REFUND Act

I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I join my colleagues who have commended the Appropriations Committee on the fine work they have done under difficult circumstances on the Homeland Security bill. It had been our hope that their fine work would have been rewarded by its passage in December, but the Republican leadership in the House decided that we would not pass the bill then to give some certainty to how Homeland Security would be funded in this year and instead toss it over until the new year.

We take an oath to protect and defend the American people. Their safety is essential to everything else. And Homeland Security is a place where we have a very big component for protecting and defending the American people. That is why we were so disappointed that, of all bills, the Republicans would pull that one bill out of the pack and say we are just doing this for a matter of weeks. It came with the promise that after the first of the year we would, of course, pass a Homeland Security bill. That was December.

In December, the Republicans said, no, we don't want to have that certainty, not just yet. Then, along came January, Paris. ``Je suis Charlie,'' around the world it is echoed, everybody coming together, heads of state, leaders of countries, whether you were present there or not, everybody present in the moment and the time since of support for protecting people throughout the world from terrorism.

It seems like that affected almost everybody, except it didn't penetrate the walls of this Chamber because here we are, once again, putting off, by other distractions, how we would pass as quickly as possible a homeland security bill. And what is interesting to me is that some of our colleagues are using immigration as the excuse.

But, Mr. Chairman, what further is interesting is that now they are saying it is not about immigration--which, of course, it has always been about passing an immigration bill and we don't even have to have this discussion. They are saying it is about the Constitution.

I have been here since President Reagan was President. I don't remember anybody calling up the Constitution when President Reagan used his executive action in the family fairness legislation. I don't remember anybody bringing up the Constitution when President George Herbert Walker Bush further expanded protections for people in our country--President Clinton and President George Herbert Walker Bush. So this is very interesting to hear it. But I do want to put this in perspective, and it will take a little time.

There is a strong legal and historical precedent to support the extension--we are just talking about deferred action here--to a broad category of people who have strong equities to our country. The Immigration and Nationality Act and the judicial precedent make clear that the Executive maintains broad discretion to determine how immigration laws are to be enforced. Such discretion extends to decisions regarding whether to defer enforcement against entire categories of people, whether such categories are defined by nationality or some other common characteristic that makes them particularly deserving of an act of administrative grace.

This legal authority has existed since the INA, the Immigration and Nationality Act, was first enacted in 1952 and has been exercised in various ways and under various names over the past 62 years. Based upon the administration's expansive prosecutorial discretion authority, the President could extend deferred action to persons who would qualify for registered provisional immigration status under S. 744, which passed the U.S. Senate on June 27, 2013, by a vote of 68-32.

The President could similarly establish a separate deferred action for persons deemed essential for agriculture in recognition of the fact that our country's agriculture industry and millions of jobs that rely upon it are largely dependent on the labor of unauthorized workers as for the parents of young people who have already received deferred action under DACA.

When Congress first passed the INA, the Immigration and Nationality Act, in 1952, it charged the Attorney General with the administration and enforcement of immigration laws and authorized the Attorney General to ``perform such other acts as he deems necessary for carrying out his authority under the provisions of this act.''

Courts have relied upon this delegation of authority to support the principle that the act ``commits enforcement of the INA to the Attorney General's discretion.''

With the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which many of us were here for, Congress further entrusted the newly created Secretary of Homeland Security with the responsibility of ``establishing national immigration enforcement policies and priorities.''

In doing so, Congress acknowledged the inherent authority of enforcement agencies to decide whom to investigate, detain, charge, and prosecute under the law. The Supreme Court ``has recognized on several occasions over many years that an agency's decision not to prosecute or enforce, whether through criminal or civil process, is a decision generally committed to an agency's absolute discretion.''

That is the Court's decision. If you want me to read the further authorities on that I will, but in the interest of brevity, courts consistently have applied this principle in the immigration context, and, in particular, to grants of deferred action and extended voluntary departure.

In Arizona v. United States, the Supreme Court relied upon the broad discretion exercised by Federal immigration officials, including ``whether it makes sense to pursue removal of all,'' to strike down almost all of Arizona's sweeping anti-immigration law. Because Arizona's law could result in ``unnecessary harassment of some aliens''--that is their term--for example, a veteran, a college student, or someone assisting with a criminal investigation whom Federal officials determine should not be removed, the law ``violates the principle that the removal process is entrusted at the discretion of the Federal Government.''

The idea that immigration enforcement efforts should be focused on high-priority targets has not always been controversial. Guidance pertaining to the use of prosecutorial discretion in the immigration context has been issued at least as far back as 1976. Under President George W. Bush, in recent memory, the Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, reaffirmed prosecutorial discretion guidance issued during the Clinton administration and reiterated the responsibility of ICE agents and officers to use discretion in identifying and responding to meritorious health-related cases and caregiver issues.

Indeed, 15 years ago, Democratic and Republican Members of Congress joined together on a letter to then-Attorney General Janet Reno urging her to issue guidelines that would provide specific instructions to agency personnel in order to alleviate some of the hardship caused by our immigration laws. Democrats and Republicans signed it, and the letter accepted the premise that ``the principle of prosecutorial discretion is well-established'' and asked the INS to explain why it would pursue removal cases that would result in unjustifiable hardship rather than prioritizing enforcement efforts against more serious cases.

Although the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA, program announced 2 years ago provides the most recent example of temporary relief from removal being offered to a substantial class of persons, it is the ``Family Fairness'' program adopted by President Ronald Reagan and President George Herbert Walker Bush that proves to be the strongest precedent for building upon DACA and offering deferred action to a larger class of persons who meet certain criteria.

This is very interesting, my colleagues, because in 1986, Congress passed and President Reagan signed into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, IRCA. The law provided a path to legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants but provided no relief to the children and spouses of such persons who were not themselves able to meet the requirements for legalization. Indeed, when the Senate Judiciary Committee reported the bill to the floor, it wrote:

It is the intent of the committee that the families of

legalized aliens will obtain no special petitioning right by

virtue of the legalization. They will be required to ``wait

in line'' in the same manner as immediate family members of

other new resident aliens.

But on October 26, 1987--less than 1 year after IRCA was enacted into law--President Reagan made the decision to defer enforcement against some of the close family members of persons who obtained lawful status under IRCA.

Now this is President Reagan acting. President Obama is acting in the absence of congressional action; President Reagan is acting in the presence of congressional action and saying, You didn't go far enough.

Under the Family Fairness program issued by then-INS Commissioner Nelson, the Reagan administration offered ``indefinite voluntary departure''--along with the opportunity to apply for employment authorization--to undocumented children residing with their parents if both parents--or in the case of a single-parent household, the parent with whom the child resides--had obtained lawful status under the act. Spouses of persons who obtained lawful status could also be granted indefinite voluntary departure and work authorization by demonstrating the existence of certain compelling or humanitarian factors.

Would you be suing President Reagan for doing that, as some of you are friends of the court in the suit against the President, as you are using the Constitution as your argument here today?

In response to continuing concerns that the Family Fairness program was too narrowly defined, President George Herbert Walker Bush went further 3 years later, expanding the program to apply to all spouses and all children of persons who were legalized under IRCA, provided they met certain requirements. The memorandum issued by then-INS Commissioner Gene McNary clarified that voluntary departure and employment authorization would be granted to such persons for a 1-year period and would be subject to extensions without limit.

The Reagan administration--would you be taking the President to court, would you be arguing that he acted unconstitutionally on the floor of the House? People didn't then.

The INS developed a new form--``Declaration, Ineligible Family Member of Legalized Alien''--precisely for the purpose of allowing undocumented persons who did not qualify for legalization under IRCA to affirmatively request relief from the threat of deportation and authorization to work lawfully. According to reports at the time, INS Commissioner McNary contemplated that the program could have affected as many as 1.5 million undocumented immigrants. Explaining the rationale for expanding the earlier program, McNary stated:

It is vital that we enforce the law against illegal entry.

However, we can enforce the law humanely. To split families

encourages further violations of the law as they reunite.

In the end, only a fraction of the people eligible for relief under the Family Fairness program obtained such protection, but that is only because the Immigration Act of 1990 was enacted less than 1 year after the program was expanded by President Bush. Section 301 of that bill contained a family unity program that largely codified the executive actions taken by President Reagan and President Bush.

The parallels between the Reagan-Bush Family Fairness program and what is being proposed at the present time are uncanny. There are several lessons that can be drawn from this past precedent.

First, the authority to provide temporary relief from removal to a large percentage of the undocumented population has long existed, and past Presidents have exercised such authority.

Second, such authority existed even when the Executive's authority would seem to be at its weakest--where Congress specifically declined to legislatively provide the relief granted administratively. The President is now being asked to take administrative action in the face of historic intransigence on the part of House Republicans after the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill buoyed by popular support, overwhelmingly supported in a bipartisan way in the Senate, but nothing happening in the House.

