November 19, 2014 - Washington, D.C. – Ahead of President Obama’s televised address to the nation tomorrow, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) spoke on the Senate floor today in support of the President taking executive action to fix our nation’s broken immigration system.
Here are some excerpts of her floor remarks. The full speech is below: “We have this poster here of 510 days. That’s how long ago the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill,” Senator Boxer said. “The Republicans in the House refuse to take up the Senate bill, which strengthens the border while giving a pathway of legality to hardworking immigrants here who are undocumented. And here’s the thing – they won’t take up the bill, so then you say, what’s your idea? Where’s your bill?”
“Why can’t they find time to take up our bill? They have voted 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act – 50 times! But they can’t find time to debate or pass a bill to reform our nation’s immigration laws.”
“The President had said to the House he’d be thrilled to sign the bipartisan immigration bill the Senate passed. Take it up and pass it,” Boxer said. “They don’t say, ‘Mr. President, we understand your frustration, don’t worry – we’ll get a bill done. It may not be the same as the Senate, we may have other ideas.’ They will do nothing. They will do nothing. And they want our President to do nothing when it comes to immigration. And frankly, if our President did not take action, it would be a terrible, terrible mistake.”
“Here’s a group of Republicans threatening to impeach the President, sue the President, shut down the government over something that 11 Presidents have done over the past 60 years on 40 occasions. I never ever heard one Republican or Democrat threaten to shut down the government when a President took action over immigration.”
“I was here when President Reagan… signed into law a major immigration bill legalizing three million immigrants in 1986. And then Congress didn’t do the next step, they didn’t take the next step, so he took executive action to stop deportations that would interfere with family reunification. I didn’t hear one Republican threaten to impeach the President, sue the President, take action, shut down the government, make life miserable for the American people.”
“In 1990, President George Herbert Walker Bush directed his Attorney General to halt deportations of an estimated 190,000 Salvadorans who were fleeing the civil war there. And he used his power to halt the deportation of up to 1.5 million spouses and children. I did not hear one Republican, not one, threaten to sue the President, threaten to take him to court, threaten to impeach him, threaten to shut down the government and make life miserable for the American people.”
“I’ll tell you, President Bush’s Family Fairness policy, the executive action he took, was sweeping. It affected more than 40 percent of the undocumented population in the United States at the time. He thought big, George Bush Senior, he thought big. And this President should think big.”
“If we don’t act, the dire situation of undocumented immigrants will only get worse, families will continue to be torn apart, people will continue to live in the shadows,” Boxer said. “I say to the President today, as I have said to him in writing, if you act, you will have my strong support and you will have the support of so many people across the country. You will keep families together, you will strengthen our economy, you will make our country stronger.”
You can view Senator Boxer’s speech on the Senate floor here.
