Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise in support of Staci Yandle, who has been nominated to serve as a Federal district court judge in the Southern District of Illinois. She is going to replace a fine Federal judge, J. Philip Gilbert, who took senior status in March. It is a judicial emergency, so I am glad we are moving to it today.

Staci Yandle has the experience, integrity, and the judgment to be an excellent Federal judge. Born in Centreville, IL--incidentally, the hometown of my wife--she currently lives in Carlyle, IL, downstate. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois and her law degree from Vanderbilt.

Over the course of her career, Staci Yandle has gained extensive experience in the courtroom. She has her own solo practice based in O'Fallon, IL, which she has operated now for 7 years. She has worked for several outstanding law firms in southern Illinois and handled a wide range of litigation matters, including employment, education, medical injury, civil rights, and nursing home abuse cases. She also worked as an arbitrator for the Twentieth Judicial Circuit Court in Illinois.

Ms. Yandle currently serves on the board of the Illinois Bar Foundation. She has taught as an adjunct law professor at the St. Louis University School of Law.

Additionally, she has a distinguished record of pro bono service in southern Illinois, representing indigent clients and nonprofit corporations, including the Delta Economic Development Corporation, which operates a childcare center in St. Clair County.

Ms. Yandle's nomination is historic in several respects. Never before in the course of the history of our State has there been an Article III Federal judge who was openly a member of the LGBT community. Upon confirmation, Staci Yandle will be the first. Upon confirmation, she will also be the first African-American Federal judge ever to serve in the Southern District of Illinois. She will be only the second woman to serve, as she is joining Nancy Rosenstengel, who was approved by the Senate just a few weeks ago.

In short, Staci Yandle's confirmation marks another important milestone in America's journey toward equality of opportunity.

Ms. Yandle was recommended to me by a bipartisan screening committee which I established to take a look at all of the judicial candidates, and I was pleased to recommend her to President Obama. He forwarded her nomination for consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee where it passed with a strong vote. I hope there will be an equally strong vote today in support of her nomination.

In conclusion, Ms. Yandle is an excellent nominee and I hope my colleagues will join me in voting to confirm her.

I yield the floor.

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

I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr.

Casey) and the Senator from Michigan (Mr. Levin) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Casey) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Casey) is necessarily absent.

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

Mr. President, just a few minutes ago the Senator from Texas, my friend John Cornyn, came to the floor and spoke about immigration and the situation on our border. It was a very moving statement that he has made before and needs to make again. He did it today and identified a serious issue we are facing--not just one but several serious issues. They are dramatized by the fact that we are seeing hundreds of children who are being turned loose on America's border with Mexico crossing the border, being apprehended, and being placed in a humane situation in America--children, some as young as 5, 6, and 7 years of age, not accompanied by adults. You think to yourself, what is going on here?

Senator Cornyn, of course, representing the State of Texas, knows this better than most because they are watching these children.

Eighty percent of these children come from three countries: Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. In these countries there is a state of lawlessness at this point that is so desperate--so desperate--that a family would turn over a child to someone who says: I will get them across the American border.

Some of these kids show up--I do not know how many; I cannot tell you--with little slips of paper with a name and a telephone number of a relative in the United States. Think about that for a second. How desperate would a family have to be to turn over a 5-year-old, a 6-or 7-year-old child to someone and say: Take them hundreds of miles and enter illegally into the United States of America with my little girl or my little boy. I cannot even imagine the desperation that people are facing that they would do such a thing.

That represents a major problem for the United States at several levels.

First, we are a humane and caring nation. We will not see a child abandoned at the border and turn our backs. What we are doing is taking these children into protective custody, trying to find a way to link them with some member of their family for their own good. Imagine the trauma these kids have gone through at that point and now what they might face. That is why we are stepping forward.

Senator Cornyn came to the floor, and he rightfully said that many of these children do not make these journeys unharmed. Terrible things happen to them. Awful things happen to them--assaults, rapes, beatings, and God only knows. You think to yourself, what impact will that trauma have on that child for such a long period of time?

