There are things in the Dream Act that we need to file and put into a
bill. In fact, it was instructed into a bill that I and Senator
Lankford and Senator Hatch filed called the SUCCEED Act. It is a way to
provide certainty for the DACA population, but it also needs to be
paired up with reasonable border security provisions so that we get the
broad base of support we need for enduring policy here. There are some people who are talking about withdrawing from
negotiations and trying to threaten a government shutdown to get
something slammed into a year-end spending bill. But if you really care
about the long-term certainty that we want to provide these young
people who qualified under the DACA Program, the last thing you should
do is to play politics and get something half baked into a provision
that will always be a target of the next year-end spending bill. Why
don't we do something crazy and actually sit down, check our Members on
the Republican side and the Democratic side who have extreme views on
this issue at the door, and solve the problem. I have taken a lot of criticism after filing the SUCCEED Act because
I had a lot of people who said that I was soft on immigration. Well, I
respectfully disagree with some of my friends who are themselves
Republicans and conservatives, because I don't think they have it
right. I think that the young men and women who qualify under the DACA
Program, who were brought to this country through the actions of their
parents, through no fault of their own, deserve a respectful,
compassionate, physically sustainable solution, and certainty. I have
been working on it, and I have been taking the criticism ever since I
filed the bill. I even had a congressional district in North Carolina
censure me, saying, ``shame on you,'' for actually coming up with
something that made sense. One thing that I said, though, when we filed that bill, is that what
we did in the SUCCEED Act had to be paired with reasonable, sustainable
border security measures and interior enforcement measures--things that
are important if we want to make sure that a decade from now, 15 years
from now we are not back here again worried about a new DACA population
that has come across the borders. I have had some people insisting that having a secure border is not
compassionate, that it is unfair, but I would actually submit to my
colleagues that not having a secure border is irresponsible. Talking
about not being compassionate, allowing things to occur with an
unsecured border--to me, having a secure border is a hallmark of
compassion. That is a little bit of what I want to talk about. So let's
stipulate to that. Working with Senator Durbin--and, incidentally, Senator Durbin and I
have been talking about this issue for about a year and a half--I knew
that we were going to be here with the DACA Program and that we needed
to work on it. So I reached out to Senator Durbin and said that I am
willing to try to come up with something that makes sense, but we have
to be willing to accept something different from all of the random
ideas and come with a compromise. We made progress in terms of how to
deal with the DACA population, but some of my colleagues on the other
side of the aisle are unwilling to talk about the reality that we
should also put into place, and pair with what we do for the DACA
population, border security and interior enforcement that makes sense. Back in February I spent about a week down along the southern border. I was on patrol boats on the Rio Grande.
Keywords matched
immigration border security DACA