DACA

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. President, some 800,000 people in this country woke up this morning with great uncertainty about their future because of President Trump's reckless, hateful agenda. Young men and women in this country are now unsure if they will be able to finish their college degree in the United States. They are unsure if they can keep their job at the hospital or as a firefighter or serve in our military to fight for our freedom. They are unsure if they can keep their homes or remain with loved ones, and they are scared that this country might break its promise and use against them the very information that they submitted to enroll in DACA in order to find them and deport them. That is appalling, and it marks a very sad time for this United States of America.

President Trump has caused a lot of divisive and disheartening moments since the start of the year, but rescinding DACA is an unusually cruel and heartless move even for this administration, and it flies in the face of so much of what and who made this country what it is. So I am here today, with my colleagues, to urge all of us in the Senate to use this moment of uncertainty and division to do what is right--to come together to defend DACA.

Use your voices for the Dreamers in your States and the many others who are calling and writing and marching in our streets, urging all of us to act for our neighbors and our coworkers, our students, our doctors, our engineers, our friends, and our first responders, who are stepping up at this very moment to protect people from the hurricanes that are wreaking havoc in Texas and Florida to the wildfires that are blazing in the West.

Let's stand behind our colleagues, Senator Durbin and Senator Graham, who have already paved a bipartisan path forward on this issue and who, just hours after the President's announcement, reiterated that they are ready to get this done. I am too.

There are more than 17,000 young men and women in my home State of Washington who are deeply connected to their communities. They were brought to this country as children. Some of them were so young when they arrived that they did not even know they were not born here until years or, maybe, even a decade later when they went to apply for college or to get a job.

Just yesterday, I heard about a young man in my home State who is very distraught. He was brought to the United States as a toddler. He did not know that he was not a citizen until he turned 16 and went to get his driver's license. As a result, he signed up for DACA. He got his license and he got a job, and he is now in his second year in a science program at a community college, getting straight A's and hoping to transfer to the University of Washington.

Now he is frightened that he is going to lose all of that and be forced to go to a country that he has never known. He says that he does not know anyone in Mexico nor has he been there to visit. That is just one story.
I sat down with a number of Dreamers in my State. They are ambitious, they work hard, they play by the rules, and they do the right thing.

They know one home--America. To penalize them for forces beyond their control is simply not what this country is about. While President Trump may see ending DACA as a political move to pander to his extreme, hard-line base, I know that the majority of people across this country will stand up and fight back. They will not let President Trump strip away protections or use Dreamers as a bargaining chip for his hateful crackdown on immigrants in our communities or on wasteful border wall spending.

As a voice in Congress for my State, I stand ready to work with my colleagues on either side of the aisle to find a solution so as to honor the 800,000 Dreamers who call America home and to honor the very foundation of our immigrant Nation.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source