Speech #1140010608

program for DREAMers announced in 2012 is still in place and renewals are happening right now. as we speak. It is 640.000 strong. So. under the enforcement priorities and under the DACA program. it is clear to meand I want to make it clear to everyone at homethat the President has no plans to deport DREAMers or the parents of U.S. citizens who have never been involved in crime. Now. I know firsthand about numerous efforts to negotiate across the aislethat the majority of our country and the majority of the Republican Party would like to have a functioning legal immigration system. But the impression the Republican Party is leaving with the American peoplethe only solution the Republicans are offeringis that they demand the deportation of DREAMers and the deportation of the parents of 5 million American citizens who would be protectedand continued to be protectedunder the Presidents executive actions. This is what my colleagues fail to appreciate when they stand alongside the hardliners and opponents of legal immigration: in their zeal to support noncitizens. Republicans are hurting themselves with citizens. In my district in Chicago. just like the rest of the country. there is no caste system where people who were born in the U.S. never mix with people who werent born here. There are no differences between the people who came with a visa. the people who overstayed a visa. the people who never had a visa to begin with. and people who were born U.S. citizens. When we celebrate the Fourth of July or Thanksgiving. believe it or not. we all sit at the same table. The undocumented are a part of our families. live in our neighborhoods. attend our churches. and are in classrooms with our children. What the Republican Party fails to see is that when they call for the deportation of DREAMers and longterm residents. they are calling for the deportation of our family members. our neighbors. and my childrens classmates. Dont forget: most Latinos in America are not immigrants but are U.S. citizens. So it should come as no surprise that when the 1 million or so Latino U.S. citizens turn 18 this year. they will not think fondly of the Republican Partythe party that is bent on deporting members of their families and their communities. Another statistic: 93 percent of Latinos under the age of 18 are U.S. citizens. Ninetythree percent of them are U.S. citizens. They will not have a warm and fuzzy feeling about the party that fought tooth and nail to throw out their moms and dads. And the 5 million citizens whose parents are undocumentedwho worry every day about whether their families will remain intactare going to remember which party was cruel to their moms and dads. using them as scapegoats and insinuating they are all criminals bringing diseases to this country. The Republican Partys goal of forcing the President to deport all the noncitizens they want deported will simply never be achieved until the Republican Party elects one of their own to the White House. And the strategy of the Republican Partyforcing this President to deport all the noncitizens they want deportedpretty much guarantees that one of their own isnt going to get to the White House anytime soon.