The lawlessness in these three countries is leading to this outmigration for safety, this desperation by many families and parents.

The second aspect is one that we cannot ignore either. Many children come into the United States, and some of them come in the most extreme situations for a very basic human reason--children who were raised in other countries and their parents are in the United States. They have not seen them sometimes for years. They have received cash to keep them going under the care of another relative, gifts at Christmas, gifts for their birthday. But some of these kids--these little kids--will jump on these freight trains and go through Central America toward the United States in the hope of finding a parent. I cannot tell you the exact numbers.

There is a book that won the Pulitzer Prize called ``Enrique's Journey.'' A woman named Nazario who writes for the L.A. Times went down to Central America, got on one of these trains with these kids, who sit on top of these freight cars as they go through these countries trying to get to the United States. Many of them--she believes the majority of them--are simply trying to be reunited with their parents.

Listen to the tragedy in what I have just described. Think about the desperation of families and the desperation of these children and where it puts us in the world today, and reflect for a moment on a political reality that did not come up in the earlier statement. The political reality is that it has been

more than 1 year since the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill with 68 votes, 14 Republicans joining the Democrats in a bipartisan effort.

I know a little bit about this bill because I joined the group who wrote it, four Democrats, four Republicans, sitting across the table-- on our side, Chuck Schumer of New York, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Mike Bennet of Colorado; on the Republican side, John McCain of Arizona, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Marco Rubio of Florida. We sat in this room--many rooms, I should say-- over a period of months and hammered out a comprehensive bill that deals with many of the issues that are behind the tragedy I just described. That is something we ought to acknowledge is part of our challenge today, that 1 year has gone by and the House of Representatives has refused to even call this bill for consideration.

I am pretty proud of what we did and what we wrote. I do not think there are many pieces of legislation that bipartisan that have the support of business and labor and religious groups of every denomination. They all support our bill. I am proud of that fact.

I served in the House. I know they have some pride of authorship. They may want to do their version of the bill. That is OK. But doing nothing is not OK. It is not acceptable. We have a broken immigration system. Senator Cornyn of Texas said as much himself.

If we are going to deal with the problem at the border with these children, if we are going to deal with the problem of 11 million or more undocumented people in America--many of whom have been here for long periods of time, may live in a household where everyone else in the house is an American citizen, and I know of these cases in Chicago; I have met them--people who are willing to come forward at this point in their lives, register with the government, tell the government where they live, where they work, have a background check so that if they have serious criminal issues they are gone, stay in this country, pay their taxes, pay a fine for being undocumented, learn English, and wait 13 years at the earliest before they can become citizens, and they go to the absolute back of the line--that is what our bill says. That, to me, is a movement toward a solution of what we are facing today.

But I hear many times criticism of this President. I will tell you, this President has been fully supportive of this effort for comprehensive immigration reform. I cannot tell you how many hours I have spent with him and so many others trying to work toward this goal. I know, because he used to be my junior Senator from Illinois and we are pretty close. I know that when he was going through the transition to become President, he invited Senators McCain and Graham to meet with him in Chicago before he was sworn in. They talked about immigration. That is how important it is to this President. So those who would blame him or dismiss him for the current situation, it is not fair. He supports comprehensive immigration reform.

He said to the House of Representatives and the Republican leadership that he will step back in terms of doing anything on an executive level and give them the opportunity to do what they are supposed to do--call this matter for a vote. We are praying they do it before the end of July because we are running out of time. In just a few months there will be an election and then a lameduck session between the election and the new Congress. Not much can get done in that period of time.

The President has said to Speaker Boehner and the Republicans: Move the bill. So when I hear the criticism of some of the terrible injustices in our current immigration system, I think we ought to be very honest. We have passed a bill--a bipartisan bill, a comprehensive bill--in the Senate, and it has been sitting in the House for more than a year. More than a year.

