[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 5 (Tuesday, January 9, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H25-H26]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       DEFENDING THE AMERICA WORD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Speaker, this morning, a high school senior sat 
attentively in a Chicago classroom while

[[Page H26]]

this country held her college dreams hostage.
  This morning, a fourth-year medical student started her rotation as 
an aspiring thoracic surgeon in Cambridge while this country took her 
talent for granted.
  This morning, an enlisted soldier living in Queens eagerly awaited 
his basic training assignment while his country shrugged their 
shoulders at his service.
  This morning, 800,000 young men and women woke up, offered a brave 
smile to their loved ones, and sought to better the only home they have 
ever known.
  You can call them DREAMers. You can call them immigrants. You can 
call them Americans. You can call them husbands, wives, sons, 
daughters, neighbors, doctors, students, servicemen and -women.
  You can call them human beings who deserve to live in a place that 
they call home; whose lives shouldn't be horse-traded for big walls, 
petty tweets, and bad campaign ads; who have offered us their talent, 
their tirelessness, their ingenuity, their empathy, their loyalty, and 
their patriotism; who have earned their government's protection in 
return.
  We gave those 800,000 human beings our word, and if those of us here 
in this room who have the incredible privilege of serving in these 
halls bestowed with the title ``Representative,'' if we aren't willing 
to defend the American word and make sure that it still means 
something, then who will?

                          ____________________