Sen. Durbin on Immigration Reform
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) made some great comments yesterday in the Senate on immigration reform and Sensenbrenner's bill. It's at page S2402 of The Congressional record, available on Thomas. Here's some of what he said:
It is an interesting story, as we watch the news reports, of the people who are gathering across the United States. Over 110,000, some say close to 200,000, came out in Chicago a few days ago; 500,000 in the city of Los Angeles. There is hardly a major city in America where people have not stepped forward because of their concern about this immigration bill.
Who are these people? They are people we always see but seldom come to know. They are our neighbors. They sit next to us in church; they send their kids to the same school as our kids. They probably cooked your breakfast this morning. They probably washed your dishes and cleaned your hotel room. They are watching your children at daycare and they are changing your aging mother's soiled bed in the nursing home. They make sure your putting green is perfect, and they stand for hours every day in a damp and cold place, watching a production line of chicken carcasses come by, so you can invite friends for a barbecue this weekend.
They often live in crowded homes. They deny themselves many things. They sacrifice for their children and in the hopes that, at the end of the week, they might be able to send a small check home to their families in other countries. Their children are in our military--thousands of them, wearing the uniform of the United States of America. Some have been killed serving our country. At their funerals, people in uniform come forward and present to the grieving parents a flag as a token of their heroism and bravery and their commitment to America.
Now from this Republican-controlled House of Representatives, we learn the way to treat these people is to declare them criminals--criminals. These 11 million undocumented people, according to the Sensenbrenner bill which passed the U.S. House of Representatives, would be branded and prosecuted as aggravated felons, treated the same as armed robbers and rapists--11 million people. That is the bill that came over.
I'm still trying to find the actual legislation passed out of the Judiciary Committee. If anyone has a link to it, or can e-mail it to me, I'd appreciate it. [Update: From Squeaky in the comments, this is the first version of the bill, called Chairman's Mark (pdf).
In all the news accounts, I haven't found one that mentions the bill number. Senator Specter (page 2408 of Congressional Record) said:
Mr. President, the Judiciary Committee has just concluded a markup on the immigration bill. For those who may be watching on C-SPAN2, a markup means we take a bill, which was the chairman's mark in this situation, a bill which my staff and I have constructed, taking parts of legislation introduced by Senator McCain and Senator Kennedy and legislation introduced by Senator Kyl and Senator Cornyn, and amalgamated it into one bill with some other provisions which had been suggested by other Senators.crafted from those introduced by Sen. Kennedy's and McCain's and Sen. Kyl-Cornyn's.
I can find the originally proposed bills, but not the composite passed yesterday.
The full Senate will begin debate on the new bill on April 6. The Republicans in the Senate are going to demand a lot of changes. Specter said it's not cast in stone and they are willing to make changes.
We are open to suggestions, as to any Senators who have ideas. We are not in concrete. If somebody has better ideas, there will be full opportunity to offer amendments on the Senate floor.
We have to stay on the Senators so they don't back down on the provisions for the undocumented.
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