DURBIN. Mr. President, today is the fifth anniversary of the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, known as DACA. DACA
provides temporary legal status to immigrant students who arrived in
the United States as children and infants, if they register with the
government, pay a fee, and pass a criminal background check. The program is based on the DREAM Act, a piece of legislation I
introduced 16 years ago in 2001. That legislation gave undocumented
students who grew up in this country a chance to earn a path to legal
status and citizenship. These young people have come to be known as
DREAMers. What used to be a word reserved for rock-and-roll groups is
now a word that has become part of our common language to describe an
immigration challenge and opportunity. These DREAMers came to the United States as children. They are
American in every way except for their legal immigration status. We
have already invested a lot of money in these kids. We educated them. We made them part of this country, and it makes no sense to squander
their talents by deporting them at this moment in their lives. In April 2010, I sent a letter to President Obama. Dick Lugar, the
Republican Senator from Indiana, joined me. On a bipartisan basis, we
said to President Obama: Stop deporting these young kids. They did
nothing wrong. Their parents made the decision to come here. Give them
a chance. The President responded. It is now clear the DACA Program he
created by Executive order has been a great success. More than 780,000
DREAMers have come forward and received DACA protection and status that
has allowed them to contribute more fully to this country as students,
as teachers, as nurses, as engineers, as entrepreneurs. A recent study by the Center for American Progress found that ending
DACA--saying to these 780,000 young people they are no longer part of
America--would cost us. It would cost our economy over $400 billion in
gross domestic product over the next 10 years. These are productive
citizens doing good things for America.
Keywords matched
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