Schools Not Shelters Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. VASQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate time I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee. If the House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with an important amendment to this bill.

My amendment would insert the text of the bipartisan American Dream and Promise Act, which provides a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers. This is an issue that Congress has failed to address, although my colleagues on the other side have continuously committed to supporting this bill.

Now, I find the response from some of our colleagues comical when they are so deathly afraid of immigrant children in our schools, but yet, when they are serviced by undocumented immigrants in the hotels that they stay at, when there are undocumented kitchen workers in the restaurants that they go to, when their houses and their homes are built by undocumented workers, we never see the same type of outrage.

I see a lot of ignorance in the response that we are seeing as to what undocumented folks provide in value to our country, and we cannot ignore that.

Now, there are nearly 2.3 million Dreamers in this country who are integrated into our communities already. They contribute to our economy. They participate in our workforce. They spend their wages. They pay taxes. We need to let Dreamers live and work in the only country they have ever known as home. We have a bipartisan bill right here to make that a reality.

I ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to take one of the first steps to fix our broken immigration system.

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Mr. VASQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit.

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Mr. VASQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

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