Speech #1140089407

Barack Obama. was my fellow Senator from Illinois for 2 years and he cosponsored the DREAM Act. So a few years ago. I joined in a letter to the President. with Senator Dick Lugar. a Republican from Indiana. and said to him: Help us protect these young people from being deported until we can finally pass comprehensive immigration reform or the DREAM Act. The President listened and did it. He created what is known as DACA. What DACA says is. if you are such a young person. you may step forward. register with the government. submit yourself to a criminal background check. pay a severalhundreddollar filing fee. and then we will give you temporary protection from deportation. Then. 2 years later. 3 years later. you have to reapplygo through the same processpay a fee and do it again. As it turned out. 700.000 young people. who were in the same situation as the Korean girl I mentioned from Chicago. have applied for this DACA protection so they can stay here on a temporary basis and go to school. work. and be a part of the United States. There is no guarantee they will ever become permanently legal or citizensI hope they willbut at least they are protected on a temporary basis. Two years later. the President said: If you are in a family where one of the kids in the house is an American citizen or here legally in the United States as a permanent resident. we are going to give parents the same opportunity to register with the government. to go through a criminal background check. to pay their fee to the government. then to be given a temporary work permit to work in the United States. That is known as DAPA. So we have DACA and DAPA. It is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court. I went over for the argument before the Supreme Court last week. The State of Texas and 25 other States have challenged this saying it will create benefits for these individuals under DACA and DAPA that will cost the States money. It turns out. the whole story is that once these people are working in the United States and paying taxes. the State of Texas and all the other States are going to make quite a bit more money off these workers when they actually are required to pay taxes. as they should. So this economic argument doesnt go too far.