I came to this issue, like most, with a family story. I have told my family story on the floor many times, but I am proud of it, so I am going to repeat it.

My mother was an immigrant to this country. She came to America, brought here at the age of 2. She was brought from Lithuania. My grandmother packed her up with my aunt and uncle and brought them over in a ship. They landed in Baltimore and somehow got on a train to St. Louis. They were headed for their great opportunity in America, their land of opportunity, the town I was born in, East St. Louis, IL. That is where I came from. That is where they landed because the Lithuanians were there working in the packing houses and the steel mills and all of the jobs that immigrants take.

That is my story. That is my family's story. But that is also America's story. Those immigrants who come here and take the dirtiest, hardest jobs, work night and day trying to make sure their kids have another chance, create time and again generations of renewal in America.

There is something in our DNA, my friends--all of us who are proud to say we are Americans--there is something in our DNA about that immigrant spirit, to think that my family and millions of others said: We are leaving Jurbarkas, Lithuania, and we are going to America, where we do not even speak the language.

What an adventure. What courage. What Americanism. That is what creates us. That is in our national DNA. Thank goodness it is.

There is something else I would like to note. It has been 2 years since President Obama issued an Executive order. It was known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, DACA.

Here is the history. Thirteen years ago I got a call in my Chicago office from a Korean mother who said she had a problem. She had brought her daughter to the United States at the age of 2 on a visitor's visa. Her daughter was now grown up, 18 years of age. She had never filed any papers for her. Technically mom, who was here legally as a citizen, had an undocumented child in her house.

The problem was that this undocumented girl had turned out to be a spectacular pianist and had won an opportunity for scholarships to the Juilliard School of Music and the New York Conservatory of Music. She was that good. When she went to fill out the application, they asked her for her citizenship. She turned to her mom and said: What am I?

Her mom said: I don't know.

The girl said: What are you going to do?

Mom said: Let's call Durbin.

So they called my office. We checked the law. The law was very clear. That little girl who had been in the United States for 16 or 17 years at that point in her life was undocumented and under the law had to leave the United States for 10 years and apply to come back in. That is how the law was written.

I thought to myself: That is not fair. That little girl did not have any say in her parents moving here. She had nothing to say when they failed to file the necessary papers. Now she was the victim of our legal system and her parents' failure to file the papers so she could be here legally.

So I introduced the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act I introduced 13 years ago said: If you are in that kind of a circumstance--brought here as a child by your parents, have lived in the United States, finished high school, no serious criminal record--we will give you a chance. Either enlist in our military or go to college for at least 2 years, and we will put you on the path to citizenship.

That is the DREAM Act. Well, that bill has been around a long time-- 13 years. It has passed in the Senate as part of a comprehensive bill, and it has passed in the House individually. But it has never passed in both places, which, as we know, is what is necessary to become a law.

So I wrote to President Obama, with 22 of my colleagues--that at one point included Senator Lugar of Indiana, my Republican colleague then-- and asked the President: Create an Executive order so these young people eligible for the DREAM Act will not be deported while we debate. Give them a chance to be here in a legally recognized status because they would qualify under this bill that continues to pass--the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. That, of course, was enacted by the President in Executive order 2 years ago.

After it was enacted, Congressman Luis Gutieerrez and I--in Chicago-- said: We want to give all of those eligible to apply for this deferred action

protection under the Executive order a chance to sign up.

So Luis and I said: We are going to reserve Navy Pier--if you have ever been to Chicago, there is a huge ballroom at the end of Navy Pier, one of the most popular sites in downtown--and we are going to invite any young person who wants to sign up for DACA so they won't be deported to come in and sign up.

I said initially: I hope we get 200 people to come because we have a big room here.

In the end over 10,000 showed up. It overwhelmed us. We had volunteer lawyers there, lots of friends there, and people helping. Parents got in line at midnight the night before, standing with their kids and waiting for a chance to give these kids a chance to be legally in the United States and not deported; that is how much it meant to them.

