It just speaks to
the wonderful, incredible diversity of people who have come here from
different places around the world. And then Congressman Soto mentioned one other important thing, which
is the historical context by which we find ourselves in this place. When you think about it, there is this intense debate going on right
now and this incredible push to do a DACA fix by the end of the week,
hopefully; and a lot of people, I think, who may not have followed the
volleying and the back and forth for a while are wondering why this is
such a crisis now. We know the immediate answer, which is, if we get to March 5, there
are 800,000 of these young people who will be deportable, subject to
deportation, who are part of the DACA program. Already, every day that
passes, 122 more become deportable. There was an opportunity a few years ago to deal not only with this
part of the immigration issue, but to achieve what is called
comprehensive immigration reform. And by ``comprehensive,'' that just
means that you are dealing not just with one part of immigration, but
you are dealing with all of the different issues associated with
immigration. So it was DACA, but it was also issues with visas, like tech visas
and agricultural workers. It was dealing with the parents of the
DREAMers, for example. And that bill that passed through the Senate with 68 votes, a wide
majority in the Senate in 2014, it came over to the House and, based on
public reports and what the Members of Congress had stated their
support would be for or against that bill, there was a majority, over
218 Members--again, based on public reports; we never took the vote,
but based on public reports--who said that they basically would have
supported a bill like that.
Keywords matched
immigration deportable DACA visas deportation