By contrast, the Reagan administration adopted the Family Fairness program less than 1 year after Congress enacted the last comprehensive immigration reform bill that contains specific criteria for legalization and knowingly excluded from protection the very people affected by the administration action.

Just as I said before, even when Congress acted, President Reagan said we can do better. Nobody argued the Constitution at the time. Well, if they did, history does not recall it.

Third, the scope of the relief now being considered by the administration is entirely consistent with the Family Fairness program after it was expanded by President George Herbert Walker Bush. According to demographic work performed by the Pew Research Center, there were an estimated 3.5 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 1990. By extending the Family Fairness program to cover 1.5 million unauthorized immigrants at the beginning of that year, President Bush used executive authority to protect approximately 42.9 percent of the undocumented population from removal and offer them work authorization.

I don't remember any uproar in Congress. Many of us were here at that time.

Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center estimated that there were 11.7 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States as of March 2012. If the administration takes steps to protect 5 million undocumented immigrants from removal, as a recent article suggested, that would extend temporary relief to 42.7 percent--a lower percentage than President Bush protected--of the undocumented population now in the country.

Finally, the most important lesson that can be learned from the Family Fairness program is that bold executive action can sometimes help change the legislative dynamic, helping to break the gridlock and pave the way to legislative reform. The only reason the Reagan-Bush Family Fairness program did not provide indefinite voluntary departure and employment authorization for many years without legislative approval--essentially a grant of deferred action--is that Congress did act and take steps, following the lead of the Presidents, to largely codify the President's program and provide such relief for removal and employment authorization itself.

At the time the Bush administration expanded family fairness, legislation to extend similar protections were stuck in Congress, having passed the Senate in 1989 but having seen no legislative action in the House. Less than 8 months after the administration's action, the House passed its version of the bill. A conference committee was

convened, and IMMACT was quickly enacted into law. The same pattern can be observed in many of the cases described in which the administration granted extended voluntary departure, deferred enforced departure, or deferred action to a broad category of people defined by their nationality or some other compelling characteristic. And Congress subsequently enacted legislation to permit such people to obtain lawful permanent residence.

I hope that will happen. The President has executive orders. Hopefully, Congress will codify that.

The Reagan-Bush Family Fairness program is just one of the many examples of past Presidents deciding to defer removal efforts and offer employment authorization to large classes of people.

In 1960, the Kennedy administration granted extended voluntary departure to many Cubans who otherwise would have been subject to deportation. Over the next 20 years, the INS granted similar protections to nationals of more than a dozen other countries. Such grants have sometimes, but not always, resulted in the enactment of special legislation permitting extended voluntary departure beneficiaries to adjust their status to that of lawful permanent residents.

In 1966, Congress enacted such legislation for Cubans. Again, President Kennedy acted. In 1966, Congress enacted such legislation for Cubans granted extended voluntary departure.

Congress did the same in 1977 for Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians who were permitted to remain in the country on EVD, extended voluntary departure; and again in 1987 for recipients from Poland, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Uganda.

I have personal experience on the initiative.

After Tiananmen Square, there were concerns that Chinese nationals residing in the United States, primarily as scholars and students, would face repression if forced to return home. Congress passed a bill to allow these Chinese nationals to remain, which President George Herbert Walker Bush vetoed.

This is my bill.

Then, in 1990, it passed the House and passed the Senate, went to his desk, and he vetoed it. It had strong bipartisan support. We could fight the veto in the House, but in the Senate, at the moment of truth, the Senate upheld the veto.

President Bush promised that he would issue an executive order extending deferred enforced departure, or DED, to an estimated 80,000 Chinese nationals. While the President did not want it to be an act of Congress for fear of what an insult it might be to the Chinese Government as they were crushing people in the streets in Tiananmen Square and arresting people, he did promise to do an executive order, which he did.

Following President Bush's executive order, Congress acted quickly to permit Chinese nationals granted protection from removal and employment authorization to adjust their status to that of lawful permanent residence.

In 1991, President Bush extended that to approximately 2,000 Persian Gulf evacuees of various nationalities who were airlifted from Kuwait the previous year during the Persian Gulf War. The persons evacuated were chosen because they had children who were U.S. citizens or because they provided protection to U.S. citizens during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

In 2000, Congress enacted a private immigration law to permit those who had not already been permanent residents by other means to obtain permanent residence.

In 1992, President George Herbert Walker Bush also extended a DED, deferred enforced departure, to approximately 200,000 Salvadorans who fled civil war and previously had been protected from removal pursuant to a grant of temporary protected status, or TPS. President Bill Clinton later provided DED to Haitians in 1997, and President George Walker Bush extended DED to Liberians in 2007.

Finally, again, this administration has extended deferred action to broad categories of people on two prior occasions. First, in 2009, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services created a process in which surviving spouses of deceased U.S. citizens and the qualifying children of such spouses could apply for deferred action.

The process was created because it was the position of the Department of Homeland Security at the time that no immigration relief was available under the law to protect surviving members from removal and that action was needed to address the humanitarian concerns.

The DACA program announced by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on June 15, 2012, presented the second deferred action program created under this administration. As of June 30, 2014, over 580,000 persons had been granted deferred action under the program.

The use of Presidential ``parole power'' is one of the oldest and most-established provisions of Presidential authority in immigration matters. Parole was first used to allow the entry of refugees who would otherwise be excluded by the national origins quota system.

Presidential parole was codified in the original 1952 INA, Immigration and Nationality Act, which authorized the use of discretionary authority to parole aliens into the United States ``for emergent reasons or for reasons deemed strictly in the public interest.''

In 1956, President Dwight David Eisenhower first used his parole authority to allow 900 World War II orphans into the country and later paroled approximately 30,000 Hungarians. This use of parole power marks the first of many mass admissions by future administrations.

Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon collectively allowed approximately 600,000 Cubans to be paroled into the country; and Presidents Ford and Carter paroled approximately 300,000 Indochinese from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

In response to a concern that the parole power was being used to admit large numbers of persons not covered by international refugee laws, Congress enacted the Refugee Act in 1980, which amended the INA to provide a process for the admission of refugees. The act also limited the administration's ability to parole refugees into the country, absent compelling reasons in the public interest, but left untouched the general parole authority.

Nevertheless, several Presidents subsequently used the parole authority to allow the entry of groups of persons who arguably could have been considered ``refugee populations.''

President George Herbert Walker Bush in 1989 created a program that allowed individuals in Vietnam who were ineligible for refugee status to enter the country as ``public interest parolees,'' if they were able to prepay their travel expenses and provide affidavits of support from sponsors in the United States.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton paroled approximately 7,000 Iraqi Kurds to Guam and allowed them to apply for asylum to the United States. In 2006, President George W. Bush created a program which allowed the United States to parole certain Cuban medical professionals who have been conscripted to study or work in a third country under the direction of the Government of Cuba.

In 1996, Congress once more amended the statutory parole authority to apply only on a case-by-case basis; nevertheless, as the terms are not defined by the statute, they are open to interpretation by the administration.

In fact, the several instances in which parole authority was used by past Presidents demonstrate that promoting family unity can serve humanitarian goals or provide a significant public benefit.

The Lautenberg Parole Program, implemented by President George Herbert Walker Bush in 1988, granted parole to individuals whose refugee claims were denied, but who had family reunification concerns.

In 2007, President George Herbert Walker Bush established the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program to expedite the reunification of Cuban families by paroling into the United States beneficiaries of approved family-based immigrant petitions, so they might wait together with their family members until a visa became available.

In 2007, President Bush created a program to authorize the parole of certain refugee derivative family members who had aged out and, therefore, could not be eligible for refugee status.

Given the administration's broad statutory parole authority, the lengthy visa backlogs that exist in most immigrant visa categories, and the humanitarian interests and significant public benefits that would attach to the unification of families, the President could make parole available to the spouses, sons, and daughters of American citizens and lawful permanent residents who face a separation of a year or more or, in the case of less than a year, when hardship is in addition to the separation.

This would not permit family members to skip the line, but would allow them to wait in the United States with their family members.

Authority for parole in place already is present in the country. The legal authority for parole in place was originally recognized in 1998. That opinion was endorsed the following year by the Commissioner of the INS, and it was reaffirmed in 2007 by the Bush administration DHS general counsel under President Bush, as I say.

According to these legal opinions, INA grants discretion to parole ``any alien applying for admission to the United States,'' and INA expressly defines an applicant for admission to include ``an alien who is present in the United States who has not been admitted.'' As a result, parole can be granted to persons who are present in the country without having previously been admitted to the country.

The list goes on and on, and I have so much more that I want to tell our colleagues, but what I am saying to you is that there is legal authority for the President to take action under the law. There is Presidential precedent, bipartisan since President Eisenhower, since these laws were passed, to do so.