Some of these parents, sadly, didn't have the same protection, but they wanted to do everything they could for their kids. Well, the time has passed, and in the course of time we have seen 560,000 children across America who signed up for this protection under DACA--560,000.

I have come to the floor and told about 50 or 60 stories about these DREAMers. We call them DREAMers--these young kids. Each time I tell the story, I get responses from people saying: I can't believe that we still haven't resolved this problem.

I want to tell you one of these stories today. I want to update you about one of the DREAMers I have spoken about on the floor.

This is Erika Andiola and her mother Guadalupe Arreola. Guadalupe's husband--Erika's father--abused her for 15 years. In order to escape this abuse and protect her kids, she fled to the United States.

Free from threats of violence, Guadalupe and her children made life in this country. Her daughter Erika graduated with honors from Arizona State University with a bachelor's degree in psychology. She is the founder and president of the Arizona DREAM Act Coalition, a group advocating for immigration reform.

After receiving DACA, her protection under the President's Executive order, Erika became the first DREAMer to work for the Congress. She could legally do it under the President's order. She served as district outreach director for Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. I might add that Congressman Gutieerrez also hired one of the earliest DREAMers under DACA on his staff as well.

The same week that Erika was hired to work for a Member of Congress, they received notice that her mother was being placed in deportation proceedings. Why were we trying to deport Erika's mother, Guadalupe? Because she was pulled over for a traffic violation and she had a deportation order that was 15 years old.

Erika made a difficult decision. She gave up her job with the Congresswoman and started focusing on helping her mom. Her mother wrote me a letter and said:

I have always taught my children that there is nothing more

important than the love for our families. . . . I ask

Congress and the President to realize that I am a human being

who was just looking to protect my children from a life full

of violence.

There are 11 million undocumented immigrants like Guadalupe in the United States. They are hard-working men and women with courage who leave everything behind they know to build a better life. They have strong family values, and they make a real contribution to our country and our economy. They serve our food in restaurants. They clean off the tables when we are finished eating. They take care of our small children in daycare, and they watch our parents in nursing homes. That is who the undocumented are in America.

They raise children like Erika and make contributions to our country. They want to be Americans. But under current law, there is no way for them to get in line and legalized.

Last week the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, was kind enough to come to Chicago. I invited him. I wanted him to see the Broadview processing facility, where those who are about to face deportation are held. It is a grim reminder of families that are being broken up right before our eyes. I wanted him also to meet with people in the Muslim community, in the Syrian community, in the Hispanic communities, and talk about immigration in America today. He was kind enough to do that.

Along with my colleagues, Congressmen Luis Gutieerrez and Bill Foster, we visited the center. We met in the detention cells a 51-year- old man who came to the United States at the age of 6. He has three kids who are U.S. citizens. One now serves in the U.S. Army and another is a police officer. In the visitation area outside, we met his mother, who is 80 years old. She was hoping to get a glimpse of her son before he was deported.

This is the human impact of immigration laws and policies. The House of Representatives has a chance to fix this and many other problems. We can move together to stop this horrible humanitarian crisis at the border with children. We can move together to deal with the undocumented among us who will step forward, pay their taxes and their fines, learn English, go to the back of the line and wait their turns. We will be a better country if we do.

I hope the House Republicans will take up this responsibility. If they have a better idea, bring it to the floor and vote on it but, if not, call up our bipartisan Senate bill. Let's fix this broken immigration system. Let's move this country forward.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Casey) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Casey) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Iowa (Mr. Harkin) and the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Begich) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Begich) and the Senator from Iowa (Mr. Harkin) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Alaska (Mr. Begich) and the Senator from Iowa (Mr. Harkin) are necessarily absent.

I ask, through the Chair, if the Senator from Massachusetts will yield for a question.

First, through the Chair, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for her leadership and her effort to refinance student loans.

Is it true that what was at stake yesterday was an opportunity for 25 million student loan borrowers--out of roughly 40 million nationwide-- to refinance their student loans at a lower interest rate?

