Speech #1140063360

Mr. President. it was 1 year ago this week that President Obama announced he would use his Executive authority to reform our broken immigration system. The President said we should prioritize the deportation of those who have been convicted of serious crimes or those who pose any threat to Americas security. The Department of Homeland Security only has funding to deport a small fraction of the undocumented immigrants in the country. So the President said: Lets make a priority. Lets focus our limited resources on deporting those who could do us harm. It seemed like common sense to most people. At the same time. the President said we should not waste our resources deporting young immigrant students who grew up in this country and would. in fact. if they were deported. tear their families apart. The Presidents policies focused on deporting felons. not familiescriminals. not children. In 2012 President Obama established the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. known as DACA. DACA provides temporarylet me underline the word "temporary"immigrant status to immigrant students who arrived in the United States as children. This program is based on the DREAM Act. a bill I introduced 14 years ago in the Senate. That bill was introduced to give undocumented students who grew up in America a chance to earn their path to citizenship. We call them DREAMers. It was known as the DREAM Act. They were brought to the United States as kids. some as infants. They grew up in our country pledging allegiance every day in the classroom to the only flag they have ever knownthe U.S. stars and stripes. They are proud and patriotic Americans in every sense but one: They are undocumented. They only want a chance to work. to be part of Americas future. We have already invested in these young people. We have put quite a bit of our resources into making them what they are today. It makes no sense to walk away from this investment. does it. if that child. grown up now. could be an asset to the future of America? So far. more than 700.000 of these young people have received the DACA protection. temporary status to stay in the United States. What have they done with this opportunity? They have decided to do more to help our countryto become engineers. teachers. small business owners. DACA. I am sorry to say. is not a popular program with many of my Republican colleagues. They have tried to shut it down.