To all of a sudden say we are having a debate now about the Constitution when we are supposed to be passing a law to protect and defend that Constitution and, instead, we are taking an exception to the interpretation of it--as I said, President Eisenhower, every President, President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, President Nixon, the list goes on and on--all of the Presidents since President Eisenhower and certainly since President Reagan and both President Bushes and President Clinton, all acted in this way.

Many of us were Members of Congress in those Presidencies. If somebody wants to come forward and say that he was a voice in the darkness, but nothing significant ever emerged to challenge the constitutionality of what the Presidents did, so why now, especially now, December?

We are not going to protect and defend by extending this bill with certainty for Homeland Security. Paris, the whole world is in unity, galvanized by wanting to stop terrorism and to do everything in our power to do so, and we in this House are hesitating to do that.

If we want to take up an immigration bill and argue that the President doesn't have the authority to do what he has done, but with an intention to act ourselves, that would be the appropriate place to have this debate, but to hold up the Homeland Security bill, which Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Lowey and the subcommittee chairs-- and we are very proud of David Price on our side on that, and I am sure that all the Republicans are proud of their Members on their side, because they came up with, under difficult circumstances, a good bill-- let us just pass it, why don't we, and then let's get on with passing an immigration bill and debate what authorities the President has, and if we don't like them, then debate the merits of what he did and pass some of that into law.

But to say that he doesn't have the authority to do it and this is about the Constitution really raises some serious questions.

Again, we should be talking about how we are creating good-paying jobs in our country. That is what people want us to do. Let's just pass this bill, get it done, and go on to how we can invest in better infrastructure and bigger paychecks for the American people.

Lifting the economy and the purchasing power of our workers really creates an atmosphere where immigration and other humanitarian initiatives are better received.

I took the time tonight because I just was listening to this debate and how people were saying that the President was acting outside the scope of the Constitution, that he had overreached.

Then I asked my colleagues: What are you thinking, that you would hold up the Homeland Security bill and that you would not question the authority of Republican Presidents--or even the Democratic Presidents when they had done this--but you are questioning the constitutionality of actions taken by President Obama?

The time is not right for this. The time is right for us to pass an immigration bill. The time is right for us to, right now, tonight, pass a clean--tomorrow morning, pass a clean--reject these amendments, reject these amendments and pass a clean Homeland Security bill, so we can get on with that and then have a clear debate about immigration.

I want to thank the staff of the Judiciary Committee for the important work that they have done, Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren and Ranking Member John Conyers for the work that they have done educating Members about what the history is on this subject--and it is a recent history. I thank them for their leadership and their service.

I ask our colleagues to reject these amendments, disabuse yourself of any notion--because it isn't a full-fledged idea--but any notion that the President is acting in an unconstitutional way. Let's get on with our work.

When we say, ``Je Suis Charlie,'' we are not just identifying with a magazine office in Paris--that would be important enough--but we are identifying with the entire effort to protect people from terrorism.

That is what the Homeland Security Committee was established to do. That is what this legislation will fund. Let's remove all doubt that we are going to do it as soon as possible.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, we are told that next week we can expect the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, which fully funds the Department of Homeland Security and includes the law enforcement priorities that were agreed to on a bipartisan basis in the House--and I think will be approved on a bipartisan basis in the Senate, hammered out in the Senate Appropriations Committee--will be coming to the Senate.

The House of Representatives has therefore voted to fund Homeland Security in essentially the way the President has asked for and the Democrats and Republicans agreed on. It is not a perfect bill for everybody, but we have to do those things. We have to agree and fund all the departments and agencies of our government.

Yet we now have a statement that our Democratic colleagues are going to block the bill. They apparently intend to say Republicans blocked the bill and that somehow Republicans didn't fund Homeland Security. That is the message they are going to try to promote.

They are going to say they want a clean bill. What does a clean bill mean? Is it a bill that funds the Immigration and Nationality Act as was passed by Congress, some 500 pages? It funds the officers and enforcement officials who carry out those duties every day. Does it fund those? Yes, it funds those.

What is it that people are complaining about then? What is this clean bill they want to see?

I would suggest it is not a clean bill they want. In reality, they want legislation that will fund action by President Obama that violates the Immigration and Nationality Act, actions that he has taken through Executive amnesty. That is the problem we are dealing with.

Apparently they believe the President of the United States, who doesn't agree with the way immigration law is written, the way it has been carried out for 30, 40 years--he is not happy with that. He asked the Congress to change it.

Congress said: No.

He said: I am going to do it anyway. Right across the river from Washington--I am going to lease a building that houses 1,000 new workers--new workers--and those workers are going to process and give out legal status, work permits, Social Security participation, Medicare participation to 5 million people. People who, according to the Immigration and Nationality Act, are unlawfully in the country and are not able to work. Businesses cannot hire somebody who is in the country unlawfully.

Is there any country in the world that says it is appropriate for a business to hire somebody who entered that country unlawfully? What kind of logic can support such reasoning?

So the President is not an imperial master. He asked Congress and Congress said no, but he wants to go ahead and do it.

Our Democratic colleagues are now telling us they are not going to support funding of Homeland Security because Congress--the House of Representatives bill and the bill I think will have a majority in the Senate--will not fund this building, the 1,000 people, and all the other activities that will be needed to execute this unlawful, unconstitutional Executive amnesty.

It is through the looking glass. I mean, what world are we in?

I was a Federal prosecutor for almost 15 years. They enforce the law, they don't enforce what some President said he would like to see done that is not lawful. Colleagues, this is so serious that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, their association filed a lawsuit, and they challenged the actions of their supervisors telling them not to enforce plain immigration law. They went to Federal court.

Has anybody ever heard of that before? This is the equivalent of the FBI for the immigration service. These are first-rate officers. Many of them have been there 20 or 30 years.

They say: You are asking us to not enforce the law.

They have challenged it in court. I have never heard of anything such as that before. The people in charge of enforcing the law having to go to court to keep from being told not to enforce the law? It is amazing.

This bill will not deny a penny of funding. It will not deny any funding for any program, activity or action that is authorized by law. It does not deny funding for any of those programs that are actually authorized by the laws of the United States. In fact, it says: Spend the money, Mr. President, on enforcing and following the law. You cannot spend money unconstitutionally to advocate and create a system of law Congress rejected--an unlawful activity.

The Congress of the United States is not helpless when it confronts the President. Colleagues, we have to get out from under our desks. Are we afraid to say to the President of the United States we don't agree with this, and we are not going to fund this?

Is that the world we are in? Are we hiding under our desks, that the President may go on television and attack us because we will not agree with his ideas? Surely not, surely not.

The Congress has the power to appropriate money. It goes back to the historic development--before America became a nation--that the Parliament took over the power of money from the King. Parliament passed the laws, not the King.

We adopted that and we created a constitutional order, instead of a King, to decide how we operate. The Parliament, and the Congress of the United States, was empowered to handle the money.

What obligation, colleagues, does this Congress of the United States have to give the President of the United States money to undermine the laws of the United States? What power does he have to compel us to do so? Zero.

We should do the right thing. And the right thing is to say: Mr. President, we are willing to consider a form of immigration law, but we didn't approve of this bill. We didn't support your bill last time and we are not going to pass your bill this time. We are going to continue to work to improve immigration law and make it better and serve the national interest of the United States--not special interests, not activist groups and not big businesses, but the average working American's interest. That is who we are going to serve in this process.

So why are we afraid to push back on that? It is amazing to me. So I don't think we will. In fact, it is sort of remarkable that this is a bipartisan position that the President has overreached. I am not going to quote the names of Senators. I will be a little bit courteous at this point and just quote some of the statements from all separate Democratic Senators in the last few months when asked about this Executive amnesty by the President. A lot of Senators have never been asked. They are probably thankful they weren't asked.

This is what one Senator said:

. . . but the President shouldn't make such a significant

policy change on his own.

Another Democratic Senator:

. . . but executive orders aren't the way to do it.

Another Senator:

I disagree with the President's decision to use executive

action to make changes to our immigration system.

Another Democratic Senator:

I'm disappointed the President decided to use executive

action at this time on this issue, as it could poison any

hope of compromise or bipartisanship in the new Senate before

it has even started. It's Congress' job to pass legislation

and deal with issues of this magnitude.

Absolutely correct. It is Congress's duty to do this.

What about another Democratic Senator:

I worry that his taking unilateral action could in fact

inflame public opinion, change the subject from immigration

to the President. I also have constitutional concerns about

where prosecutorial discretion ends and unconstitutional

authority begins.

A wise quote, I think.

Another Senator:

I have concerns about executive action . . . This is a job

for Congress, and it's time for the House to act.

Another Democratic Senator:

. . . the best way to get a comprehensive solution is to

take this through the legislative process.

So I would say, colleagues, why would any Senator, Democrat or Republican--when the very integrity of the constitutional powers given to Congress are eroded in a dramatic way by the President of the United States--not want to assert congressional authority? It is important for our constitutional structure, in my view.

