The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Immigration (Executive Session)” mentioning Richard Burr was published in the Senate section on pages S1667-S1669 on March 22.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Immigration
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, from El Paso to Brownsville, my home State shares a 1,200-mile border with Mexico. If you were daring enough to attempt to walk that entire stretch, you would trek through deserts, mountains, big cities, small towns, and maybe even stick your big toe in the Rio Grande. You get to know folks who are proud of the strong bonds that our country has with our southern neighbor, including many who have relatives in both countries. You would meet entrepreneurs whose businesses depend on legitimate trade and travel between our countries. You would talk with local, State, and Federal law enforcement officials who go above and beyond the call to keep our communities safe. And I have no doubt that along the way, you could enjoy some great Tex-Mex, and depending on the season, you would find the best grapefruit you have ever eaten in the Rio Grande Valley.
Our Texas-Mexico southern border is a beautiful, vibrant region with a rich sense of community that you can't find in any other part of the country. I believe it is truly unique.
Throughout my time in the Senate, I have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in our border communities and work with their incredible leaders: mayors, county judges, sheriffs, school superintendents, NGOs--nongovernmental organizations--and countless others.
Well, I am sure you have heard the song ``God Bless Texas.'' It is true, I believe, and the folks I have come to call friends along the border are certainly doing the Lord's work. These men and women work around the clock to create safe communities and thriving economies, something that has been especially tough during the hand they have been dealt this last year with the pandemic. But they have lived through a pandemic, hurricanes, droughts, a winter storm that presented subzero freezing temperatures for a week. All have hit my State in the last 12 months.
Folks in these communities, as they have throughout the country, have lost friends and loved ones. They have lost jobs. They have lost businesses and opportunities and so much more. Now they are trying to deal with another crisis, one they had no hand in creating and should not be responsible for managing alone.
Unfortunately, the administration continues to play a high-stakes version of the game Taboo as they try to find a word--any word--but
``crisis'' to refer to what is happening along the southern border. President Biden himself has called it a ``humanitarian challenge.'' Secretary Mayorkas prefers the term ``situation.'' And the President's Chief of Staff referred to it as a ``mess.'' The problem here isn't the choice of the word you use to describe it but the implication of downplaying the seriousness of this migration surge.
In an attempt to lessen the impact of this dramatic increase in illegal migration, the administration has revoked policies that were helping deter such an influx. It failed to rapidly provide the resources needed to respond to the crisis once it revoked the previous policies, and now the border communities in my State along that 1,200-
mile common border with Mexico are expected to pick up the slack.
Regardless of how you want to brand what is happening, here are the facts. Last month, Customs and Border Protection encountered more than 100,000 individuals along our border last month alone--100,000. That is the highest number since 2006. More than 9,000 of these 100,000 people were children, unaccompanied children, separated when their parents sent them, along with human smugglers, criminal organizations, to make their dangerous trek from Mexico or Central America or somewhere else into the United States. Another 19,000 are what are euphemistically called family units, usually 1 parent and 1 or more children.
Now, we know that this journey to our borders isn't safe or easy, and you can imagine that is especially true fo unaccompanied children. Many arrive at our border in critical health, having endured days and weeks or even months of exposure on the road. I have heard horrific stories of physical and sexual abuse that occur in the hands of these criminal organizations who move migrants from place A to place B. But they are nothing more than cartels, human smugglers, criminals who care nothing about the individuals whom they are ferrying from their point A to point B. All they care about is the money that they make, and they make a lot of money.
By law, children cannot be in the custody of Customs and Border Protection for more than 72 hours. Within that window, they are required by law to be transferred to the custody and care of the Department of Health and Human Services. But right now, the system is so overwhelmed that thousands of children have been in custody beyond the legal limit, including hundreds who have been held for more than 10 days in border detention facilities.
Axios has recently released some pictures taken inside, I believe, the Donna detention facility showing children basically stacked end to end, trying to stay warm, trying to sleep because the Border Patrol facilities are simply overwhelmed.