Through the Chair, I also ask the Senator from Massachusetts if it is true that the way we paid for this--this loss of interest by the Federal Government--was to impose the Buffett rule, which meant that those who are multimillionaires, for example, would have a higher income tax rate--at least as high as the secretaries who work for them--and that would have meant a tax increase on roughly 22,000 millionaires.

Through the Chair again, the choice yesterday was between helping 25 million student borrowers get a lower interest rate, saving on average $2,000 a year, and asking 22,000 multimillionaires to pay slightly more in income tax, and sadly only three Republicans would join the Democrats in saying: Let's help the student borrowers. Is that what happened?

I say through the Chair to the Senator from Massachusetts that I have been traveling the State of Illinois, the city of Chicago, and every campus I stop on there are students who come forward and tell me their stories of the debt they have incurred because of their degrees and the impact it has had on their lives. There are student teachers who sadly cannot take jobs teaching because they owe too much money from college.

Is the Senator from Massachusetts hearing that in her State and around the country?

I will ask the last question through the Chair. So yesterday--so everybody can understand what happened--there was a threatened Republican filibuster to stop us from even debating this bill, and in order to stop the filibuster and begin debating the bill so 25 million students could get a lower interest rate on the student loans, we needed 60 votes on the floor. We had all the Democrats and only three Republicans--Senator Collins of Maine, Senator Corker of Tennessee, and Senator Murkowski of Alaska--prepared to vote. No other Republican Senator would join us in starting the debate on lowering the interest rate on student loans.

We need two more Republican Senators to join those three Republicans so we can start bringing relief to student borrowers all across the United States.

Is that where we stand today?

I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for her leadership on this important issue.

Madam President, what is the order of business on the floor?

Madam President, I will follow up on the dialogue I just had with Senator Warren.

These are issues that really hit home for families. We have had four issues on the floor of the Senate in the last several months which really define the difference between the political parties.

The Democrats have argued and urged that we extend unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed in America so they can find work, save their homes, pay their utility bills, and have a cell phone to go look for work. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough support on the other side of the aisle when it came to extending unemployment benefits.

The next issue was to raise the minimum wage--which we have not done for a long time--so that those who are struggling--primarily women-- will have a basic minimum wage so they can get by from paycheck to paycheck. Many of us believe that if you are willing to get up and go to work every morning, you should not live in poverty in America.

The third issue was gender equality. If my daughter and my son work the same job, they should get the same paycheck. There should not be discrimination against women. Republicans opposed us on that.

Now comes the fourth issue: renegotiating college student loans so that some 40 million student loan borrowers across America have a chance to pay less interest on their student loans, their monthly payments would go down, and they would be able to pay off their loans sooner so they could get on with their lives. We could only get 3 Republicans out of 45 to join us in an effort to start the debate on the bill yesterday, so we fell short. We needed two Republican Senators to join Senator Warren, myself, and others--Senator Franken of Minnesota and Senator Reed of Rhode Island--to join us in initiating this conversation.

I say to my Republican colleagues, when you go home this weekend, try to find some college students and their families and engage them in this conversation. You will find what we found out on the Democratic side. If you listen to working families who are struggling to put their kids through school, they will tell you they need help. We offered help yesterday, but we fell short by two Republican votes.

I hope the Republican filibuster will be overturned next week when we return.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from California (Mrs. Boxer), the Senator from Missouri (Mrs. McCaskill), the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Merkley), and the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Rockefeller) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from California (Mrs. Boxer), the Senator from Missouri (Mrs. McCaskill), the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Merkley), and the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Rockefeller) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from California (Mrs. Boxer), the Senator from Missouri (Mrs. McCaskill), the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Merkley), the Senator from Florida (Mr. Nelson), the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Rockefeller), and the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 12, 2014, at 10 a.m., in room SR-328A of the Russell Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``A National Priority: The Importance of Child Nutrition Programs to our Nation's Health, Economy and National Security.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 12, 2014, at 10:30 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 12, 2014, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Regional Implications of a Nuclear Deal with Iran.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 12, 2014, at 3 p.m., to hold a hearing entitled ``Thailand's Political Crisis.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to

meet during the session of the Senate on June 12, 2014, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Securing Raiological Materials: Examining the Threat Next Door.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 12, 2014, at 10 a.m., in SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct an executive business meeting.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 12, 2014, at 2:30 p.m.

