Immigration Reform
IMMIGRATION REFORM
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts who has just spoken. Senator Kennedy has led so many important fights in the Senate. This may be one of the most historic. We know our immigration system is broken. It just does not work.
In my office in Chicago, almost 90 percent of all of the work we do is on immigration. The stories will break your heart. There are people who have come to this country and, for reasons that often cannot be explained, are not in legal status today. As Senator Kennedy said, approximately half the undocumented people in America arrived here legally. What happened? They were going to school on a visa and they didn't take the necessary course work to be a full-time student. They lost their legal status. They were part-time students. They started again as full-time students, and they are undocumented as a result, or they came and stayed beyond their visas or they came into circumstances that, frankly, created family situations so they could not leave: A woman falls in love with an American citizen, is married, and has children. Her husband is an American citizen, all her children are American citizens, but she is not.
She is an undocumented person in this country.
But let me tell you one story or one group of stories that I think dramatizes some of the injustices of the current system that I think should be addressed. A few years ago, Senator ORRIN HATCH and I worked together in a bipartisan effort to pass what is known as the Dream Act. Senator Hagel, Senator Lugar, and I are now cosponsoring it on a bipartisan basis. It came to my attention because we got a phone call from a woman in Chicago, a Korean-American woman who works at a dry cleaners in Chicago 12 hours a day. She said she had a problem. Her problem was her daughter, who came to the United States at the age of 2 and became a musical prodigy. She played the symphony piano by the age of 8. She has played with the Chicago Symphony. She is an amazing, talented musician.
She was recruited by Julliard School of Music--the best in America--to develop her skills as a musician. When she started to fill out the application, she turned to her mother and said: It says here: Nationality. American, right? And her mother said: No, we never filed your papers. And here she was, a bright future ahead of her, and she called my office and said: What am I to do? We called the Immigration and Naturalization Service and they said: The answer is obvious. She has to go back to Korea.
Back to Korea? She had been in this country for 16 years. Through no fault of her own, she was not a documented citizen or in legal status. She had fallen through the cracks, one of the 11 million.
Let me tell you another story. It is about Diana, who was brought to Chicago at the age 6 by her family from Mexico. Diana is undocumented. She has lived her entire life in the United States. There is a 50-percent dropout rate among undocumented students in America--50 percent. She didn't drop out of school; she did the opposite. She stayed in school and made the dean's list all through high school. She graduated with a 4.4 average out of 4.0, taking advanced placement classes to pursue her dream of being an architect. She was accepted at Northwestern University and was so excited. She came to learn that because she was undocumented, she couldn't get financial assistance. She couldn't go to Northwestern. She went to another college. She is still trying to be an architect.
Tell me: Is America a better place if those two girls leave or is it a better place if they stay?
The Dream Act gives young people such as that a chance, people who came to the United States, young people, through no decision on their own--their parents made the decision. They did the right thing, followed the rules, didn't break any laws, went to school, were good students, studied, aspired, and dreamed of the opportunity in this country, and then learned, to their bitter disappointment, they were reaching a point where they could not pursue their education.
The Dream Act says this: If you are one of those people, if you have been here 5 years or more, if you entered the country under the age of 16, if you are in high school, you have a chance, and the chance is this: Complete high school and then either 2 years in college or a college degree in the next 6 years, or serve in our military for 2 years, and we will then give you a chance to start a long path toward citizenship. That is important.
I can't tell you the people who come up to me in the city of Chicago, students, for example, who are undocumented, who want to teach. We need them so badly. They want to teach math and science and critical languages. Yet, being undocumented, they can never be licensed to teach in my State of Illinois or virtually any other State.
Should these young people have a chance? Should they be allowed now to become part of America and our future? I think they should. The Dream Act is part of this immigration reform, and I urge my colleagues to support it. I yield to the Senator from Iowa.
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