DURBIN. Mr. President, it was 1 week ago when President Trump and
Attorney General Sessions announced that they were going to rescind the
DACA Program. This is a program created by President Obama by Executive
order that allowed those who had come to the United States as children
to have an opportunity to be given 2 years on a renewable basis where
they would not be subject to deportation and could work. These young people are known as the Dreamers, a term that came about
when I introduced the bill 16 years ago called the DREAM Act. These are
young people who, frankly, are just asking for a chance, an opportunity
to be part of the only country they have ever known. The laws of the United States are very tough and very strict, and
they say that, if you are undocumented, in their situation, you have to
leave America for 10 years and then petition to come back in. That is
why I introduced the DREAM Act. So these young people who were brought
to this country by their parents would have a chance. President Obama used his authority in an Executive order to allow
them to apply for DACA protection. They had to pay a substantial filing
fee and submit themselves to a criminal background check before they
would be allowed to stay. So 780,000 young people did just that, and
they are protected currently, but only for a few more months, under
this DACA provision. What is going to happen to them, we don't know. The only thing that
makes any sense at this point is for Congress to act, for us to do
something to replace the DACA Program, which the President is going to
rescind, with a law--a law that establishes clearly the requirements,
as well as the rights, that will be given to these individuals under
the law. That is why I have introduced the Dream Act with my cosponsor Lindsey
Graham, a Republican of South Carolina. There are three other
Republican cosponsors at this point, and we hope to move this forward. President Trump has said he is interested in working with us, and we
are going to take him at his word. Despite rescinding DACA, I hope the
President will be on our side to come up with a replacement that is
fair. Also, I want to address many of the myths that have come up about
DACA, as well as the Dream Act. I am going to quote an unusual source
for this Senator. The source is a man named David Bier. David is an
immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute. Those of us who live
in this Washington environment of politics know that the Cato Institute
is not a liberal think tank. It is the opposite. It is a conservative,
largely Republican think tank, and Mr. Bier has published an article
that has been seen in the Washington Post, in the Chicago Tribune, and
in other papers entitled the ``Five myths about DACA.''
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
the Washington Post article entitled ``Five myths about DACA.''
Keywords matched
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