The DREAM Act

Floor Speech

THE DREAM ACT -- (Senate - October 24, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for their remarks that were just concluded on the DREAM Act and for the vote in support of it. It is interesting to me that those who have taken no time to meet the students who were involved in this issue come away with a much different feeling. Once this goes beyond cliches and inflammatory rhetoric that you hear in what passes for entertainment--television and radio--and you actually sit down and hear these life stories, you just can't help but have your heart touched by them. It happened to me a long time ago, 6 years ago, and it continues to happen to me. But, unfortunately, we didn't have the votes. We had 52 votes when we needed 60. In the Senate, 60 votes is a threshold requirement.

I thank the 11 Republicans who voted with me. I will tell you, it took some courage for them to do it. It is not an easy vote for anybody. It is surely not an easy vote for them when the vast majority of their colleagues are going the other way.

I also thank the 41 Democrats who stood by me. Some of them did it with pain in their eyes, thinking about: Now I have to go home and explain this one. I understand that. I thank them for doing that.

After you have been around Capitol Hill for a few years--and I have--you try to put things in perspective about your public service. I don't believe there are many, if any, who come to the Senate with the ambition of retiring. Most of us come here with the ambition of doing something important for our Nation and serving our Nation. There reaches a point sometime in a career where risks have to be taken for important things to happen. What I did today was no great risk. I will probably hear about it back home, and I already have a little bit, but I will just say in the course of our history the important things that have occurred here in this Chamber have involved political risk and controversy--whether it is a question of voting on war or voting on issues involving civil rights and human rights. It is rare that you find a great issue that makes a career that everybody agrees with.

I say to my colleagues who joined in this effort today, thank you from the bottom of my heart, but thanks also to the thousands of young people across America who continue to follow this debate and follow this issue so closely. The toughest part was not standing in the well and being told that I lost with only 52 votes; the toughest part was walking up those stairs and facing 3 of the kids in my office. I didn't quite know what to expect. These young people have been through a lot, through no fault of their own.

One young man whose stepgrandfather failed to file the appropriate documents is 20 years old. A few years ago, he was arrested and detained in jail over Christmas and New Year's. How is that for a high school graduation present, to be told that you are illegal and subject to deportation?

Another young woman--her parents were outed as being illegal and deported. I pled with the Department of Homeland Security to let her stay in school and finish her college degree, and they have allowed her to do that. I hope they will continue to. But she doesn't know where she is going from here. She has lived in the United States since she was a very young girl and this is her country, this is where she wants to be.

Another one is literally a young woman without a country. A refugee from Vietnam, she went to Germany and then came to the United States. Vietnam is not a safe place for her to return to, and Germany doesn't want her. She is without a country. She has a bachelor's degree and no place to turn.

I didn't quite know what to expect when I went up to see them after this disappointing vote, and they greeted me with smiles and encouragement. It is great to work around young people; they have such determination and energy, and they are not going to let anything get them down. It made me feel better, and I am glad we did it even though we weren't successful. It renewed my commitment to this issue.

I am not going to quit. I don't know when the next chance will be. I know we have a busy schedule, and Senator Reid was kind enough to give me the chance today for a vote, but this is an idea whose time will come because it is an idea based on justice and fairness. To think these young people would see their lives ruined because their parents were undocumented, because their parents brought them to this country, to think we would turn them away from America, saying we don't need any more electrical engineers, we don't need any more teachers and nurses and doctors--no, we know better than that. We need them. We need all of them, and their strength makes us a stronger Nation.

So the day will come, and I hope soon, when we will have a chance for those who follow the debate so closely and to those who understood their fate was in the hands of the Senators who voted this morning.

Do not give up. We have not given up yet and you should not give up. We are going to keep pursuing this. We are in a sad and troubling moment in American history when the issue of immigration is so divisive. But let's be honest, it has always been divisive. There have always been people saying: No more immigrants, please, in this nation of immigrants.

Immigrants have to play by the rules. They have to follow the law. I understand that. But let's not turn our back on our heritage as a nation. The strength of America is its diversity. The fact that we come from the four corners of the world to call this place home, the fact that our parents and grandparents had the courage to pick up and move, rather than to be content with a life of mediocre opportunity--those are the people who made America, those are the ones who defined who we are. It is why we are special in this world, if we are, and I think we are.

We cannot let these young people go. We cannot afford to let them go. For those several of the Senators today who stuck their necks out a mile, a political mile to cast this vote, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and these DREAM Act kids thank you too. The American dream will be there some day, and we will keep working until it happens.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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