Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, on September 5, 2017, President Trump announced the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, known as DACA. As a result of that, hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the United States as children and are known as Dreamers have faced losing their work permits and face deportation to countries they barely remember.
DACA provided temporary legal status to Dreamers only if they registered with the government, paid a fee of almost $500, and passed a thorough criminal background check. This DACA Program has been a success. More than 800,000 Dreamers have come forward and received DACA protection, which has allowed them to become a part of the only country they have ever called home.
Many of these Dreamers were brought here as infants and toddlers, raised in this country, pledging allegiance to that flag. They believed they were part of America, and usually at some point when they became teenagers, their parents gave them the terrible news that they were undocumented.
When President Trump decided 8 months ago to repeal DACA, he set March 5 as the deadline for the final expiration of the DACA Program. However, two Federal courts have stepped in and issued orders blocking the President's repeal of this DACA executive order. This means that Dreamers who have DACA can continue to apply to renew their status for now.
I urge every DACA recipient to file their renewal application immediately. The Trump administration is doing everything in its power to fight this court protection, and that court protection could be lifted any day. This means there is a need for Congress to do something.
Again, I urge the Republicans who control Congress to immediately pass the Dream Act--bipartisan legislation I first introduced 17 years ago that would finally give these Dreamers a path to becoming citizens of the United States.
The reality is that tens of thousands of Dreamers are already at risk of losing their work permits and being deported. The Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, has promised me that her Department will not deport any DACA recipient with a pending DACA application, even if their status expires. I am going to hold her to that commitment because lives hang in the balance.
However, for DACA recipients whose status has expired, the Department will not authorize them to work unless and until their DACA is renewed. This means that tens of thousands of DACA-eligible individuals could be forced to leave their jobs while their applications are pending and before the renewals are approved.
Then consider the fate of Dreamers who are eligible for DACA but never quite reached that status. They can no longer apply for protection because of President Trump's decision to prohibit new DACA applications after September 5, 2017. For example, a child turning 15-- the youngest age at which you can apply for DACA--is now blocked from applying. The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that in addition to 800,000 DACA recipients, there are an additional 1 million Dreamers who are eligible. Thanks to President Trump's harsh decision to end DACA, 1.8 million Dreamers are at risk of deportation and cannot work to support themselves or contribute to the country they love.
On September 5, Trump called on Congress to ``legalize DACA.'' But since then, he has rejected six bipartisan proposals to achieve that. He has even rejected a $25 billion bipartisan offer to build his border wall. Mexico, of course, was supposed to pay for that wall.
We provided the money in a bill that also provided protection for the Dreamers. The President rejected it. Instead, he has tried to put the entire hard-line immigration agenda on the backs of the Dreamers. President Trump has said that he will support legalization for Dreamers only if Congress passes his plan, which would, among other things, cut legal immigration to the United States by more than 40 percent.
There are people within this administration and some within the Senate who really despise immigrants, and you can see it. They want to cut legal immigration to the United States. That would be the largest cut in immigration in almost 100 years.
Earlier this year, the Senate decided to vote on President Trump's plan--the one he supports. It failed; it failed badly when 39 Senators voted for it, and 60 voted against it. President Trump is holding Dreamers hostage to an immigration plan that is so extreme that many of his own party members do not support it.
Over the years, I have come to the floor of the Senate more than 100 times to tell the stories of Dreamers. I could give these speeches endlessly. I don't think they have the impact of coming to know the young people who are engaged and involved and at risk in this political debate.
This is Dalia Larios, the 114th Dreamer I have introduced on the floor of the Senate. She was brought to the United States from Mexico when she was 10 years old. She grew up in Mesa, AZ. She remembers celebrating the Fourth of July, going to school dances, and of course, watching the Super Bowl.
Her parents were hard workers who usually had two or three jobs. They taught her that although there were many things she could not control, she could control how long she studied and how much time she devoted to school. She did; Dalia graduated from high school in the top 1 percent of her class. She was named the most outstanding life science student in school. Not only did she excel academically, she completed over 150 hours of community service.
She is a remarkable young woman. She started an after-school dance program for at-risk children and was the first place State champion in both French and constitutional debate.
Dalia then attended Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University. She majored in biological sciences--specifically genetics, cell, and developmental biology. She continued her community service volunteering as an English and biology tutor at a number of health clinics. Dalia graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA and received a number of awards, including the School of Life Sciences award for plant-based research on cervical and breast cancer vaccines.
Today, Dalia is a fourth year medical student at Harvard Medical School. She is researching lung cancer and lung transplants at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
In 2016 she won the Robert Ebert Prize for Healthcare Delivery Research or Service for her work on designing a student-led health coaching program to improve health outcomes in complex diabetic patients, and what did she dream to be? A cardiothoracic surgeon.
Dalia wrote me a letter. She said:
For many, DACA may be a political bargain. For me, it is my life. And [because of DACA,] for the first time ever, I have been able to live a life that is not just rooted in dreams but rather the realization of those dreams. It has been a gateway to change, inclusion and meaningful integration into the country I call home and desperately hope to serve.
At least 65 additional Dreamers were enrolled in medical school this last school year, but without DACA these Dreamers could be deported back to their countries, where they haven't lived since they were little kids. Will America be a stronger country if we ask Dalia to leave--this Harvard Medical School graduate, who wants to be a cardiothoracic surgeon? If we tell her, ``We don't need you; go to some another country,'' are we better off for that? Of course, not. We are stronger to have people like Dalia in the United States.
The Association of American Medical Colleges states that the Nation's doctor shortage is going to continue. Both the AMA and the Association of American Medical Colleges have warned that ending DACA could make it even harder to deal with the physician shortage in the United States. They caution that President Trump's reversal in policy ``could have severe consequences for many in the health care workforce, impacting patients and our nation's health care system.''
I personally think it would be a tragedy to deport someone like Dalia, who has so much to contribute to America.
President Trump created the DACA crisis. Instead of working toward a solution, he has sabotaged every effort we have made to support and save the Dreamers. Now it is up to the Republican majority in Congress to accept one of the six bipartisan solutions on the table to save these young people.
Congress should do its job and make the Dream Act the law of the land, or we are going to be responsible for the fate of wonderful young women like this. This amazing young woman could be saving lives in America as a surgeon, or we can deport her back to Mexico. What sense would that make?
Currently, the U.S. House of Representatives is debating when and if to return to the immigration debate. It is fortunate that 20 Republicans have had the courage to step up so far, and I hope more will join them to say: We have to do something. We can't just let this happen without an effort to pass a bill to solve the problem.
The same thing could be said of the Senate. That is why I am hoping that at the end of the day, we can put this kind of Dream Act and DACA bill back into active consideration on the floor of the Senate.
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, as in legislation session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 1615; that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am just going to respond briefly.
The bill that I asked to be called today for a vote was debated at length over a period of 17 years with numerous committee meetings. This is not an open-ended bill. There is a deadline. To qualify for it, one must have been in the United States already for over a year. So it would not be a magnet for those who would like to come and take advantage of it in the future. It wouldn't apply to them, but it does apply to 1.8 million who would be eligible for citizenship.
I am sorry that there was an objection, but I will continue to work with Members on both sides of the aisle to resolve this. We owe it to Dalia and to many others like her who are waiting for Congress to act.
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