Immigration

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, immigration is an issue which divides America. You only have to tune into the Presidential debate to hear it. Most everyone would agree that the immigration system in America is broken. I believe it is. I was part of an effort with some colleagues to try to come up with a comprehensive immigration reform bill, which passed the Senate 3 years ago by a vote of 68 to 32. We worked long and hard on that bill. We brought this bipartisan bill to the Senate, and it passed with an overwhelming majority. The House refused to consider the measure. Speaker Boehner never called it to the floor. The bill we passed never ever got a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, and so here we sit today with the same broken immigration system.

Let me tell you that one part of that is very important to me and to many of my colleagues. Fifteen years ago I introduced a bill called the DREAM Act. The genesis of that bill--as I have said on the floor many times and will quickly repeat--began after we got a call in my Chicago office from a Korean American woman who had a daughter who was a musical prodigy. She was an amazing pianist and had been accepted at two of the best music schools in America. She was filling out her application and asked her mom: What do I put down for my nationality or citizenship. Her mom said: I don't know. When we brought you here, Tereza, you were 2 years old and came here on a visitor's visa. I never filed any more papers. So I don't know. The daughter said: What are we going to do? The mom said: We are going to call Durbin's office.

So they called our office and we said: Let us check the law.

The law was very clear. This 18-year-old girl, brought here at the age of 2, under American law had to leave the United States for 10 years and apply to come back in. Does that sound right? When she was 2 years old, she had no voice in the decision to come to America, no voice in the decision of filing papers. Yet our law basically told her to leave.

That is when I introduced the DREAM Act. It says that if you are brought here under the age of 16, complete high school, no serious criminal issues in your background, we will give you a chance. We will give you a path to become legal and ultimately become a citizen. That is what the DREAM Act is.

We haven't passed that bill. We have passed it maybe once in the Senate, once in the House but never brought it together to be sent to the President. This President, Barack Obama, was my fellow Senator from Illinois for 2 years and he cosponsored the DREAM Act.

So a few years ago, I joined in a letter to the President, with Senator Dick Lugar, a Republican from Indiana, and said to him: Help us protect these young people from being deported until we can finally pass comprehensive immigration reform or the DREAM Act. The President listened and did it. He created what is known as DACA. What DACA says is, if you are such a young person, you may step forward, register with the government, submit yourself to a criminal background check, pay a several-hundred-dollar filing fee, and then we will give you temporary protection from deportation. Then, 2 years later, 3 years later, you have to reapply--go through the same process--pay a fee and do it again.

As it turned out, 700,000 young people, who were in the same situation as the Korean girl I mentioned from Chicago, have applied for this DACA protection so they can stay here on a temporary basis and go to school, work, and be a part of the United States. There is no guarantee they will ever become permanently legal or citizens--I hope they will--but at least they are protected on a temporary basis.

Two years later, the President said: If you are in a family where one of the kids in the house is an American citizen or here legally in the United States as a permanent resident, we are going to give parents the same opportunity to register with the government, to go through a criminal background check, to pay their fee to the government, then to be given a temporary work permit to work in the United States. That is known as DAPA. So we have DACA and DAPA. It is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court.

I went over for the argument before the Supreme Court last week. The State of Texas and 25 other States have challenged this saying it will create benefits for these individuals under DACA and DAPA that will cost the States money. It turns out, the whole story is that once these people are working in the United States and paying taxes, the State of Texas and all the other States are going to make quite a bit more money off these workers when they actually are required to pay taxes, as they should. So this economic argument doesn't go too far.

The point I have tried to make to my colleagues in the Senate, as long as I have been here and as long as I have had this opportunity to talk about the DREAM Act, is that they ought to take a moment, stop listening to the Presidential debates, and just pay attention to the lives which are at stake in this conversation.

I have come to the floor quite a few times to talk about young people who would be helped if the DREAM Act became the law of the land. This morning I am going to introduce Cynthia Sanchez to those who are watching.

Cynthia Sanchez is another young person who is living in the United States and is undocumented. She was brought here at the age of 7 from Mexico. She grew up in Denver, CO. She was an excellent student. In high school, Cynthia was a member of the National Honor Society and made the President's honor roll every semester with a 4.0 grade point average. I wish I could say the same about my high school experience.

Cynthia was vice president and co-president of the Student Council. She volunteered as a peer mediator and volunteered at the local library. She went on to attend the University of Denver where she received lots of awards and scholarships and was an active volunteer.

For the record, undocumented young people like Cynthia receive no Federal assistance to go to college--no Pell grants, no government loans. They have to find a way to pay for it. They can't use any government benefits to move forward with their education.

She was a member of a student organization called the Pioneer Leadership Program. She helped to develop Denver University Senior Connect, an organization to help raise awareness about the needs of senior citizens.

As a member of the Volunteers in Partnership Program, Cynthia organized workshops at high schools and middle schools with low-income and minority student populations. She helped the students fill out their college applications and write scholarship essays, and she brought the students to visit her campus at the University of Denver.

She graduated in 2010 with a degree in cognitive neuroscience, which is a double major in psychology and biology, and she even minored in chemistry on top of that.

Because of her immigration status--and despite the fact that she had this amazing college experience and was academically successful and had this important degree--she couldn't find a job. She wasn't even able to volunteer at a local hospital because she lacked a Social Security number, being undocumented.

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Mr. DURBIN. Thank you.

Cynthia's dream to become a doctor was on hold because of her immigration status. Only nine schools told her she might be able to apply and be considered as an undocumented student. Two years after graduating, Cynthia was working as a nanny and questioning whether all the hard work and time in school was wasted.

Cynthia cried as President Obama made the announcement about creating DACA. She realized she was going to be given a chance. She applied for DACA immediately. She was approved in the summer of 2013. By September, Cynthia was working at Northwestern University in Chicago doing clinical research in the Department of Medicine's Division of Cardiology. Her research focuses on improving treatment options for patients facing heart failure.

She sent me a letter, and this is what she said:

DACA has meant a new realm of opportunities for me, it has opened new doors for me, and it has allowed me to once again see my dream as a reality. I truly believe that if those opposed to DACA or the DREAM Act had the chance to sit down and meet undocumented students, their opinions might change. They would see capable, smart, hard-working individuals who are Americans in every sense of the word, love this country and want to contribute to its prosperity. After all, this is our home.

Cynthia and the other DREAMers have a lot to give to America. Like many Americans who have come to this country, they are willing to sacrifice. They are willing to go to the back of the line. All they are asking for is a chance.

I urge my colleagues--particularly my Republican colleagues--to join us in doing the right thing for these DREAMers, doing the right thing for Cynthia, and thousands of others who are just asking for a chance to make America a better nation.

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