do with DREAMers--children who have lived most of their lives as Americans even though they were brought here illegally. Yet Republicans would have us believe the two are inseparably connected. This is clearly not true.

The junior Senator from Texas is trying so hard to link these two groups of children. In fact, the junior Senator from Texas is saying that before he will agree to the White House supplemental request, which would give our Border Patrol the resources it needs to
care for these refugee children, President Obama must end the deferred action program.

We just read some legislation on the floor a few moments ago. That is what it is--no money for these poor boys and girls until, I guess, you deport them--hundreds of thousands of people who are here because they deserve to be here.

Republicans, in attacks such as this, are resorting to ransoming children to get their way, and that is shameful. The assistant Republican leader, the senior Senator from Texas, who has authored legislation to prevent any meaningful hearing process for migrant children, appears to support the junior Senator's plan. The bill put forward by the senior Senator from Texas implements a process that will send these children back to dangerous places without some minimal concern for their health and well-being. If people were treating animals the way these boys and girls are being treated, they wouldn't send an animal back to this, let alone a little boy or girl.

Neither of the plans put forward by the junior or senior Senators from Texas address the underlying issues. And what is the real issue?

The Presiding Officer has lived in South America. He is one of the few Senators who speaks fluent Spanish. He is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

So what is the real issue?

The Presiding Officer could tell us what the real issue is if he were able to speak now.

Why are these children arriving at our southern border. As Nobel laureate Oscar Arias, who was President of Costa Rica and did a good job in an overwhelmingly bad situation, said yesterday in the Washington Post: ``The root cause is the violence and poverty that make these children's lives at home intolerable.''

We hear that from the schoolboy's message to us. Deporting DREAMers already here or speeding up the process for sending children who need protection back to their crime-ravaged homes does not address the root cause.

In fact, it will only break up families who are already here and ensure that we see these migrant children again in a few months if they survive, because they are not going to stay there. Many of them won't survive, but if they do, they will try to come back again until things become tolerable. Instead of playing a game of hot potato with thousands of innocent children, let's address the pressing needs we have now, which is to treat these kids humanely.

I have had the good fortune of traveling in every country in South America except Belize and Uruguay. Cuba is sending huge numbers of physicians all over South and Central America; China has a lot of money and projects there.

We--because of the stringency of what is happening with our appropriations bills--took months and months to get a Peace Corps Director. The Peace Corps helps, but without the Director it was kind of wobbly. The Agency for International Development has a good program, but it doesn't have much money at all. We do very little to help those countries.

We have Venezuela. Chavez ships hundreds and hundreds of teachers and oil to those countries, and we do nothing. For a fraction of what we spend on our border, we could help those countries stabilize.

We need to get resources to our Border Patrol agents and others who are caring for these children from Central America. We need judges to hear these kids' cases and decide whether they need protection or need to be sent back home.

The world is watching how this great democracy of ours responds to this crisis. Congress must act now and give the administration the funding it needs to temporarily house and feed these boys and girls and reinforce the infrastructure to process thousands of asylum deportation claims.

We had a big show not long ago where we provided $35 billion to help veterans. We have spent trillions of dollars in two wars--unpaid for, by the way. That is what President Bush wanted, and that is what he got. He squandered the surplus we had--a surplus of over 10 years when he took office that was trillions of dollars. But now we are being asked to spend a few dollars to take care of these people who have come back in need--as our veterans. Senator Sanders has been working for well more than 1 month to get them to try to agree to something, and it looks to me as if they are going to come back with nothing.

The conference has not been completed. Why? Because they have to spend money on these people on whom they were glad to spend money to take them to war. But now they are back. They are missing limbs. They have many post-traumatic stress problems, a lot of medical issues, and no money is there.

I am afraid that is where we are headed with this other situation. I am afraid we are headed to the place where either Republicans get to deport all these DREAMers--what the Texas Senators obviously want--or just give these kids no hearings at all and just shove them back. It is not fair.

The American people want these kids to be treated fairly. If the kids don't belong here, let's have somebody decide they don't belong here and have somebody do what needs to

be done. But to just ignore the issue and run out of money--what do we do?

What we should do is legislate. We are not doing that.

I have said on the floor a number of times--I repeat--for 5 1/2 years Republicans have opposed everything that President Obama has wanted--everything. That is what they set out to do 3 days after he was elected, and they have stuck by that. Scores of ambassadors' positions are not filled, and legislation has gone wanting.

They want to be able to show there is a Democrat in the White House and Democrats control the Senate, but the American people are not realizing a small minority can stop us from doing everything--and that is what they have done with the so-called filibuster, hundreds of them. I only hope this November people will respond, as I believe they will, and say: This is enough.

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