Keep the Door Open for Dreamers

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, we all suffer when this country breaks its promises. But for our children, that cost compounds. They pay the interest on our inaction and inadequacy. They pick up the pieces of the precious things that we broke, the sacred resources we took for granted, the battles that we were too afraid to fight.

Time and again, by choice and by chance, they have not disappointed. Their broad shoulders carry twice as much twice as far. Their spines prove twice as sturdy as the adults meant to protect them.

American history is littered with the names of young men and women, and even boys and girls, forced to be heroes before their time: the patriots of D-day, memorialized in a statue called the Spirit of Youth in Normandy; 14-year-old Emmett Till, lynched by a lie; Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, all 14, and Carol Denise McNair, 11, four choir girls lost at the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Alabama.

The Children's Crusade. Little boys and girls, kids, who dared defy Bull Connor's firehoses and attack dogs to be arrested and rearrested again and again as a Nation recoiled in horror.

Nine African-American high school students from Little Rock marched into an all-White high school to prove that separate is not equal.

Four college students from Kent State who gave their lives to a war-weary nation's plea for peace.

Thirteen-year-old Ryan White from Indiana who showed our Nation that an HIV diagnosis does not claim your dignity.

The record number of men and women under the age of 21 who showed up at military recruiting stations in 2001, signing up to serve a nation reeling from terror on its soil.

Nineteen-year-old Zach Walls who told us that love is love as he bravely defended his two moms before the Iowa State Legislature.

Seventeen-year-old Lila Perry from Missouri who withstood the sting of stigma by being true to herself and her gender identity.

Thirty-one-year-old Alonso Guillen, a Texan who traveled 120 miles from safety into the heart of Hurricane Harvey's fury on a volunteer rescue mission, who gave his life so that others, strangers, might survive. His courage and sacrifice exemplify the best traits of our Nation. They place him squarely on the long list of young American heroes who have carried us toward a more perfect union.

But this week, President Trump slammed the door on 800,000 people like Alonso. DREAMers. Children raised in our neighborhoods, who run on our playgrounds, who pitch in our Little Leagues, who proudly march in 4th of July parades, who make lemonade stands, build snowmen, go to prom, and get summer jobs, who hit the books, who earn a living, who raise families of their own, who serve in our military, who give to this country just as much, just as faithfully as you or I.

Now, our President told them that they are not wanted, that he would rather see them in handcuffs, their families ripped apart, their futures in limbo, sent to be strangers in a strange land.

Mr. Speaker, sometimes this body has to make hard choices. Sometimes our solutions are complex. This is not one of those times. This one is easy. Our work comes down to a very simple question: What are we willing to ask our children to bear?

We have the power in this body to say: Not this, not again, that we will not ask the youngest among us to force our country's conscience to awake because of the burden that we, the adults in the room, place on their shoulders. We can do better. We can be braver. We can change the course of that history. We will not stand here and leave it for future generations to wonder why we allowed such harm to pass.

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