Michael Bennet: “I wish to start by thanking the able Senator from Arizona for his statement, for his leadership, and for his incredible…”

“I wish to start by thanking the able Senator from Arizona for his statement, for his leadership, and for his incredible work on this bill. I wish to thank all of my colleagues who have been in this so-called Gang of 8, both Democrats and Republicans, including Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin and Bob Menendez on the Democratic side. But today I especially want to thank the Republican Members of this group, led by John McCain, and including Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, and Marco Rubio, for their extraordinary leadership. For reasons everybody in this Chamber understands, their willingness to be at the table and to stay at the table was an act of leadership unlike any other I have seen in this Chamber in the 4 years I have served here. We would never be here today voting to fix our broken immigration system were it not for them. So on behalf of the people I represent in Colorado I thank them. For me this all started in Colorado, because everywhere I went I heard people talk about how the broken immigration system was affecting them. I would hear the peach growers in Palisades say one thing and the cattle ranchers on the eastern plains say something else. The immigrant rights community, many of whom represented children in my old school district, our high-tech community, our ski resorts--everybody was feeling the pain of a broken immigration system that Washington was refusing to fix and they had actually given up hope that Washington would fix it.…”