The situation has grown so dire, the administration has sent the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help, and now they have set up a new influx care facility in Dallas and Midland to provide for these children. The Midland facility has experienced so many issues that no additional migrant teens are being sent there. In the first few days of operation, more than 10 percent of the population housed there tested positive for COVID-19, and at least one child has been hospitalized. One government official described the process of setting up the facility as ``building a plane as it's taking off.''
There is simply no reason the administration should have been caught flat-footed by this surge of illegal migration. After all, the President campaigned on promises of policies that were sure to lead to this very situation. When you remove the policies that deter illegal border crossings, what do you expect?
We know that the spring months are typically the busiest for migration because mild temperatures make the journey a little less dangerous and folks want to come to the United States for summer work.
We know the cartels and criminal organizations are very knowledgeable about our immigration laws. They know them perhaps better than most Americans do, and they know how to navigate them. We know a flawed court ruling on the Flores settlement agreement means even more children will come across our border because now families are subject to the same requirements as unaccompanied children. We know we have an immigration court backlog that is roughly 1.3 million cases deep, and the average time for a case to be presented in court is now 2\1/2\ years. Nevertheless, the Biden administration, by revoking the previous policies without having a plan to replace them, has created a perfect storm that anyone could have told them would end up in this situation. We have experienced migration surges in the past but never of this magnitude.
In the midst of a pandemic, Secretary Mayorkas has said that we are on track to see the highest number of border crossings in 20 years and the administration needs to take action now to keep things from getting any worse.
As migrants continue to make their way to our southern border in record numbers, law enforcement, local officials, and nongovernmental organizations, notwithstanding their best efforts, are not equipped to manage the influx, certainly not in these numbers. They don't have the facilities. They don't have the policies, the funding, or the resources to manage the crisis in a fair, efficient, and humane way. That needs to change.
For folks who are not from a border State or haven't spent much time at the border, it is difficult to understand just how complex the situation is. They may have learned what they think they know about the border from movies or novels, or they may have read news articles and assume border communities are dangerous or lawless places. That assumption could not be farther from the truth. But it is true that our border communities are being asked to carry more than their fair share of the weight during this crisis, when the past year has already been challenging enough with the pandemic.
Like cities across the country, border communities have had to cover a range of expenses created by the pandemic, but unlike those other communities, they now have the added economic struggle created by limits on nonessential border travel.
Prepandemic, folks from Mexico could travel across the border to shop, to eat at restaurants, and visit family members. These were huge drivers of the economy along our entire border region. But the pause on legitimate, nonessential travel by title 42 has created a serious economic strain on these communities, and leaders are struggling to understand the disconnect between the Biden administration's two very different approaches.
At a recent roundtable my friend Congressman Henry Cuellar and I hosted in Laredo, someone said: I don't understand how you can catch and release the migrants and not let our neighbors across the border come over and spend money in our communities to help bolster our economy.
This confluence of crises is a one-two punch for our border communities, and it is unfair they are expected to carry the burden of this crisis. That is the Federal Government's responsibility.
This Friday, my colleague Senator Cruz and I will welcome a number of our colleagues to the Rio Grande Valley, where they can hear and see about these challenges firsthand. I welcome any Member of the Senate or the Congress to join me at the border at a time of their choosing. I know I have benefited from the feedback and advice from the experts on the ground who are dealing with this crisis firsthand, and I am glad to bring some of my Senate colleagues on Friday along for a visit at this critical moment.
Hopefully that will help us to find a way, along with the administration in a bipartisan way, to reduce some of the pull factors that incentivize people to come and navigate our system.
You are never going to deal with the fact that people want a better life or are fleeing violence. We all get that. We understand why, as human beings, people would want to leave that, but we also know that the cartels are getting rich off of this business model, and certainly they are incentivized to encourage as many people as possible to come and pay their extortionate fees in the process. But the combination of those at this point--both the push factors and the pull factors, especially with the Biden administration putting a green light on our border and basically saying ``All comers are welcome to enter the country''--is creating an unreasonable expectation about what people are going to encounter, as well as overwhelming the capacity of our Border Patrol, Health and Human Services, and the Office of Refugee Relocation to be able to deal with them.