I announce that the Senator from Missouri (Mrs. McCaskill) is necessarily absent.

Mr. President, the Senator from Texas just spoke on the floor about the number of children coming across the border into the United States, and the numbers are frightening, they are so large.

We had a hearing today with Jeh Johnson, who is the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. A lot of questions were asked, such as if actions by our government or statements by our President are luring these children into the United States. Let me make the record clear. There is nothing--nothing--about the President's Executive order involving those we call DREAMers--children brought to the United States--which would lead any of these families of the children to believe they could qualify to be treated as qualified for docket--that is, deferred deportation--because they would be eligible DREAMers. None--none--of these children would be eligible, period. So the suggestion that this Executive order has anything to do with luring these children to the United States is wrong.

Second, there is turmoil in Mexico and Central America. That is a fact. I am sure that is a factor in decisions being made by some to leave. But there is an issue that has been overlooked here time and again which needs to be addressed. There is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book entitled ``Enrique's Journey.'' The author is an L.A. Times writer named Sonia Nazario. She started following the paths of children-- children--coming into the United States from Mexico and Central America and even South America. Here is what she found after her investigation: 48,000 children a year coming across the border into the United States, some as young as 7 years old, half of them without any escort. How do they get in? Well, many of them jump on freight trains. Can my colleagues imagine, 7-, 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds jumping on a freight train to come into the United States, trying to get here by themselves--half of them by themselves? Why? Seventy-five percent gave the same reason: To find my mother. To find my father.

That is what is bringing so many of them into the United States. What happened? Mother left that village in Mexico or somewhere in Central America and came to the United States. She works hard now and sends money home and occasionally will send toys at birthdays and Christmas and exchange photographs. And heartbroken children get on these trains and try to find them.

They found a 9-year-old boy walking around Los Angeles. They asked him why and where he was going. He said: Where is San Francisco? He was trying to find his mother.

That is the reality and the heartbreak of what is happening at our border when it comes to children, so many times over. The lucky ones make it. Many don't. A survey done by the University of Houston found over and over these kids on their way are starving, they are beaten, they are robbed, they are raped over and over. Some are pushed off of the train. Some die. Some are maimed. That is the reality.

What does it tell us? As we step back and look at this, what does it tell us? It tells us what we already know: Our immigration system in America is broken. It is flat-out broken. I know this, and everyone else does too. Twelve million people living amongst us, some of whom have been here for decades, worried about being deported tomorrow, with a household where the wife and mother may be a citizen, the children may all be citizens, but one person in the household is not--that is our broken immigration system.

Well, Congress, stop talking about it. Do something about it. So we did. We did. And the Presiding Officer was here. It was a little over a year ago. We put together a bipartisan coalition of Senators--four Democrats, four Republicans, and I was one of them--and we sat down and for months worked out comprehensive immigration reform to finally fix this broken immigration system and start to end some of the tragedies we know are happening to children and to their parents all across America. We worked on it for months.

It was a pretty interesting coalition. It included John McCain, a well-known Republican Senator from Arizona; Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator from South Carolina; Marco Rubio, a Republican Senator from Florida; Jeff Flake, a Republican Senator from Arizona; and on our side, Chuck Schumer of New York, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Michael Bennet of Colorado, and myself.

We worked on it for months, and we produced a comprehensive immigration reform bill that was endorsed by virtually every major labor organization and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. We go through the list of virtually every religion in America, and major religions endorsed it. It was an amazing bipartisan product, and I was proud to be a part of it and even more proud when the day came that we passed it on the floor of the Senate with 68 votes--Republicans and Democrats. We did it.