Well, there we are. We had hearings in the Senate on these issues and on the new nominee for Attorney General. The new nominee said she supports and will actively work for the policy the President established. The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer in the land. They take an oath to see that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed.

I believe strongly in this. I don't think it is a close question. It is not a close question, colleagues. The President's actions are unlawful. The President's executive actions impose a policy that is detrimental to our ability to ever establish a lawful system of immigration in America. They are against the wishes of the Congress, which rejected this proposal, and they are overwhelmingly in opposition to the views of the American people, as poll after poll has demonstrated.

Do the American people have no role in their government? They can't expect their Members of the Senate to vote for legislation that follows the law instead of breaking the law? Aren't they frustrated already that Congress is not following the law, and they are frustrated with the President's failure to follow the law? I think they are.

Of course I would like to note that President Obama himself said 20 times he did not have the power to do this. He said, in May of 2008:

Congress's job is to pass legislation. The president can

veto it or he can sign it . . . I believe in the Constitution

and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We're

not going to use signing statements . . .

Another time he said:

Ultimately, our nation, like all nations, has the right and

obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency

and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter

their reasons, the 11 million people who broke these laws

should be held accountable.

October of 2010:

I can't simply ignore laws that are out there.

On October 25 of 2010, he said:

I am president, I am not king. I can't do these things just

by myself. We have a system of government that requires the

Congress to work with the Executive Branch to make it happen.

Well, even King George couldn't act contrary to the laws passed by Parliament. That statement goes on:

. . . I just want to repeat, I'm president, I'm not king.

If Congress has laws on the books that says that people who

are here who are not documented have to be deported, then I

can exercise some flexibility in terms of where we deploy our

resources . . . but there's a limit to the discretion that I

can show because I'm obliged to execute the law. That's what

the Executive Branch means. I can't just make the laws up by

myself.

Well, how true is that? That is absolutely correct. It goes on. There are 20 of these. I could continue, but we will be talking about this as the weeks go on.

Now, what do scholars say? Do the scholars say that this action is lawful and that Congress should fund it and we have an obligation to fund it or the President has the right to demand it? Jonathan Turley, who is a Shapiro Professor of Law at George Washington University, a nationally recognized constitutional scholar, testified before Congress many times, most often as a Democratic witness, has said he supports President Obama and voted for him. But he said this:

I believe the president has exceeded his brief. The

president is required to faithfully execute the laws. He's

not required to enforce all laws equally or commit the same

resources to them. But I believe the president has crossed

the constitutional line . . .

He said that again yesterday at the judiciary hearing on the Attorney General. He continues:

This goes to the very heart of what is the Madisonian

system. If a president can unilaterally change the meaning of

laws in substantial ways or refuse to enforce them, it takes

offline that very thing that stabilizes our system. I believe

the members will loathe the day that they allow that to

happen. This will not be the last president. There will be

more presidents who will claim the same authority.

Well, I think that is pretty significant. Professor Turley is a supporter of President Obama personally, and someone who has been a frequent Democratic witness for Congress.

Professor Nicholas Rosenkranz of Georgetown University Law Center, in his testimony yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, said-- and how simple and true is this. It is pretty insightful, frankly:

Rather than declining to comply with a duly enacted

statute--

The INA.

the President has decided to comply meticulously--with a bill

that never became law.

What a statement that is. And it is absolutely true. He went on to say:

Congress has repeatedly considered a statute called the

DREAM Act, which would exempt a broad category of aliens from

the Immigration and Nationality Act. The President favored

this DREAM Act, but Congress repeatedly declined to pass it.

It is not in the code. It didn't pass. He goes on to say:

Once again, the President does have broad prosecutorial

discretion and broad discretion to husband executive

resources. But in this case, it is quite clear that the

President is not merely trying to conserve resources. . . .

To put the point another way, the President shall ``take Care

that the Laws''--capital L--``be faithfully executed''--not

those bills which fail to become law. Here, in effect, the

President is faithfully executing the DREAM Act, which is not

law at all, rather than the Immigration and Nationality Act,

which is supreme law of the land. The President cannot enact

the DREAM Act unilaterally, and he cannot evade article 1,

section 7, by pretending that it passed when it did not.

How much clearer can you lay it out? This professor is simply telling the truth. There is no other way to look at this, in my opinion. Congress is being challenged at its very core by this action, and the result of this challenge will have constitutional ramifications and it will have ramifications as we consider the relative powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches in the years to come.

This is not a little matter, colleagues. It really is an affront to constitutional order. We have a duty no matter what we feel about this amnesty that goes well beyond DREAM Act amnesty. We have a constitutional duty to defend the integrity of the Congress against an encroachment of monumental proportions by the President. That is the fundamental issue we will be dealing with when people complain about the funding bill for DHS.

David Rivkin, who served two Presidents in the Office of White House Counsel, and Elizabeth Price Foley, a constitutional law professor, wrote an article recently in the Wall Street Journal. It just hammers and devastates the arguments the President is making in favor of his executive amnesty. They say this:

By announcing a global policy of nonenforcement against

certain categories, Mr. Obama condones unlawful behavior,

weakening the law's deterrent impact, and allows lawbreakers

to remain without fear of deportation . . . These individuals

are no longer deportable although Congress has declared

them so.

They conclude with a statement we need to consider. I believe their concluding statement is accurate. I think it is pretty much indisputable. And if it is accurate, then Congress has a duty to stand firm.

This is what they conclude:

The President, after months, finally extracted from the

Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice a

memorandum that allows basically what he is trying to do. It

has been heavily criticized. Legal scholars say it is a poor

analysis in a whole lot of ways. In fact, it is unacceptable.

This is what the authors of this recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal said:

The OLC's memo endorses a view of presidential power that

has never been advanced by even the boldest presidential

advocates. If this view holds, future presidents can

unilaterally gut tax, environmental, labor or securities laws

by enforcing only those portions with which they agree. This

is a dangerous precedent that cannot be allowed to stand.

So this is what is at stake. And now we learn that the Democrats intend to oppose even going forward to consider the House bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security--and they intend to block that through the filibuster.

This is what Senator Barbara Mikulski is reported by Congressional Quarterly as saying last night:

Senator Mikulski tells CQ that Democrats will block the

Senate from proceeding to debate the DHS spending bill over

immigration riders.

Have they made that decision? Surely not. Surely we should move to the bill. If they are unhappy with the language the House put in this, then offer an amendment to take it out. They will have the right to have full amendments, consistent with the rules of the Senate, on this legislation. They can offer amendments to strike the language in the House that simply says we are not going to fund unlawful Executive amnesty. It is a pretty stunning thing that we are dealing with and that we will be confronting next week. I believe it is a position that is untenable. It is untenable constitutionally, it is untenable lawfully, and it is untenable because it is contrary to the will of Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate who oppose the President's action. It is untenable politically because overwhelmingly the American people reject it.

I am flabbergasted that we are now hearing that Democrats might not even allow the bill to come up on the floor. What does that mean?

I suppose they will say: Mr. Republican Congress, are you shutting down Homeland Security?

Why? I would ask.

Well, because you are putting in language that says the President shouldn't go off and create and endorse and support and fund changing of the law of the United States that Congress hasn't changed, and we insist that you fund his activities and give him the money he needs to carry out this project.

Then Congress says: No. We don't want to do that.

We oppose it and we won't pass the bill that funds Homeland Security.

That is a bad thing to do. The American people won't like it that you don't fund Homeland Security, the Republicans may say.

And do you know what our Democratic colleagues will say?

No. You shut Homeland Security down because you kept the President from doing his activity. We are going to accuse you of not funding Homeland Security, and we are going to say you placed the Nation at risk. The President is going to accuse you of defunding Homeland Security, and he is going to accuse you of putting the country at risk. And the media? Why, they are on our side, and they are going to report it that way. When you turn on your television at night, they are going to say to the American people that Republicans didn't fund Homeland Security, and you are going to lose.

Look, we are not through the looking glass yet. Give me a break. That is not going to sell. The American people are not going to buy that and the press is not going to shill for this kind of story. It is going to be clear who is not funding Homeland Security. It is going to be clear who wants to create a lawful system of immigration and to fund it in an effective way and serve the national interests in this fashion.

I feel strongly about it. Hopefully this won't happen. Hopefully the report last night is not going to be the position of the Democratic Party.

I just read of seven or eight of them who said they don't approve of the President's action. Why would they vote not to even go to a bill? And remember, if the bill comes up and our colleagues don't like this language in it, they can move to alter it or strike it. Let's vote on it.

Sometimes you win in this body; sometimes you lose. We lost many times--many on the Republican side--in supporting the Keystone Pipeline. Now we are told the President may veto the bill that has well over 60 votes and many Democrats voting for it. Well, is Congress going to say ``We are going to ignore that'' and ask the law enforcement officers or the other officers to ignore the President's veto and pretend the law passed when it didn't pass? Of course not. And neither can the President. We are coequal branches, and the President does not have the authority and the right and the power to enforce a law that never passed to grant amnesty to people who are unlawfully here.

