Fostering Undergraduate Talent By Unlocking Resources for Education Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. KENNEDY. Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman for moving this legislation forward and to our colleague, Ms. Jayapal, for extraordinary work on this legislation.

Madam Speaker, you can learn an awful lot about a country by its approach to justice. You learn about its values, about the people it protects first, about the arc of its history, about the injustice it tolerates and the inequities it reinforces.

When you aim that spotlight on our Nation, what it reveals is not pretty. It is not something to be proud of. Because for millions of people who call this Nation home, justice is not a guarantee. It is something withheld. It is something far too many will never experience.

Very few battle that injustice more frequently than immigrants who arrive on our shores and at our border because they believe in the promise of our Nation. If we believe in that same promise as fiercely as they do, we shouldn't be scared to provide them with justice, with, at the very least, access to legal counsel.

Madam Speaker, we need to pass this bill to, at the very least, take a small step forward in living up to those ideals, and we need to do it today.

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