What happened to it? We sent it to the U.S. House of Representatives, where it has languished for over a year. For over a year they have refused to call this bill.

Now Senators who come to the floor, who voted against the reform, who don't acknowledge the obvious--that the Republican House will not even call this bill for debate and a vote--and who criticize the current immigration system in America, aren't telling us the whole story. The whole story is that we need to fix this system top to bottom--yes, a path to citizenship but a path to citizenship that eliminates those with serious criminal records--we don't want them--makes those who want to enter this path pay a fine and learn English and make sure as well that they are paying their taxes to our country. Then we will put them on a path to citizenship, where they can be at the back of the line. Under our bill, it would take a person 13 years before they become a citizen. All that time they are paying their fines, they are learning English, they are doing what they are supposed to do, and they are subject to regular questioning as to any problems that might be in their lives that we should know about. That is what the bill does.

So when I hear people come to the floor and say this immigration system is broken, I agree completely. It is a tragedy to think thousands of children are crossing the border in search of their parents, as young as 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, and teenagers, being preyed upon.

I just had in my office the Ambassador of Ecuador to the United States of America. We talked about this issue. She told me the story of a 12-year-old girl whose mother and father were in New York, and this heartbroken girl decided she had to at any cost be reunited with them. She jumped on one of those trains, and she was apprehended by Mexican authorities. The parents found out about it and tried to find her. They put her in an orphanage. She was going through the Mexican legal system. The next thing: It was announced that this 12-year-old girl had committed suicide--questionable but still a tragedy. And this Ambassador from Ecuador said: I can't tell you what that did to our country. It broke our hearts to think that little girl was just trying to find her mom and dad.

We can do better. We can be better. All of the excuses in the world don't count when it comes to this issue because we are a nation of immigrants, my friends, all of us. We may have to go back several generations--in my case, not very far. My mother was an immigrant to this country. I am lucky to be standing on the floor of the Senate representing a great State such as Illinois. That is my story. That is my family's story. That is America's story. That is who we all are.

Why can't we, in our generation, embrace the reality of immigration and fix this broken system, make sure we have security on the border to stop, as much as we physically can, the flow of illegal immigration, and make sure those who are here are reporting to our government so we know who they are, where they are, and where they work? All of these things will make us a better and stronger nation.

Let me tell my colleagues something else about these immigrant folks, and I speak with some authority. The first wave of immigrants to this country, by and large, take the toughest, hardest jobs available-- anything--and they will work hard on those jobs. But they are also looking over their shoulder at their kids and they are saying to their kids: We expect more from you. We

want you to stay in school. We want you to succeed.

That dynamic of the hard-working immigrant and the first-generation American, striving to prove they can succeed, gives our country the energy it needs. It gives our economy the energy it needs.

I see my friend has come to the floor, Senator McCain, and I mentioned his name earlier in a positive way because we worked together so closely on immigration reform. He has a special challenge I don't have. Yes, we have many undocumented in Illinois, but being a border State, Arizona has tougher challenges than most. We tried in our bill to be sensitive to both States and all States in what we were putting together.

So I wanted to come to the floor and say a word about children coming across the border. I see two of my colleagues here, and I will yield the floor in just a second.

We need to acknowledge the obvious. These children are vulnerable. They are being exploited. Many of them are being hurt. Some are being raped. Others are being killed. And that has to come to an end. To bring it to an end in a sensible, thoughtful, American way, we ought to pass comprehensive immigration reform. No more excuses in the U.S. House of Representatives. Call the bill. For goodness' sake, call the bill. Debate it. Vote on it. I will accept whatever comes, but what I won't accept is ignoring these problems, blaming them on someone else, and putting off to some time in the future the reality of the responsibility we should face today.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Missouri (Mrs. McCaskill) and the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Merkley) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Missouri (Mrs. McCaskill) and the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Merkley) are necessarily absent.