We know that the incentives involved in a catch-and-release system, in which people are asked to return in perhaps months, maybe years, for a future court date to consider their asylum claims, are nothing but an invitation for them to not appear and simply melt into the great American landscape and, again, continue to incentivize people to come because they know they can beat the system. They certainly can game the system, and, unfortunately, too often people beat the system, creating the situation we find now at the southern border.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hirono). The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BURR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered
nomination of martin joseph walsh
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I rise to support the nomination of Marty Walsh to be our Nation's next Secretary of Labor. Mr. Walsh is an experienced leader who has always been a fighter for working families as the mayor of Boston, a State legislator, and as a union president. We need a Secretary of Labor who will make workplaces safer and prevent the spread of COVID-19 on the job, ensure that unemployed workers get the benefits they need and deserve, and support workers exercising their rights to form a union and bargain collectively.
Only 11.6 percent of workers were represented by a union in 2019, down from 27 percent in 1979. The decline in unionization has coincided with a marked divergence between overall productivity growth in our economy and paychecks for workers. While productivity has grown significantly, hourly compensation for rank-and-file workers has been nearly stagnant once inflation is taken into account.
In a January 22 Executive order on protecting the Federal workforce which faced especially harsh attacks from the Trump administration, President Biden reaffirmed that it is ``the policy of the United States to encourage union organizing and collective bargaining.'' Strengthening and enforcing the laws that enable workers to do so must be at the core of our efforts to build an economy that works for all Americans, and Marty Walsh is the right person for the job.
Mr. BURR. Madam President, I am going to support the nomination of Mayor Marty Walsh to be the U.S. Secretary of Labor.
Now, why is a guy from North Carolina here to encourage my colleagues to vote for the mayor of Boston, MA? Well, it is quite simple. Mayor Walsh has the background and skills and the awareness for the need of balance in conversations between labor and management.
He has been a mayor; he has been a State representative; and he has also been a union leader. The Department of Labor serves an immensely important role in our economy and in the lives of the American people. Especially in the midst of a pandemic, with unemployment at 6.7 percent and 12.6 million Americans unemployed, this is a job that needs filling.
But our Nation can't have a Labor Secretary that will ever be accused of being in cahoots with labor or beholden to management. I have made it clear that the Labor Secretary's job is to play a balanced role and to confront both, when necessary, for the protection of the rank-and-
file workers.
Mayor Walsh emphasized during his nomination hearing that he wanted to work with us collaboratively to help the American workers improve and expand opportunities. He respects the importance of job creators and the need for better coordination of numerous job training programs.
Mayor Walsh is committed to making sure commerce and labor work cooperatively. He stated that the workers in a representation election have the right to listen to both sides. Mayor Walsh agreed to be responsive to our oversight requests and to keep us updated on his plans and departmental actions.
Now, we won't agree on everything, but we should be able to find places that we can agree, in a bipartisan way, to move forward. I support the nomination of Mayor Marty Walsh, and I look forward to working with him. I encourage my colleagues to support this nomination as well.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
vote on walsh nomination
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, all postcloture time has expired.
The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Walsh nomination?
Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant bill clerk called the roll
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski), and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Heinrich). Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 68, nays 29, as follows:
YEAS--68
BaldwinBennetBlumenthalBluntBookerBrownBurrCantwellCapitoCardinCarperCaseyCassidyCollinsCoonsCornynCortez MastoCramerDuckworthDurbinFeinsteinFischerGillibrandGrahamGrassleyHassanHeinrichHickenlooperHironoHoevenKaineKellyKingKlobucharLeahyLeeLujanManchinMarkeyMarshallMenendezMerkleyMurphyMurrayOssoffPadillaPetersPortmanReedRomneyRosenSandersSchatzSchumerShaheenSinemaSmithStabenowSullivanTesterTillisTubervilleVan HollenWarnerWarnockWarrenWhitehouseWyden
NAYS--29
BarrassoBoozmanBraunCottonCrapoCruzDainesErnstHagertyHawleyHyde-SmithInhofeJohnsonKennedyLankfordLummisMcConnellMoranPaulRischRoundsRubioSasseScott (FL)Scott (SC)ShelbyThuneWickerYoung
NOT VOTING--3
BlackburnMurkowskiToomey
The nomination was confirmed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.
The majority leader.
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