Broader Options for Americans Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, our Constitution begins with three very simple and very powerful words: ``We the People.'' It is the mission statement for our Nation, for our Constitution. It is a vision in which decisions are made of, by, and for the people, not for the privileged and not for the powerful.
Who wrote those words? Well, it happened to be a group of White, wealthy landowners--the powerful and the privileged. They didn't choose to build a nation that would make laws for their benefit but laws that would be designed for the entire populous to thrive.
They were descended from immigrants. In our country, unless you are 100 percent Native American, unless you have just arrived as a new immigrant, you are descended from immigrants yourself. It is part of the fabric of our Nation. It is what makes us a combination of powerful talents and abilities from around the world.
George Washington himself once said: ``America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respected Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions.'' On another occasion, he wrote to a friend: ``I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.'' True to Washington's wishes and to his vision, that is the land we have been. It has been that land of opportunity, that land that welcomes others to our shores and gives them the chance to pursue the vision of opportunity, to help participate in the making of our great Nation, and to do so, each generation brings together a variety of languages and cultures and backgrounds. That is America.
That is why, a century after our Nation's founding, the French gave to the United States the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty has stood as a beacon of hope, welcoming those from other lands. Inscribed in the pedestal of that statue are these words:
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Those are the welcoming words for hundreds of thousands arriving here in the United States.
As I speak at this moment, 800,000 young men and women right here in America are yearning to breathe free as full participants in the Nation that they have grown up in. These are our Dreamers--Dreamers like this group of Oregonians who visited my office in December, who came to this country as very young children, who went to elementary school here, who went to high school here, who are our neighbors, our community members, who have gone on to college, who have taken jobs, and who are contributing in every possible way to our community, studying in their schools, practicing and working in our industry. They are now young adults who are striving to support their families, building to strengthen this economy, and building a future for themselves. They are paramedics saving lives.
If you stand on a street corner in Oregon and look around, there is a pretty good chance you will see a Dreamer. You may not know it because they are full members of our community, and you will see them contributing. But they have overcome a lot of obstacles, which creates a grit of character. It also helps to build the future of our Nation, just as it did for those of our forefathers and foremothers who arrived 1 or 2 or 3 or 10 generations ago.
We provided a program, the DACA Program, which struck a deal that said: If you give us all of your information, we will make sure that you are legally protected. President Trump has broken that promise. He has broken that deal, that commitment made by our executive branch to these Dreamers. So it puts them in a terrible spot of uncertainty and stress and limbo. Now it is time to set that right. It could be set right by the President in a moment.
Several of the courts have weighed in and said that the President has acted unconstitutionally in attacking our young immigrants, our Dreamers. But let's not wait for the courts to remedy this. Let's take care of it ourselves in this Chamber, the Senate Chamber. After months and months of inaction, after broken promises by President Trump, let's finally protect these men and women who do so much to embody the American spirit.
As we move forward in this debate, we must look again to what our Founding Fathers intended for the Nation they created and ensure that the ``golden door'' that the poet Emma Lazarus wrote about in her poem remains an open door, open to all those who dream to become an American and to contribute to this Nation. We must remain, in President Washington's words, ``open to receive not only the Opulent and Respected, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations.''
Yet, looking at the plan that President Trump has put forward and similar plans offered in this Chamber, there is a real interest in slamming the door shut by those who have already arrived as immigrants, who have fled persecution, who have pursued freedom, who have pursued opportunity, and who have escaped from famine to come in and slam the door on everyone else. It is not very American to do that, and it is not a strength to undermine the future success of our economy by draining away the extraordinary talents of our Dreamer community.
President Johnson made the point. He said: ``The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources--because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples.''
President Ronald Reagan made the point. He said: ``More than any other country, our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands.''
The founding President of our country, a respected Democratic President of our country, and a respected Republican President of our country have said the same thing: The strength of our country is in the contributions that have been made by our immigrants.
The Founding Fathers wrote those words, that mission statement, that this would be a nation of, by, and for the people, not one to make laws by and for the powerful and the privileged. That is the vision we need to continue to hold on to--to understand that the strength of this Nation comes from weaving together the many cultural threads of the people of the United States of America.
Let's get this Dream Act to this floor. There is a bipartisan understanding around restoring legal status. There is a bipartisan foundation for border security. Let's not give in to those far-right Breitbart voices that are so out of sync with the traditions, the strength, the culture, and the vision of our Nation. Let's restore the legal status for our Dreamers, enhance our border security, and do the work that this Chamber should have done long ago.
Thank you.
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