National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 -- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, when we finish this period of morning business, which is open to speeches and statements on many different topics, we will then go to the Defense authorization bill. Our process in the Senate is to authorize spending and then to appropriate the money for the actual spending. Occasionally, those two things are in sync, but many times they are not. I am afraid that what we face today is uncertainty.
Senator McCain, who is the chairman of the defense authorization committee, will bring his proposal to the floor, but it is at a spending level that is not allowed by current law. The Budget Control Act will not allow Senator McCain or the Senate to spend at

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the level at which he wants to spend. I can make a good argument that the statutory level we are required to hold to is inadequate to our national defense. If we are honest about taking care of the problem, we not only have to pass this authorization bill, but we have to change the Budget Control Act so that we can put more money into our national defense. That debate will get started this week. It is near and dear to Senator McCain's heart. He works hard on it each year with Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island.
There will be many amendments considered, I am sure, during the course of this week on Defense authorization.

DACA

Mr. President, what I come to the floor to speak to as in morning business is not that issue; it is the issue of DACA and the Dreamers.

It was just 6 days ago that the announcement was made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he was going to rescind the DACA Program.

A quick history. Sixteen years ago, I introduced a bill called the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act was written to take care of young people who, by their parents, were brought to the United States as infants and toddlers and young boys and girls and who grew up in this country. They did not get into trouble with the law. They finished school and always thought that they were going to be Americans and that they would use their education and their skills to build lives in this country.

However, because their parents either came here undocumented or did not file the appropriate papers, these young people are literally without a country. The country they grew up in does not accept them under the law. So 16 years ago I introduced the DREAM Act and said: Let's take care of this problem. These young people, as it was through no fault of their own, should be given a chance to stay in this country and be part of its future.
I passed it in the Senate, and I have seen it passed in the House. We have never quite been able to bring it together in any one year and have it pass both Chambers, so it is not the law of the land. Sixteen years ago, I introduced it, and it is still not the law of the land.

In the meantime, Senator Obama, my colleague in the Senate, cosponsored the DREAM Act and then got a promotion. As President of the United States, I asked him: Can you do something to protect these young people from being deported?

He said that he would, so by Executive order, he created something known as DACA, the DACA Program, by which young people come forward, turn themselves in, register with the United States, pay a filing fee to cover all of the costs of the process, and go through a criminal background check. If they are approved and cleared, for 2 years, they can stay in the United States without having the fear of being deported, and they are allowed to work. Then, 2 years later, it is renewable. Over the years President Obama had done that, 780,000 young people signed up, went through the background check, and were approved under DACA.

Last week, President Trump, through his Attorney General, announced that he was going to rescind the DACA Program. So the 780,000 young people have their futures in doubt. They do not know which way they are going to turn. This creates serious problems, as you might imagine. The young people who are affected by it are affected emotionally--I would be, too--because they do not know what is going to happen next. They do not know whether they are going to be allowed to stay in this country, whether they will be deported from this country, or whether they will be able to work legally. They are waiting for Congress to give the answer, and the President says he is waiting for Congress to give the answer.

Last Friday, I went back to Chicago, which I am honored to represent in the Senate, and I visited Loyola University's School of Medicine. It is known as the Stritch School of Medicine.

At the outset, let me say how proud I am to represent the city and especially to represent Loyola University.
Here is what they did in their medical school when President Obama created DACA. They said: We will open up competition for our medical school to include those who are protected by DACA. We will not give them special slots, and we will not give them a quota. They can compete with everybody else who wants to go to our medical school.

Do you know what happened? At the end of the day, 32 of those DACA applicants scored so high that they were accepted at Loyola's Stritch School of Medicine. They are now in 2 or 3 different years of classes.
It is amazing. Many of them, from all over the United States, grew up without having legal citizenship status and always dreamed of being doctors, but it was impossible. They knew that no medical school would accept them. And Loyola said: We will accept you, and they got their chance--32 of them.

There is more to the story, as these young people do not qualify for any government assistance from the Federal Government. Because they are undocumented, they do not qualify for Pell grants, and they do not qualify for Federal Government loans. Medical school is expensive. How are they going to do it? They worked their way through college, paying out of their own pockets. How are they going to pay for medical school? Our State, the State of Illinois, under Governor Pat Quinn and renewed under Governor Rauner, created a loan program for them from which they could borrow money from the State. But there was a catch: For every year they borrowed money to go to medical school at Loyola, they had to pledge that they would give 1 year of service, of their lives, as doctors in underserved communities in our State. They did it. Thirty- two of them signed up for it. I am very proud to say that the program has been a terrific success in our State. They are just extraordinary, along with the other students at the medical school.

They are special people. They come from all over the world, and they are all in this similar predicament, but until last week, they were protected by DACA. What happens when you take away the DACA Executive order, which President Trump said he will do over the next 6 months? There is a special challenge here. After they finish 4 years of medical school, these students apply for residencies, whereby they pursue their specialties, whatever they might be. A residency is work experience for all of these medical students. Through some university, they will be working as residents at hospitals, working long hours while pursuing their dreams of being doctors and specialists.

Here is the problem: With DACA's being gone, they no longer have the legal right to work in the United States. What does that mean? They cannot apply for residencies. This is the end of it, the end of their medical education. It stops right there. Whatever their ambitions might be, whether it is surgery or psychiatry, they cannot go forward without DACA.

