Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez Keynote at National Journal Live: “Pathways to Reform: A Discussion on Immigration Policy”

REMARKS AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY

Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL-4)

National Journal Live: “Pathways to Reform: A Discussion on Immigration Policy”

Washington, DC | May 22, 2014

Thank you and thank you to National Journal for hosting this event.  I am honored to share the microphone today with Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi.  There is probably a long list of issues on which Governor Barbour and I disagree, but I think you will find that when it comes to immigration – in broad strokes at least – he and I agree more than we disagree.  We’ll see if that holds true as the morning progresses.

I think Republicans are in a jam of their own making.  A decade ago, when George W. Bush was President, the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States was estimated to be about 11 million.  Today, after one of the deepest recessions we have ever experienced, we still have at least 11 million undocumented immigrants, maybe more like 12 million.

But about a decade ago, public opinion turned a corner.  When you said 10 or 11 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the United States, the forces that favor an enforcement-only and deportation-only approach could get people fired up.  As a political issue, frankly, it fired up more enforcement-hawks than it did legal immigration supporters and it was fairly good politics for the opponents of immigration reform.

But then people started thinking.  11 million people is a lot of people.  That’s more than the population of Ohio or Pennsylvania or Georgia and getting 11 million people to leave doesn’t sound very realistic.  And all of the enforcement we are doing is tending to drive people farther underground.  And restricting legal immigration to 1990s levels in an economy that is growing is also feeding the black market.

The world economy changed.  People were on the move.  Money and goods could cross borders legally but we had not updated our immigration laws to match the new reality.  And the black market of identity fraud, smugglers, fly-by-night immigration advisors and labor brokers had a license to prey on immigrants and undercut employers trying to play by the rules. 

Early in the Bush years, a new approach to immigration was put on the table that had three parts.  The first part was to modernize the legal immigration system so that more of the people who were coming could come with visas instead of smugglers.  Tie the level of legal immigration more closely to the demand for legal immigration and you will reduce the black market.

The second part was to institute workplace enforcement mechanisms like E-Verify so that only authorized workers could work.  We need and can have an electronic verification system that allows only authorized workers to work, and that minimizes the fraud we see in the system today.

The final part – part three – is to legalize those millions of immigrants who are living and working here and who will – with or without legal status – probably live and work here for the rest of their lives.  The goal is to get them in the system and on-the-books.

All three of these parts must move together or none of them will work on their own.  You can’t implement the enforcement and the legalization without the reforms to our legal immigration system or you will get the result that President Reagan got when he did that in 1986.

You can’t implement the enforcement and the legal immigration reforms and hope to improve overall legality because you will be building the new system on a faulty foundation that doesn’t address reality that 11 million people live, work and raise families here but are undocumented.

And you cannot improve border security without also doing the other parts of the reform because – as we have learned over the past three decades – border security alone doesn’t work when there is a major disconnect between the supply of legal immigration and the demand for legal immigration and when we are deporting tens of thousands of people who have children, careers, and mortgages in the U.S.  -- precisely the people most likely to try to come back who have no legal alternative.

The problem with the Republican Party is that the side of this policy issue that represents the law and order side has moved. 

It moved from the enforcement-only side to the side that wants to do more than just enforcement so that we actually control immigration. 

The Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, most of the Governors and Federal lawmakers moved too, but a lot of the Republican Party did not and are stuck in their old ways.  They continue to defend the status quo and try to make an argument about mass expulsion that the American people are not buying anymore.

Mark Krikorian, who will be on this panel later, invented the “Self-Deport” sound bite that Mitt Romney used in the 2012 campaign and -- if it even ever did -- it certainly does not pass the laugh-test now. 

Enlightened Republicans like Haley Barbour – and a lot of other national Republican leaders from George W. Bush to Jeb Bush to Chris Christy -- are trying to get more of their Republican brothers and sisters to see they are coming down on the wrong side of the law and order debate on immigration.

Not to mention the wrong side of the big government debate, the free market debate, the budget deficit debate and a lot of other debates that motivate Republican voters. 

And starting a decade ago, public opinion started to switch sides, not just among American voters but among Republican voters and now even a majority of Tea Party voters support immigration reform.

Let me say to Haley Barbour and Mario Diaz-Balart and other pro-reform Republicans, I feel your pain.  I used to be the one trying to convince Democrats, when we had majorities in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 that we could move forward on immigration reform and that it was not only smart policy, it was smart politics.

But even with 250 Democrats in the House and 60 in the Senate, I could not get Democratic Leadership to move because they were scared it would cost them politically with certain parts of their base and with swing voters. 

They were wrong, but I did not win that argument. 

Democrats talked a lot about immigration, but we did not pass much in the way of reform.

Notice that up until this point, I have not even made the moral argument, the civil rights argument, or the Latino empowerment argument for immigration reform, which is what a lot of people have come to expect from Luis Gutierrez. 

Breitbart, in completely misreading my written testimony at a hearing in Chicago on Monday, said I said that every institution in America should [quote] “ignore or work around federal immigration laws,” which is what I imagine their fantasy version of Luis Gutiérrez is saying in every speech.

In fact, in written testimony, I lamented the fact that the U.S. military is forced to cope with our broken immigration system, going so far as to counsel recruits to divorce their immigrant spouses in order to enlist and having to deal with soldiers on active duty in war zones whose spouses are being deported.  The military and other institutions are forced to make the best of a dysfunctional situation.

But this is typical.  Many who support the restrictionist view, championed by Mark Krikorian and Steve King, do not see that the law and order side of this debate has shifted and that they are  now on the side advocating against fixing our immigration system to make it more secure, more in control, and more legal.

In Chicago, with my base in Little Village, Pilsen, and Back of the Yards, the arguments that are persuasive with voters are the humanitarian ones.  The argument that we should keep families together and let young people who were raised in the United States live and work here legally – that is what is persuasive.

While the control and orderliness arguments are persuasive to the majority of Americans who are not deeply connected to the immigration issue, in the Latino community, the most important factor is the humanity.

Generally speaking, they see the Republican Party standing between them and an end to the deportations that are hurting their community and an end to the hostile rhetoric about immigrants and Latinos and they run the other way.  They run towards the Democrats even though the Democrats have been united around immigration reform only for the last few years.

And from a political point of view it is the human connection to the immigration issue – by U.S. citizens who feel a sense of solidarity with the undocumented -- that will prove to be absolutely fatal to the Republican Party if they don’t get it off the table this year.

With 65,000 U.S. born Latino citizens turning 18 every single month for the next three decades, Republicans  cannot afford to be seen as a the Party that supports breaking up families in the Latino community and making it harder for children to attend college or serve in the military.  It is simply destructive for the Republican Party.

I’ll end with this before I take questions.

I think Republicans are smart enough to walk away from Steve King and Mark Krikorian and head in the direction of Haley Barbour, John McCain and Jeff Flake.

I still have hope that we will see a series of bills from House Republicans in just the next few weeks and that the ones who care about the future of the Republican Party and the future of the country will have a major confrontation with those who just want to play it safe and attack the President in an Election Year.

And if I am wrong, I look forward to working with Secretary Jeh Johnson and President Obama to see what we can do administratively to dial back deportations and institute a little compassion and sense in how we handle immigration.

Republicans have it within their power to legislate in the next five or six weeks and be able to help shape the immigration issue and claim some of the credit. 

Or not. 

And it is entirely up to them.

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[Followed by Q&A]