It goes beyond prosecutorial discretion. As I said, I was a prosecutor for a long time. It is not prosecutorial discretion to give someone who is unlawfully in the country a work permit, a photo ID--as they intend to do--a Social Security number, the right to participate in Social Security, the right to work, to take any job in America. What job are they going to take? Who is offering any jobs of any numbers today in America? Not many. So these individuals who are here unlawfully will now be able to go to the trucking company and take a pretty good trucking job or maybe a forklift operator job or maybe they want to work for the county commission.

I asked the Attorney General nominee 2 days ago at a hearing would the Department of Justice sue a business that said: Well, we have job openings, but we are going to hire those people who have green cards or who came here lawfully and have a lawful status, but we are not going to hire somebody with temporary Presidential amnesty? Are you going to sue them for some sort of violation of rights?

She said she didn't know. They might. She basically said they might sue them. So this is a real danger.

The truth is, colleagues, we don't have enough jobs in America today. We have the lowest percentage of Americans actually working, in the working ages, that we have had since the 1970s. It has dropped steadily year after year. There is no doubt that if you bring more people into our country than we have jobs for, it does make it harder.

Also, an excess of labor pulls down wages, and things aren't really getting better. Median family wages since 2007 are down $4,000. That is a stunning amount. Wages in December--last month--in America dropped 5 cents an hour.

This idea that the economy is on track, everything is wonderful--it is not so wonderful for average working Americans. Their wages went down, not up, as we have been told is happening. This is not going to help. It is going to make that situation worse.

Fundamentally, we need a lawful system of immigration that we can be proud of, and somebody needs to be concerned first and foremost about the people we represent. We should be concerned about the people who have immigrated here lawfully. Their wages are down also, in some cases even more so. In fact, they are often competing most directly against unlawful immigrants.

I would say this: This is not the right way to do it. We are going to continue to talk about this. I believe the Congress of the United States, once it is really understood what is happening, will listen to the constituents of America. They will decide first and foremost that our duty is to create a lawful system of immigration that is fairly endorsed, that we can be proud of, and that serves the interest of the American people--the national interest. That is what is being overlooked.

People are coming from abroad. They want to come to America. We have always had the most generous immigration system in the world, and we believe in immigration. But they should come lawfully and the Congress should help create a system that supports a lawful entry into America.

The council that represents the Customs and Immigration Service Officers just January 22nd of this year issued a strong statement. They said:

The dedicated immigration service officers and adjudicators

at USCIS are in desperate need of help. The President's

executive amnesty order for 5 million illegal immigrants

places the mission of USCIS in grave peril.

Has anybody been listening to them or do they just listen to big business? Do they just listen to activist groups? Do they just listen to lobbyists, politicians with their political schemes to win elections? Is that what they are listening to? They are not listening to the officers who are carrying out the duties.

Last fall the same group who represents these government workers--Ken Palinkas, a very able leader, said this:

Making matters more dangerous, the Obama administration's

executive amnesty, like S. 744 that he unsuccessfully lobbied

for, would legalize visa overstays and cause millions

additionally to overstay--raising the threat level to America

even higher.

It goes on with many other points.

I thank the Chair for the opportunity to speak. I am very worried that our Democratic colleagues are making a mistake. I think it is the right thing in this new Senate with Majority Leader

McConnell who has allowed more votes in 1 day than the Republicans got from Senator Reid the entire year last year. We probably doubled the number of votes this year than we had all of last year.

The Democrats are saying, we are not even going to go to this bill that would fund Homeland Security. And if we don't go to it, then Homeland Security is not funded. Are they going to block a bill that would fund Homeland Security?

Senator McConnell is saying you can have your relevant amendment. If you don't like the language the House put in that says the money can only go to fund lawful activities, then you can vote to take it out and offer an amendment to take it out; but if you don't have the votes, you lose. That is the way the system should work.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I always try to be accurate in what I say on the floor. Having been trained before Federal judges for almost 15 years, practicing law, if you said something out of line, you got hammered for it.

My friend, very good friend and colleague, the Democratic whip, Senator Durbin, earlier today came to the floor and said: Mr. President, I have been trying to understand what is holding up the funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

I would ask my colleague Senator Durbin: Have you ever heard of a filibuster? What about the filibuster you are leading to block the bill that funds Homeland Security? I mean how much more obvious can the answer be to what is holding up funding for the Department of Homeland Security, the House-passed legislation?

It is good legislation, to my knowledge. There is very little dispute about the agencies and the departments in Homeland Security in terms of what they would get in terms of funding. They simply said that the extra-lawful actions of President Obama would not be funded.

The Los Angeles Times now says that this executive amnesty could cost up to $484 million. I think it will be much more. The Los Angeles Times isn't counting the cost to State and local governments, welfare costs, tax costs. This is just their idea of what it will cost to give lawful status to 5 million people. It is going to cost more than that. But $484 million is still a lot of money.

Congress, the House of Representatives, said: Mr. President, we don't agree with this policy and your policy is unlawful. You said 20 times yourself you don't have the power to do this. Constitutional scholars say that. It is an erosion of our power and, based on the fact that we don't like the policy and we think it is unlawful policy, we are going to fund Homeland Security, we are just not going to allow you to take money from enforcement of homeland security laws to reward people who violated the laws.

Isn't that a responsible thing for Congress to do? Isn't it an absolute fact that Congress has the power to fund what it desires to fund and not fund what it does not desire to fund? That is the power of the purse, vested in the coequal branch of Congress. It is Congress's fundamental power.

Senator Durbin is now leading the filibuster. We have had a series of votes. He has been able to get every single Democrat to vote with him to block even going to the bill, even allowing a bill to come up on the floor of the Senate for debate and amendment.

If he wants to offer language that says we want to ratify what the President did and allow all this to happen, he is free to offer that amendment on the floor of the Senate. But he is not even attempting to do that. He is basically saying we are not going to allow the bill to come up for a vote, and we are going to blame the Republicans for blocking the bill.

What kind of world are we living in? I have suggested that is ``through the looking glass.'' We have the people leading the filibuster accusing the House and Republicans in the Senate for blocking the bill when they, indeed, are the ones doing it.

He also quoted our fine colleague Senator Flake to say: To attempt to use the spending bill to try to poke a finger in the President's eye is not a good move, in my mind.

I agree with that, we shouldn't be using a spending bill to poke the President in the eye. But I suggest to my colleagues that the President is the one who has poked the American people in the eye, he has poked the rights and powers of Congress in the eye by taking money that was assigned and given to Homeland Security to enforce the laws of the United States. He is taking out money and spending it at this very moment to undermine and to violate the laws of the United States.

Colleagues, the law of the United States--we have a lot of laws--says that an employer, for example, cannot hire somebody unlawfully in the country.

So the President's proposal: Well, I am going to make 5 million people who are unlawful today lawful. I am going to give them a photo ID, I am going to give them a right to work, a Social Security number, and the right to participate in Social Security and Medicare, because I am angry that Congress wouldn't pass it.

Senator Durbin says this--and our colleagues who have been leading the filibuster have been saying this--repeatedly.

It is impossible to explain the situation, quoting Senator Durbin, where the agency ``with the premier responsibility to keep America safe is not being adequately funded.''

He goes on to say that again about placing America at risk.

I would ask a couple of questions. How does taking funding from the lawful, authorized policies of Homeland Security that are supposed to identify people unlawfully here, to identify terrorists, and do other things to make America safe--how does taking the money from them, to give legal status to 5 million illegal aliens make us safer?

Does that make us safer? How absurd is that?

Ken Palinkas, who is head of the union of CIS workers, the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, said:

Unfortunately--and perilously overlooked in Washington--our

caseworkers are denied the urgent professional resources,

enforcement tools, and mission support we need to keep out

those who are bent on doing us harm.

This is processing the 1 million or so per year who are given lawful status in America. He is not referring to the future when they are going to be expected to process--immediately, apparently--5 million more. They don't have money to process the people today. These are his words, not mine, in a letter dated September of last year. He said:

The 9/11 hijackers got into the U.S. on visas and now, 13

years later, we have around 5 million immigrants in the

United States who overstayed their visas--many from high-risk

regions in the Middle East. Making matters more dangerous,

the Obama Administration's executive amnesty, like S. 744

that he unsuccessfully lobbied for, would legalize visa

overstays and cause millions additionally to overstay--

raising the threat level to America even higher.

That is what the people who enforce the law every day are saying.

In January of this year, a few weeks ago, January 22, Mr. Palinkas said:

The President's executive amnesty--

And that is what they are objecting to. That is what the people who are filibustering this bill today are doing. They are protecting, advancing, supporting, and attempting to fund the President's unlawful amnesty.