It really puts a burden on us in Congress to decide what we are going to do, doesn't it? Are we going to pass a law that finally, once and for all, defines the legal status of these young people--not just for these medical students but for hundreds of thousands of others who are working? They are engineers. They are teachers. They are working in so many different areas, and they want to continue being part of this country.

I am encouraged that we have a bipartisan response. My colleague Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, is my lead cosponsor on this year's version of the Dream Act. We currently have three other Republican Senators who have joined as cosponsors from across the United States--Senator Murkowski from Alaska, Senator Flake from Arizona, and Senator Gardner from Colorado. We hope others will join them. If we get the critical 60 votes in the Senate--60 sponsors or 60 who will pledge to vote for it--we can pass the Dream Act once and for all and take care of the concerns of the medical students I mentioned and so many others across this country.

I have come to the floor over the last few years and told the stories of the Dreamers. I think these stories have created good impressions in people's minds about who these young people are and what they can do for the future of the United States. I would like to do that again today.

This is Harminder Saini. Harminder was 6 years old when his family moved

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to the United States from India. He grew up in Queens in New York City.
He was a typical American kid--played sports and went to the park every day. Harminder's dream was to serve his country as a soldier in the U.S. Army. In his words, he simply wanted to give back.

Harminder was a born leader, and in high school, he was active in student government and was ultimately elected class president. He first learned that he did not have legal immigration status when he was in high school and he could not get a driver's license. They explained to him that he did not have the necessary legal documentation to be in this country. He was brought here as a kid and is growing up. He is now a student at Hunter College at the City University of New York and is working toward his bachelor's degree in history.

Thanks to DACA, he is fulfilling his dream. Last year, he was able to enlist in the Army through the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest Program, known as MAVNI. This photo is from his enlistment ceremony.
The MAVNI Program allows immigrants with skills that are vital to our national interests to enlist in the Armed Forces. More than 800 DACA recipients with these skills--the people whom I described earlier--have joined America's military. They really want to be part of our country.

Now, some Trump administration officials claim that DACA recipients are taking away jobs from Americans. But Harminder and hundreds just like him have skills that our military couldn't find in the general population they were recruiting from. Harminder, along with many other Dreamers, is now waiting to ship out for basic training. He continues his undergraduate studies and is working full time while waiting for a chance to volunteer to serve America in the military.

Harminder said:

All I want to do is serve. I want to do my part to give back to this country because it allowed me to serve.

Harminder and other Dreamers have so much to give to America, but without DACA--without the Dream Act--Harminder and hundreds of other immigrants with skills that are really important to our national interests will have to leave the Army. They want nothing more than to serve our country. They are prepared to die for our country. What more can we ask?

But, instead, there are those who would say that they should leave, that they should be deported. One of the President's former staff advisers, in a ``60 Minutes'' show last night, said those exact words: They should just leave.

I don't think America would be a stronger country if Harminder left.

I don't think our military would be stronger without his contribution and service to our country. He should be part of America, and we can do something about it.

A friend of mine recently went to the University of Notre Dame to visit with the administration there--represented by the Presiding Officer--in the State of Indiana. It is my understanding that they have some 68 DACA recipients at Notre Dame University. There is hardly a university in this country that doesn't have DACA-eligible young people who are going to school there. Remember, they don't qualify for any Federal assistance for education, at all, because they are in an undocumented status, but they are working their way through. They are borrowing the money. They are working jobs to make sure that they reach a point where they have a future.

Now it is up to us. We have to decide what we are going to do.

Senator Graham, my cosponsor of the Dream Act, said a week or so ago, when we introduced the bill, that the moment of reckoning is coming.

That moment is not only coming. It arrived last Tuesday.

We need Republican leaders to join us to help make the Dream Act the law of the land. Otherwise, what will happen to these young people? As for this Senator, I have made this a major part of my public career. I feel a special kinship with these young people. Yesterday was Mexican Independence Day in Chicago. What a parade there was. It must have gone on for 2 miles. It felt like it. There were more people than you could imagine coming out with their families--people of Mexican heritage who are now part of Chicago, part of Illinois, and part of the United States. As I was marching down the street, there was a young lady and a couple of her friends walking next to me wearing princess crowns, and I started talking to them. It turned out that two of the young girls were born in the United States. The third was born in Mexico, and she is a DACA recipient. She is going to school. She thanked me for the DACA Program and said: I hope you can make it a reality again.

We have that obligation. We have that responsibility. We need to step up with this broken immigration system and make certain that, at the end of the day, we have done everything in our power to give these young people like Harminder and hundreds of thousands just like him a chance to be part of America's future.

Remembering September 11

Mr. President, let me just close with a brief statement. I listened to my colleague and friend Senator Schumer speak in very touching terms about this anniversary which we observe today--the 16th anniversary of 9/11. I can recount where I was and what I remember, as I have before on the floor, but I will not. I will just say that it changed America in so many different ways.

As I went through airport security this morning at O'Hare, which I do every single week. I thought to myself that 16 years ago it would have been unthinkable that we would put passengers--every single one of them--through this kind of security process. But that is the reality of life in a world that is dangerous, life in a world where we want to protect innocent people from the 9/11s of the future that are being plotted and planned by our enemies around the world.

I think of those whose lives were lost on 9/11. I think of those who risked their lives. I think of those whose lives will never be the same because of that day.

It is a reminder to all of us to thank God that we live in this great country, to remember our history well, to honor the men and women in the military, and the men and women in law enforcement and in medicine, who stepped up that day in a heroic way, and to make sure that we do everything in our generation so that no future generation has a similar experience.

I yield the floor.

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