One Step Closer to Universal Healthcare and the American Dream and Promise
Floor Speech
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Mrs. RAMIREZ. Mr. Speaker, tonight, I am convening a Special Order hour for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, where we are focused on our shared commitment and shared urgency to make comprehensive immigration reform and universal healthcare our reality. We are one step closer to doing so for DACA recipients, or Dreamers, who have been waiting and are still waiting for us to make good on our long-overdue commitment to a pathway to citizenship for them.
Healthcare is a human right, full stop. I know saying healthcare is a human right can feel more like a slogan or a hashtag than a call to action that anyone will actually do something about. I have certainly felt that myself and felt frustrated by the simplicity of that call to action contrasted with a deflating lack of change.
Some people think it is too lofty and that we should start smaller. What does it mean, though, to start smaller? When it comes to healthcare, that means dividing people into who is worthy of healthcare and who is not.
I will take a quick moment to thank everyone who doesn't give in and doesn't give up on envisioning a better world that has more than enough resources for all of us because I know that you get pushback, doubt, and detraction. It is those big, lofty goals that keep us rooted in our why and keep pushing us for better.
That is why, last week when President Biden announced his proposal to expand eligibility for Medicaid and Affordable Care Act benefits to Dreamers, we all celebrated.
DACA first started in 2012, over a decade ago. There are approximately 600,000 DACA recipients living across the United States. They are healthcare workers, they are teachers, they are parents, and they are neighbors.
About 35,000 Dreamers call my home State of Illinois their home. One of them is my husband, Boris Hernandez, who has lived in the U.S. since he was 14 years old. He has now lived in the U.S. more than he ever lived in Guatemala.
Collectively, Dreamers pay $9.4 billion in State and Federal taxes every single year.
For all these years, access to healthcare through the ACA or through Medicaid hasn't been available to Dreamers. That is a policy failure with life and death consequences.
Right now, DACA recipients can mainly only access healthcare if their employer provides it. Otherwise, they are largely reliant upon the State they happen to live in to have a State-funded healthcare program.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, more than a third of DACA recipients don't have any healthcare insurance whatsoever. We know what happens when you deny access to affordable healthcare. People avoid going to the doctor as much as possible because they can't afford to go. Health conditions that may only need preventive care or some kind of medication go undiagnosed, untreated, and get worse and worse until it is a life or death emergency.
Before I came to Congress, I had the deep honor of serving in the Illinois House of Representatives, where I led legislation with the Latino Legislative Caucus, the Healthy Illinois coalition, and Governor J.B. Pritzker to create what is now State law that expands Medicaid coverage to all residents age 42 and up regardless of legal status. This made Illinois the first State in the entire country to provide healthcare coverage to immigrants, regardless of status.
By the time this passed into law, it reflected multiple rounds of negotiations. If I could have, I would have had eligibility start at the age of 19 to ensure that there was no break in healthcare coverage for our children who are now adults.
I now look forward to working with President Biden's proposed expansion of healthcare coverage to Dreamers and it going into effect so that we can continue to build on the work we have done in Illinois and across the country.
Hearing even one story of what expanding healthcare coverage for just one person has meant to them and their loved ones underscores what is true for all of us. We must recognize the importance of providing access to quality healthcare and services for all people, regardless of their citizenship status.
Olga, a resident in Illinois, who, because of this new State law, could access medical coverage for the first time, graciously shared her story with me. She said: ``I was born in Mexico, and I came to Chicago in 2004. I came to the United States for a better life for my family. I encountered many obstacles, such as language, work, housing, school for my children, and health. I had to get a dental treatment, but due to the cost, I put off going. Then, it got complicated and more expensive. I managed to save $8,000, but I had to choose between two options: pay for the dentist or pay for my son's university. Having access to medical coverage is a true relief because now I can go regularly to the doctor.''
I share Olga's story because her story is the story of many others, hundreds of thousands of immigrants, whether DACA or otherwise, who live all across our country and still don't have the ability to go to the doctor when they need it.
The immediate and tremendous impact she experienced once affordable healthcare was no longer denied is the same immediate and tremendous impact President Biden's proposal will have on all Dreamers.
It feels obvious to say, but the benefits of access to affordable healthcare for someone who is a DACA recipient are the same for all immigrants. It is not just Dreamers.
Yet, here is just one example of how we continue to divide and break up the immigrant community into politicized categories that we then use to weigh different members of the immigrant community against each other. Who is and isn't worthy of citizenship? Who is and isn't worthy of healthcare?
I say all this as the only Member of Congress in a mixed-status marriage. What I want to make absolutely clear is that our families and our communities cannot be conveniently divided into documentation status and, therefore, neither can our deservedness of healthcare as a human right.
That is why The New York Times' reporting this week that multiple staff at HHS warned the administration that migrant children were being hastily connected to sponsors who put them in grave danger cannot be seen as separate.
More than 250,000 migrant children have come alone to the United States in the last 2 years alone, and thousands have ended up in grueling, dangerous, exploitive jobs all across the country, in complete violation of child labor laws. They are away from their families and caregivers. They are not in school, and they are doing graveyard shifts in factories.