Mr. Palinkas, whose duty it is to enforce these laws, said:

The President's executive amnesty order for 5 million

illegal immigrants places the mission of USCIS [that is the

immigration service] in grave peril. Instead of meeting our

lawful function to protect the Homeland and keep out those

who pose a threat to U.S. security, health, or finances, our

officers will be assigned to process amnesty for individuals

residing illegally inside our nation's borders. This

compromises national security and public safety, while

undermining officer morale.

That is exactly right. You don't have to be a real expert to understand he is exactly right about this.

He continues:

The Administration's skewed priorities means that the

Crystal City amnesty processing center will likely have

superior worksite conditions for personnel relative to our

normal processing centers. Additionally, the security

protocols at place in this facility will be insufficient to

engage in any basic screening precautions, ensuring and

rewarding massive amounts of fraud. For the administration to

continue down this course after the Paris attacks is beyond

belief.

This is what we are dealing with. In October of last year, Mr. Palinkas, when the President was proposing this amnesty before it happened, issued a statement on behalf of his workers and his colleagues in the immigration service. He concludes in his statement:

That is why this statement is intended for the public. If

you care about your immigration security and your

neighborhood security, you must act now to ensure that

Congress stops this unilateral amnesty. Let your voice be

heard and spread the word to your neighbors. We who serve in

our nation's immigration agencies are pleading for your

help--don't let it happen. Express your concern to your

Senators and Congressmen before it is too late.

Well, that is what it is all about. The President 20 times said he did not have the power to do such a thing, but he--under political pressure, I suppose, or just an overreach on his part--decided to do it anyway. He said he didn't have the power to do this. Now he has acted on it, even though the officers pleaded for him to not do it, even though an overwhelming majority of the American people said don't do it, even though at least nine Democratic colleagues who were supporting this filibuster said the President didn't have the power or shouldn't do it this way, that these kinds of decisions are part of Congress's power.

Mr. President, don't do it, is what they said. Yet all nine of them are now standing in lockstep to block the funding of homeland security that funds every part of homeland security--it just doesn't fund this building they have leased across the river in Crystal City that is supposed to process up to 5 million people.

Colleagues, I want you to know it is absolutely true they will not even have face-to-face interviews with these applicants. This is going to be coming in by mail and computer. They will eventually be sent someplace to get a photo ID, they will be given a work permit to take any job in America, and the right to participate in Social Security and Medicare, weakening both of those programs over the long term, without any doubt.

That is what is occurring without congressional approval. This is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars just in the process.

But what I want Senator Durbin to know is this is going to weaken national security. Because if someone is here to do harm to America-- perhaps they are a drug dealer or they are a terrorist and they want to do criminal acts in America, and they have a record--they are not going to ask for the amnesty. They are going to stay and continue to work their wicked will. That is what they are going to do. Nobody is going to go look for them. Nobody is looking for them now, and nobody will be looking for them then. It will be business as usual.

But if you came here with a bad purpose--terrorism, drug dealing, other criminal activity--and you don't have a criminal record, you will just call in, send an email in, get your identity, and be allowed to permanently operate in the United States.

And colleagues, the American people, I think, understand this. Nobody is going to investigate anything, other than maybe to run a computer background check--a computer check to see if there is a criminal record out there. There is no way anybody is going to go back and try to verify whether someone has actually been in the country a number of years, verify family relations. They are not going to go back to some school to see if they actually graduated. There are no people to do that. This is just a blanket approval for people who apply, basically. You send in a few documents, and you are in. There is no capability of doing anything other than that.

So the President has just made a big mistake--a big mistake--and Congress needs to push back. Congress has the power to consider what kind of policies we want to set with regard to immigration. Those have been set. It is unlawful for people unlawfully in America to work in America and to participate in Social Security and all of those programs. It is just unlawful to do that. The President is violating that law in issuing directives through these departments and agencies to Federal employees, and those employees are protesting dramatically, but nobody seems to care.

Congress is the one body that is supposed to stand up to that, and the House of Representatives has done so. They passed a bill that would stop this activity, that says: we will not authorize the expenditure of any money to carry out this plan that Congress has not approved, that undermines the laws we have in place, and that--as Palinkas and other officers have told us--will encourage more people to come to America unlawfully, further decimating any integrity the system has.

We issued a 49-page document of 200 different actions taken since President Obama has been in office that undermine the moral integrity of the immigration system, making it more and more difficult to maintain even a modicum of legality in the system. His actions are continuing to erode that--the most dramatic, of course, being this Executive Amnesty. So we are just supposed to accept this.

This isn't a personal issue to attack President Obama or any of our colleagues. It is a big American policy issue. It is a huge issue for this country, and we need to understand it. It is a constitutional question as well as a policy question.

The constitutional question, which the House of Representatives understands, is that Congress appropriates money. Congress has no duty to placate the President of the United States when he wants to carry on an activity that Congress chooses not to fund. Congress has a duty to history and to generations yet unborn to defend and protect its power of the purse. Congress has to do that.

I plead with and say to my colleagues that those who know the President overreached on this, this is the time, this is the bill when we should fix this. Passage of this bill without the language of the House would basically fund all of the Executive Amnesty. It would not block funding of this activity. To take out the House language and to pass what our colleagues want to pass--a bill that makes no reference to the Executive Amnesty--takes no action to stop that activity; that is, it ratifies it. It is in effect a financial ratification of an unconstitutional overreach by the executive branch that will have ramifications in the future that we can't even imagine today.

Somebody asked the question--and I think it is a valid analogy--what if the President wanted to reduce the tax rate from 39 percent to 25 percent and Congress wouldn't pass it. So he tells all of his IRS agents--they work for him--don't collect any money over 25 percent. He says to the people: Don't send in money more than 25 percent. I told the agents not to collect more than 25 percent.

Is that so far-fetched, if this were to pass?

What the President is saying is, I know the law says you can't work here. I know the law says you are supposed to be removed if you are here illegally. I know all of these things, but we are just not going to do it. Not only am I not going to enforce the law with regard to immigration, but what I am going to do is I am going declare you as lawful. I am going to give you Social Security numbers and work permits.

A recent report from a liberal group, the Economic Policy Institute, announced on February 10 that the unemployed exceed job openings in almost every industry in America.

We know unemployment is exceedingly high, and we know that we have high job unemployment in the country. Remember, the unemployment rate we see today does not include people who drop out of the workforce, it only reflects those people who are underemployed and looking for more work or people who are actually seeking employment aggressively and have signed up on the unemployment rolls in efforts to get a job.

This indicates that in the big industry we used to hear a lot from-- the construction industry--there are six times as many construction workers as there are job openings. Even for professional and business services they are higher. In retail trade there are far more applicants than jobs. It goes on and on, sector after sector.

So remember, at a time of this high unemployment, we are also going to be legalizing 5 million people to take jobs. We know we have to get over 200,000 jobs created in a month--that it takes 180,000 or 200,000--just to stay level with the growth in the population of America. We have been slightly above that recently, and there has been a lot of positive spin about that. But we still have the lowest percentage of Americans in their working years actually working that we have had in this country in 40 years.

Income is down $4,000 since 2007 for middle-class working families. The median income is down $4,000 since 2007. So how is this good for lawful immigrants, permanent residents, American citizens? How is it good to bring in even more workers at a time when we have the smallest percentage of Americans in the workforce in 40 years? I point to 40 years ago because we began to see a lot more women working in

those years, so this is a reversal of that trend.

What do the American people think about it? Here is some Paragon Poll data that says by a more than 2-to-1 margin Americans strongly oppose rather than strongly support the President's Executive actions. Blue collar and middle class workers strongly oppose the President's action by more than a 3-to-1 majority. By a 50-point margin, voters want Congress to pass legislation making it harder for companies to hire workers now illegally in the country--71 to 21.

The American people want to make it harder. Their children, their husbands, their wives are looking for work and not finding any. They want to have a decent wage, a rising wage, and a chance to get a job. So this is a 50-point margin. Remember, the President's action--far from making it harder for people to get a job--is going to provide a photo ID, work authorizations, and Social Security numbers to 5 million people unlawfully here. Almost all of those are adults, frankly.

Just to show how people feel about this and how strongly they feel about it, Kellyanne Conway's polling data shows that by a 75-to-8 margin Americans say companies should raise wages instead of allowing more immigrant workers to fill jobs.

People would like to see a pay raise around here for a change. Salaries dropped 5 cents in December. We are not doing nearly as well as some would like to say. That is a Department of Labor statistic--a government statistic--that says that.

How about this? What about people who have the hardest time finding work right now. African Americans, according to the Conway poll, by an 86-to-3 margin say companies should raise wages instead of allowing more immigrant workers to take jobs. For Hispanics that is true by a margin of 71 to 11. So by a 71-to-11 margin, Hispanics in America say companies should raise wages instead of bringing in more workers to take jobs, pulling wages down. That is what the market says.

