Speech #1140063360

President Obama also expanded this to cover all DREAMers who came to the United States as children and have lived here for at least 5 years. Why did he take these actions? Because for years Congress has failed to fix our broken immigration system. I remember the dayit was June 27. 2013. 21/2 years agothe Senate passed comprehensive legislation to fix our broken immigration system. The vote was 68 to 32. A substantial number of Republican Senators joined with Democrats in voting for this comprehensive reform. We had spent. eight of usthe group of 8. as we were calledmonths negotiating back and forth and back and forth on the toughest issues involving immigration. We reached a bipartisan agreement. brought the bill to the floor. and it passed. We were in the majority at that time on the Democratic side. but we reached across the aisle to make sure enough Republicans could support us so that we could have a bipartisan solution to our immigration challenge. Unfortunately. the Republican majority in the House of Representatives at that time would not even considerwouldnt even considerthe immigration reform bill we passed. In the face of that. the President had no choice. He could allow our broken immigration system to continue or step forward and try to make America safer and more just. The Center for American Progress. incidentally. says the economic benefit of the Presidents Executive orders would have been significant. Both DACA for children and DAPA for their parents would increase my States gross domestic product by almost $15 billion over 10 years and increase the earnings of all Illinois residents by almost $8 billion. Unfortunately. both DAPA and the expansion of the earlier DACA have been blocked by lawsuits that have been filed by Republicans who oppose the measure. These Republicans. who have the majority in the House and Senate. refuse to even consider any legislation to fix our broken immigration system. Well. last week. in a decision that was no surprise. a Republicanappointed judgeactually. a bank of judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appealssided with the Republicans who had filed a lawsuit and upheld an injunction that blocks DAPA and the expanded DACA Program. The Obama administration announced they will appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has been clear in the past that Presidents have the authority to set Federal immigration policy. I believe the Presidents actions will ultimately be upheld. Over the years. I have come to the floor more than 60 times to tell stories about DREAMers. I used to give speeches about the general issue. and people didnt pay much attention. But then I started telling the stories of the actual people who would be affected by the DREAM Act and by DACA. Today. I want to tell you another one.