In December of 2010,
the House passed the DREAM Act right here on this floor. Almost all of
the Democrats voted for it, and a handful of Republicans, too. The goal
was to legalize immigrants who had grown up in the U.S., achieved
education, and had no way of getting legalization status unless
Congress took action. Way back in 2001, I had introduced the first bill to legalize
immigrant youth. So it took almost 10 years until it passed in the
House in 2010. And later that same week, there was a vote in the
Senate. Fifty-five out of 100 Senators voted for cloture on the DREAM
Act to legalize the status of undocumented immigrant youth. We know you need 60 votes in the Senate to move something forward, so
the DREAM Act was blocked, even though it had a majority of the votes
of the Senators because of a filibuster led by Republicans. Not just any Republican led the filibuster, but the leader of the
opposition to the DREAM Act was none other than the Attorney General of
the United States, Jeff Sessions. So yesterday the President, unwilling
to go out to the cameras and announce he was killing the DACA program
himself, sent Jeff Sessions out to tell 800,000 immigrants: We don't
want you here anymore. Included in that announcement was a halfhearted sales pitch for
Congress to pass legislation. But remember, when Sessions had a chance
to do exactly that, he led the fight to stop it. That is hypocrisy on
steroids. So President Obama finally took the only action he could take
2 years later and crafted a narrowly defined program call DACA that has
never been successfully challenged in court. DACA recipients are teachers, nurses, and one is even a Chicago
policeman who straps on his gun and badge to protect people every day
in my city of Chicago. During Hurricane Harvey, DREAMers with DACA were
first responders and volunteers and those who gave their lives to save
others, like Alonso Guillen of Lufkin, Texas. Look, we want a clean DREAM Act, an up or down vote. Democrats, let's be clear.
Keywords matched
DACA undocumented immigrant immigrants