So let's go back to the morality of all of this, which is fundamental. We as members of Congress represent the people of the United States. That includes immigrants, recent immigrants--naturalized citizens--living here today. It includes native-born citizens. That is who our obligation is to. So we need to ask ourselves, how are we helping them at a time of difficult wage conditions, difficult job conditions, while allowing a surge of workers to come to compete for the few jobs there are? Is that fulfilling our duty to the voters, to the electors who sent us here? I think not.

I think it is time for somebody to focus on the needs of people who go to work every day, who have had their hours reduced, who have had their wages decline, who have had their spouses and children having a hard time finding work. That is what is happening.

To repeat for my good friend Senator Durbin, who says he has been trying to understand what is holding up the funding for the Department of Homeland Security, let me answer that question. The House has passed a bill. They have sent it to the Senate. More than a majority of the Senators have voted to pass a bill and fund the Department of Homeland Security. And you, as the Democratic whip, are leading the filibuster to block it from even coming up on the floor so amendments can be offered.

That is the answer to your question. So I don't think you should continue blaming Republicans for not attempting to fund Homeland Security. The whole world knows who is blocking the bill that funds Homeland Security: You and your team of filibusterers.

That is what it is. There is no doubt about that, and we need to get this straight. I don't believe the American people are going to be misled by that argument. I believe they are going to know what is happening in this Senate and why we have this difficulty.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President. I would like to touch on two topics. The first is that today the President has submitted a request for authorization for use of military force with regard to ISIL, or ISIS, as some call it.

First, I think it is good news that the President has made that submission, and I think he is right when he says the country is stronger when both Congress and the President act together.

I would say there is a pretty simple authorization he could ask for, and it would be one sentence, and that is, ``We authorize the President to defeat and destroy ISIL.'' And that is what I think we need to do.

I look forward to reading through his submission. I understand it contains a time limitation. It does not contain geographic limitations. It contains some language that supposedly will make people feel more comfortable about the use of ground troops.

An authorization to use force that has limitations built into it is really quite unprecedented. We did some research, and the Congressional Research Service said that there really were only two previous authorizations that have limited the President in terms of the use of force to be used or the duration of the conflict. One was in 1983 in Lebanon, and one was in 1993 in Somalia. Both of those were peacekeeping missions, so it made sense to limit the peacekeeping mission to use of force. But it appears that never before in certainly modern history has the Congress of the United States authorized the President to take on and defeat an enemy but has done so with limitations on the time or geography or anything of that nature. That is an important point for us to understand because under no circumstances can ISIL stay. What we need to be authorizing the President to do is to destroy them and to defeat them and allow the Commander in Chief--both the one we have now and the one who will follow--to put in place the military tactics necessary to destroy and defeat ISIS.

It is important to point out that circumstances on the ground might rapidly change. They already have. For example, when this began--if you look back a year and a half ago, if I had stood on the floor and given a speech about defeating ISIL or ISIS, no one would have known what I was talking about because at the time most Americans and most Members of Congress had no idea what that was. That is how quickly this has developed into a threat.

I would remind everyone that when they actually crossed over from Syria into Iraq, the President called them the JV team. Even today the facts on the ground continue to evolve very rapidly. For example, we now know through open source reports that ISIL has now established a presence in Derna, Libya, which gives them access to a port facility, and it is a completely uncontested space. There is no government shooting at them. There are no airstrikes. There is no one coming after them there. They can do whatever they want in Libya, and they are doing it. They are using it as a place to train, a place to recruit, a place to resupply, a place to raise money, and they have access to a port that allows them to bring all these things in.

There have also been open source reports of groups in Afghanistan beginning to pledge allegiance to ISIS. In fact, in at least four different countries in north Africa, there are now groups who have pledged allegiance to ISIL. So while we continue to focus on the conflict with relation to Iraq and Syria, we cannot overlook the fact that they are sprouting affiliates throughout the entire region.

I think that after the brutal murder of numerous Americans--we saw last week what happened to the Jordanian pilot--I don't have to spend much time convincing people how dangerous this group is. What we don't hear enough about is the atrocities being committed on a daily basis on the ground, what they are doing to the Sunni population, for example, of areas they have now conquered, the brutality, the way they enforce sharia law with brutal tactics, not to mention the brutal stories we have heard of women being sold off or given away as brides to ISIL fighters, children trafficked into slavery, entire populations slaughtered, and fighters who were captured and killed in mass killings. This is what this group envisions for the world.

The goals of this group are not simply to govern what we knew once as Iraq or Syria or Libya or any other country; their ultimate goal is for the entire world--including where we stand today--to one day live under their mandate, under the rules they have established, under their radical version of Sunni Islam. You may say that is far-fetched, and it may be today, but that is their clear ambition--to spread their form of radical Islam everywhere and anywhere they can. They openly talk about this.

This group needs to be defeated. I wish we had taken this group on earlier. I wish, in fact, that we had gotten involved in the conflict in Syria earlier and equipped moderate rebel elements, non-jihadist rebel elements on the ground so that they would have been the most powerful force there. The President failed to do that in a timely fashion, and as a result a vacuum was created, and that vacuum was filled by this group who has attracted foreign fighters from all over the world to join their ranks.

Now we are dealing with this problem, but I would argue better late than never. Had we dealt with this a year and a half ago or 2 years ago, it wouldn't have been easy, but it would have been easier. But it is important to deal with it decisively now. We can debate the tactics, but it is the job of the Commander in Chief, in consultation with his military officials who surround him and advise him, to come up with the appropriate tactics to defeat the enemy.

For our purposes--very straightforward--ISIL is the enemy. They need to be defeated, and we should authorize this President and future Presidents to do what they can and what they must to defeat ISIS and erase them from the equation.

Venezuela

Mr. President, I also wish to take a moment to talk a little bit about what is happening in Venezuela. Tomorrow, February 12, will mark the 1-year anniversary since students and others across Venezuela took to the streets in peaceful demonstrations and demanded a better government and a better future than the current one, which is corrupt and incompetent and provides no leadership to the country.

Tomorrow also marks the 1-year anniversary since the Venezuelan Government, under Nicolas Maduro, responded with a violent crackdown that left dozens of people dead, thousands injured, and hundreds in jail as political prisoners. There have been at least 50 documented cases of torture by government

forces on peaceful demonstrators, and more than 1,700 individuals await trial today in Venezuela before a judiciary that is completely controlled by Maduro's government. This includes Leopoldo Lopez, who has been languishing in the Ramo Verde prison for almost a year.

In the year since the people took to the streets demanding more opportunity, accountability, and more freedom, the basic necessities have vanished from the shelves. It is one of the richest nations in the hemisphere, and its economy is in shambles.

Venezuela is also plagued with one of the world's highest murder rates, rampant corruption related to state assets, a 57-percent inflation rate, a junk rating on the global bond market, and unprecedented scarcity of goods as basic as toilet paper. Lately, things have gotten so bad in Venezuela under Maduro that they are no longer just kidnapping people. As the Diario las Americas, which is a newspaper in Miami, reported earlier this week, people are now kidnapping dogs and other pets in Venezuela and holding them for ransom. That is how bad things have gotten.

Why is this happening? Why has the cradle of Latin American independence--a country blessed with oil and energy wealth, with talented and hard-working people--become a failed state?

For starters, because it is modeling its economy after Cuba, which itself is a failed state.

Second, for years Venezuela has been in the grips of incompetent buffoons, one after another. First it was Hugo Chavez and now Nicolas Maduro. They have squandered the nation's riches.

Third, the country is being run by corrupt individuals. Just last week reports came out alleging that the speaker of the national assembly, Diosdado Cabello, is himself a drug kingpin.

Fourth, even with all the oil wealth Venezuela has squandered, it still possesses some of the largest oil reserves on the planet, but oil prices are dropping. In a country such as Venezuela where innovation and entrepreneurship are stifled, where wealth and power are concentrated in the government and its cronies, the entire economy is the oil industry. Ninety-six percent of Venezuela's export revenues come from oil.

So I am proud that in December the Senate and the House passed and the President signed a bill that sanctions human rights violators in Venezuela. It mandates that their assets be frozen and visa restrictions be placed upon them if they are involved in human rights violations. That is going to be critical going forward. As things get worse, more people in Venezuela will take to the streets, and the national guard in the country--which is nothing but armed thugs working on behalf of the Maduro government--will be tempted to crack down on people violently. So our legislation would impose visa sanctions and asset sanctions on individuals responsible for these human rights violations.

The good news is that the President has moved forward with some of these visa restrictions, and that is a very positive step. America should not be and cannot be a playground for Venezuela's human rights violators. But the financial sanctions part of the bill are long overdue. They are urgently needed because things are only going to get worse in Venezuela. People are only going to get more desperate. They are only going to speak out more. They are only going to demand freedom more. And I suspect, although I hope I am wrong, that the response from the Venezuelan Government will be more violence and more crackdowns on the people of their own nation.

