Durbin Urges Colleagues To Pass NDAA & National Security Supplemental Request

Floor Speech

"I'd also like to speak briefly on the National Defense Authorization Act. The bill authorizes $886 billion for America's defense, expanding benefits for service members, strengthening national security. It provides a 5.2 percent pay increase for our troops in the Pentagon civilian workforce, the largest increase in 20 years. Importantly, the conference report excludes a number of dangerous partisan provisions that were designed to rip away the freedoms of the very Americans who we every day send to defend [them].
I want to close on a topic that Senator McConnell raised of immigration. It is not an easy issue. I've given 20 years of my life here in the Senate to the issue of immigration and feel it was time well spent. It was over 20 years ago that I introduced the Dream Act. Infants, toddlers, and children brought to the United States by their parents, growing up here, going to school and determined to help this country succeed in the future. And what do they find when they're teenagers? That they are undocumented. They don't have legal status in the United States. I've always believed they deserve a chance.
That is something we should do automatically [offer a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients]. We should have done it a long time ago to protect these young people and the aspirations they have to make us a better nation. These are young people who will serve us not only as teachers and engineers, but doctors and nurses and members of our military. If we give them the chance to fight and die for America, they'll do it. They want to be part of this nation's future, and they deserve that opportunity.
I have taken a close look at the situation at the border. I know that change is necessary, but it must be change consistent with our values and realistic. For Republicans to propose a change which says that those who come into the country seeking asylum will either be detained or sent to remain in Mexico, a policy that Donald Trump tried during his presidency, there are some fatal flaws here. How in the world are we going to detain all those people presenting themselves at the border? And secondly, this notion of "Remain in Mexico,' there is only one party to this conversation that hasn't agreed to it -- Mexico. They don't want to have these people residing in their country for long periods of time while we work out changes in America's legal system.
The notion that in seven days or 14 days we can craft some change in an immigration policy that will help us for time immemorial is unrealistic and naive. To condition any assistance to Ukraine on the achievement of that political goal is nonsense.

I think back as a son of an immigrant myself, I know there was a determination in my family to make it in this country. We have got to find a way to carefully construct a border policy that still takes advantages of the opportunities of immigration, the people who will come here and make us a better nation in the years ahead, and do it in a fashion that is thoughtful, not vindictive. That is what immigration requires, and I hope that we can reach that goal."

Source