You can't tell me that is healthy. You can't tell me these children and their families they have been separated from are not deserving of safe, caring sponsors who would prioritize their healthcare, education, wellness, and a pathway to citizenship.
I commend President Biden for his proposal for Dreamers. It marks a significant step forward for immigration reform, demonstrating our commitment to protecting Dreamers by providing them with access to quality healthcare and services.
But we must recognize this moment, which has been preceded by years of moments, that the brokenness of our immigration system is a failure we share on both sides of the aisle. Let us use this moment to rededicate ourselves to this shared responsibility to fix it humanely, comprehensively, and immediately.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield to my colleagues, who will highlight the tremendous impact that President Biden's proposed expansion of healthcare to Dreamers will have and our shared responsibility to make universal healthcare and comprehensive immigration reform a reality after all these years.
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Mrs. RAMIREZ. Tlaib).
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Mrs. RAMIREZ. Mr. Speaker, I too dream of that day. You see, half of my family is still undocumented. Half of my family has lived here for almost 40 years.
My uncle, Max Guerra, will be turning 70 in 2 years. He works at a diner. He works 65 to 70 hours a week, standing there preparing meals for others to be able to enjoy.
I asked him: Tio, you are almost 70, why are you still working so much?
He says to me: Delia, I have to make sure that all my four boys get through college. I have to help them pay for college because I have no way of guaranteeing that I will be here tomorrow or the day after because of my immigration status. I have to work like today is the last day that I will be able to provide for my family. My uncle, Max Miliano Guerra, is not alone.
As we think about this broken immigration system and as we think about healthcare, I have to go back to that moment where I proudly stood on the statehouse floor and passed legislation to expand healthcare coverage to people who are undocumented and over the age of 42.
I remember receiving a letter from a young woman who had just become a citizen. Her letter to me said, Representative Ramirez, I wish you would have been in the statehouse just a few years before. I wish you would have been able to pass the legislation you passed a few years ago because if you had done that my father would still be alive today.
Her father was in this country for almost 40 whole years working at factories and small businesses, giving to the community, contributing every single day, paying taxes. He got very sick. He got cancer but had no healthcare. Her father worked until he could no longer work, which was days before he died because he had no access to healthcare in a country he contributed to for almost 40 years.
This is why when we talk about healthcare coverage and when we talk about this moment and immigration, we can't separate the issues. We understand that it is past time for us to be able to have a pathway to citizenship. It is past time that DACA Dreamers, like my own husband, have access to healthcare. They are healthcare workers, they are teachers, and during the pandemic they kept you and me alive. This is exactly why I applaud President Biden's administration and this proposal to finally provide healthcare to those who every single year provide more than $9.4 billion of tax revenue to this country we love.
This is exactly why standing here as a Member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as the daughter of a woman who crossed the border when she was pregnant with me in her first trimester--a woman who said to me, Delia, water was just a privilege. It was the ability to be able to keep on walking and recognizing that I needed you to have the life I never had. I needed you to wear your first pair of shoes before the age of seven, unlike me. I needed you to be able to get more than a third grade education. I risked everything in 1,811 miles of desert, walking 40 years ago so that you, inside my womb, could be born in a country where you would have the opportunities I never had.
That woman today is a citizen because of amnesty of 1987. One thing that woman never imagined was that her daughter, that life she fought so hard to keep alive in the Rio Grande, would be standing before you today in the same fight for immigration reform that so many for the last 40 years have had.
This is why we understand that we have to get past parties. We have to be in a position to be able to expand healthcare coverage to people regardless of their legal status.
As Congressman Carter said, we need to recognize that it is actually quite more affordable to provide preventative care than to care for someone when they are nearly dying in a hospital, which is exactly what we saw in the State of Illinois.
By expanding healthcare coverage to people in Illinois, hospitals no longer have to take in people who are dying because they didn't get preventive care. This is why this proposal and this proposed rule will make such a difference--not just to Boris, but to all of those children that came so young and are no longer 13, 14, 15, they are 38, 39.
It has been the honor of my life to be sworn into the U.S. Congress. I recognize the responsibility we have and the commitment of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to ensure that we stop talking about immigration reform and do something about it.
Mr. Speaker, I am sick and tired of going back home and having to look at people that look like me, that carry my blood, and tell them: Maybe next Congress. Maybe next time. Maybe convince this person or convince the other.
It is past time that this country that I love, that I was born in, where I get to serve in Congress as the first Latina from the Midwest that proudly I represent, that we finally do what is right and what we all know is not just a moral obligation. It is also one that allows us to be able to continue to contribute and see the economic development and the contributions of our immigrants here in this country.
Mr. Speaker, I thank all of my colleagues who have joined tonight's Progressive Caucus Special Order hour. What is absolutely clear to me is that the power of our collective voices, united in making comprehensive immigration reform and universal healthcare a reality now, not later--and not only for some while other members of the immigrant community suffer--must be our responsibility. I know that when there is a will there is always a way.
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