If, God forbid, they use lethal force against their own people--which is a right they have reserved for themselves, a right the government has approved and has given authority to the national guard to use--we cannot simply stand by and watch as innocent people are killed or injured because the regime believes there will be no consequences.

So today I wanted to come here for a few moments and urge the President to do what I asked him to do in a letter last week, and that is to not sit idly by on the Venezuelan sanction law he signed last year but to use it--to use it immediately and decisively to make clear that the United States of America will not stand for repression taking place in Venezuela and that we will use the tools of our economy and the power we have given the President to punish those responsible for committing human rights violations in Venezuela against the people of that great nation.

Thank you, Mr. President.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, many of my colleagues know I have been fighting for years to end the abuse of the H-1B visa program and help disadvantaged U.S. workers who are harmed by that program. Today I wish to draw the attention of my colleagues to a recent incident that highlights how some employers are potentially using legal avenues to import foreign workers, lay off qualified Americans, and then export jobs overseas. I was shocked by the heartless manner in which U.S. workers were injured in the case I am about to describe.

First, I wish to remind my colleagues about how the H-1B program is supposed to work. Under the terms of the H-1B program, U.S. employers may import into the United States each year up to 65,000 so-called specialty occupation workers. The jobs being filled must be a job for which a bachelor's degree is necessary. Even though the annual cap is 65,000, the actual number of foreign workers being imported is much more because of numerous exemptions. In fiscal year 2012, for example, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved a total of 262,569 H-1B petitions--way above the legal limit of 65,000 or I should say the supposed limit of 65,000.

About 60 percent of H-1B workers come to fill computer-related occupations. Every year the list of the top 10 H-1B employers is dominated by foreign-based companies offering information technology or IT consulting services to the clients.

Under the law, H-1B employers are also required to: No. 1, pay the workers the greater of the prevailing wage for that job in that area or the wage the employer pays to similarly qualified U.S. workers doing the same job and at the same time--or the No. 2 condition--provide working conditions that will not adversely affect other similarly employed U.S. workers.

Additionally, H-1B employers may not displace a U.S. worker within the period beginning 90 days before and ending 90 days after the date of filing any H-1B petition by that employer.

Now I will describe what the program lacks. Most people believe employers try to recruit Americans before they petition for H-1B workers. Yet under the law, not all employers are required to prove to the Department of Labor that they tried to find an American to fill the job first. That is right. American workers do not get the first chance at these jobs in the United States, and if there is an equally or even better qualified U.S. worker, the company does not have to offer him or her that job.

I have pushed for changes in the legislation in that law. In fact, I offered several pro-U.S. worker amendments during consideration of the immigration bill in 2013. Every amendment I offered was defeated. The majority at that time--meaning the Democratic majority, and it was a bipartisan majority that helped defeat it--defeated these pro-American worker amendments. They pushed through S. 744, the 2013 immigration bill, without this significant, much needed change.

Let me describe to my colleagues the appalling instance referenced above.

I have described what the H-1B law was and how, during the immigration debate of 2013, I tried to amend it and improve it, and I wasn't successful. I started my remarks tonight by talking about the abuse of H-1B, the law not being followed, overseas companies bringing workers in here for an American company to employ, and then in turn these jobs are going to be shipped overseas. So now I wish to describe this appalling incident I referenced earlier.

Last August, Southern California Edison started laying off 400 American workers from its IT department. The company replaced them with foreign H-1B workers. According to the company, 100 additional American workers who will also be replaced by H-1B workers will leave supposedly voluntarily. According to Computerworld, the final major batch of layoffs is scheduled for March 6 or March 7.

The foreign workers who are replacing the American workers at Edison are employees of two overseas-based IT consulting companies that are also two of the largest users of H-1B visas. In 2013 one of the two companies paid the largest immigration fine in U.S. history. That company paid $34 million in a civil settlement after allegations of systemic visa fraud and abuse.

The jobs being filled by H-1B workers are manifestly not jobs for which Americans are unavailable. I say that because the jobs are currently filled by skilled American workers. It is disturbing that not only have these American workers been laid off, but also some of them have reportedly had to train their very own replacements.

A columnist for the Los Angeles Times writes that by laying off hundreds of its American IT staff and replacing them with relatively low-wage foreign contract workers, Edison stands to save as much as 40 percent in wage costs per laid-off worker. One

laid-off Edison worker told the columnist that company supervisors told a group of workers last year: ``We can get four Indian guys far cheaper than the price of you.''

Worse yet, most of the 500 jobs that had been held by Americans will eventually just move overseas. According to the Los Angeles Times, Edison admits that eventually about 70 percent of the work will shift overseas permanently.

Edison describes the 400 layoffs as a ``transition'' to the foreign IT consulting companies that ``will lead to enhancements that deliver faster and more efficient tools and applications for services that customers rely on.''

Then it adds further: ``[T]hrough outsourcing, [Edison's] information technology organization will adopt a proven business strategy commonly and successfully used by top U.S. companies that [Edison] benchmarks against.''

With respect to replacing American workers with H-1B workers, Edison says the company ``is not hiring H-1B workers to replace displaced employees.'' Edison's cynical defense is built upon a very shameless exploitation of a loophole in the H-1B laws. That loophole says that technically Edison isn't the H-1B workers' employer; the two foreign consulting companies are. The H-1B workers are just contracted out for extended, potentially multiyear periods from the foreign consulting companies to the American company, Edison. Thus, Edison argues that it is not subject to the requirements under the immigration laws that I spoke of earlier. They argue that because they are not the employer who petitioned directly for the H-1B workers, they--Edison--don't have to abide by the working condition requirements or the 90-day rule.

The condemnation of this attack on American workers has been very quick and, quite frankly, bipartisan. On February 10 over 300 members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers rallied in Irvine, CA, in support of their fellow Edison employees. Several Members of Congress have expressed concern about the situation. On February 17 the Economic Policy Institute sent a letter to the Secretary of Labor asking him to investigate the Edison layoffs. Specifically, the institute asked the Secretary of Labor to determine whether Edison, the foreign consulting companies, or any of the parties involved in these layoffs violated the requirements that the hiring of H-1B workers not ``adversely affect the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers comparably employed.''

I echo the request of the Economic Policy Institute. The prohibition on adversely affecting U.S. workers can reasonably be applied to situations, such as in the Edison case, where the H-1B workers are contractors at a worksite rather than employees.

I also draw your attention to a powerful February 16 Los Angeles Times editorial entitled ``End H-1B visa program's abuse.'' The Los Angeles Times calls Edison's action ``part of a years-long trend among companies of misusing H-1B visas to undercut wages and offshore high- paying American jobs.'' The Los Angeles Times concludes that the H-1B program, although perhaps well-intentioned, is ``broken'' and that ``Congress needs to fix it.'' And, of course, I could not agree more, as evidenced by all the amendments I offered in 2013 on the immigration bill.

This situation with Southern California Edison is not new. It is happening time and time again. American workers are losing out because the law is not strong enough to protect them, so it needs to be fixed.

Any proposal to reform the H-1B program must include substantially increased protections for U.S. workers such as I have proposed many times in the past. These protections must at a minimum include the requirement that companies first recruit here at home before they import more foreign workers. We also need to reform the H-1B wage requirements so that U.S. workers' wages would no longer be undercut by H-1B workers' wages. There also needs to be more oversight of the program, including random audits of those who use the program.

Tightening the law to ensure that U.S. workers have the first opportunity at high-paying, high-skilled jobs in this country is a no- brainer. Yet there is so much opposition to this philosophy. I just cannot believe the opposition. As I stated earlier, the majority in the last Congress--and that happened to be a bipartisan majority--pushed for changes to the H-1B program but voted against every single amendment I offered to ensure that U.S. workers were given priority.

Now there is a lot of fanfare and a lot of talk about a high-skilled bill that has been reintroduced in the Senate that would increase the annual number of H-1B visas. The sponsors of the bill claim it will ``boost our competitiveness in the global economy.'' This bill only makes the problems worse. It doesn't plug the loopholes. It doesn't make sure American workers are put before foreign workers. It doesn't ensure that employers don't use the program to pay cheaper wages, which then in turn disadvantages U.S. workers.

The H-1B program could be a very worthwhile program. According to the original intent, I obviously would support it because we want workers to do the jobs that need to be done in America, but it should first be people who are already here.

Our employment-based immigration programs could have served and could again serve a valuable purpose if used properly. However, they are being misused and abused. They are failing the American worker. Reforms are needed to put integrity back into the programs and to ensure that American workers and students are given every chance to fill vacant jobs in this country. So I am putting my colleagues on notice that I am committed to this effort. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I don't intend on allowing legislation to move through this body without reforms to the H-1B program that protect American workers.

I yield the floor.