[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 10 (Wednesday, January 17, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H457-H462]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  DACA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Castro) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks 
and include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Texas?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I speak tonight on the issue of the 
DACA program.
  In 2012, President Obama issued an executive action to allow 800,000 
young people, known as DACA kids, to remain in the United States. These 
are young immigrants who were brought here at an early age by their 
parents, people who had no choice in whether to come to the United 
States, but, for many, this is the only home and only Nation they have 
ever known.
  These young people now face the threat of deportation if Congress 
does not act as soon as possible. And certainly, by March 5, 800,000 
young people will become subject to deportation. Already, there has 
been a cost to Congress' inaction. Every day, 122 of these folks become 
subject to deportation.
  We all understand in this body the long history of immigration to the 
United States and the incredible contributions that immigrants from 
around the world have made to our Nation. These are people from 
Germany, Ireland, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. From literally every 
corner of the globe, people have come here lending their talents, their 
energy, their creativity, and their passion to making sure that the 
United States remains the greatest Nation on Earth. That is the case 
with the DACA kids.
  Today, I am joined by several of my colleagues who are going to share 
some stories about DACA recipients, their lives, and the contributions 
they are making in our American communities and in American life.
  But before I yield to my first colleague, I want to run through, for 
a minute, the requirements for somebody to be a DACA recipient. This 
has sometimes been, obviously, a very passionate, sometimes heated 
debate about what should happen with the DACA recipients and whether 
the Congress should even commit itself to coming up with a DACA 
solution. Whether it is people making comments on television or 
sometimes comments you read online, it is clear that there is a lot of 
misinformation out there--sometimes, willful misinformation--about who 
these people are.
  So I want to read real quickly the requirements for somebody to be a 
DACA recipient.

                              {time}  1815

  First, they were under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012.
  Second, they came to the United States before reaching their 16th 
birthday.
  Third, they have continuously resided in the United States since June 
15, 2007, up to the present time.
  Fourth, they were physically present in the United States on June 15, 
2012, and at the time of making the request for consideration of 
deferred action with USCIS.
  Fifth, they had no lawful status on June 15, 2012.
  Sixth, they are currently in school, have graduated or obtained a 
certificate of completion from high school, have obtained a general 
equivalency development--GED--certificate, or are an honorably 
discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United 
States.
  And, seventh, they have not been convicted of a felony, significant 
misdemeanor, or three or more misdemeanors, and did not otherwise pose 
a threat to national security or public safety.
  This addresses two of the common questions or, sometimes, criticisms 
that you hear about the DACA program, which, first, is the idea that 
some of these folks are criminals. Well, it makes very clear in these 
requirements that that cannot be the case.
  And then, second, this idea that, hey, these folks, if they wanted 
to, they could have just become citizens. Again, number five was: had 
no lawful status on June 15, 2012, when the program commenced.
  These are energetic, hardworking folks that we can be very proud of 
who are making significant contributions to American society.
  Congress must act--and we should act this week--to come up with a 
DACA solution, to make sure that no more of these kids are subject to 
deportation, that their lives are no longer left in the balance, and 
that their futures are secure. These are folks who are in college, who 
have graduated and have gone into different fields, different 
professions, teachers and many other different professions that are 
represented by the DACA students now. Congress must act to make sure 
that they can stay in the country.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Barragan).
  Ms. BARRAGAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, the DREAMers issue, DACA recipients, is very personal 
for me. My district is 70 percent Latino, and I have an estimated 8,000 
DACA recipients. I also have a cousin who is a recipient of DACA.
  It is heartbreaking to hear the stories of recipients who are living 
in uncertainty, living in fear, and who tell you firsthand of the sense 
of urgency that they feel. It is a sense of urgency that, frankly, I 
don't feel is happening here in Congress.
  Now, I will talk to my colleagues across the aisle, and they will 
tell me: ``I support a solution. I want to do something to help DACA 
recipients.'' But we can't get a vote. The leadership will not give us 
a vote on the Dream Act. They won't give us a vote on any legislation 
that involves DACA.
  Just today, we had White House Chief of Staff Kelly come in to meet

[[Page H458]]

with members of the Hispanic Caucus to talk about this issue. We 
continue to hear that the President is committed to finding a fix, yet 
he is using DACA recipients as a political pawn, a political pawn to 
get a wall that he said Mexico would pay for.
  Frankly, as a member of the Homeland Security Committee, I know that 
putting money into a wall is not the best use of our dollars.
  This issue is urgent; it is real. These are people's lives. They are 
doctors, they are nurses, and they are teachers.
  In my very district, I have a DACA recipient named Roque Pech. He was 
my guest for the State of the Union last year, somebody who is now 
teaching our children, somebody who is giving back to our community.
  DACA recipients are good folks. They are our neighbors. They are our 
friends. They are our family members. There is overwhelming support, on 
a bipartisan basis, to give them the protections that they need and 
deserve. Members of our military who are serving are also DACA 
recipients.
  I urge us all to come together to find a solution, so that we can 
deliver on providing the protections that DACA recipients so urgently 
need and so urgently want, and stop making this a political football so 
that we can also move on to other issues.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, before I bring up my next 
colleague, Congresswoman Barragan talked about the incredible DREAMers, 
DACA recipients that are in her district, and I have many in my 
district. I represent a very large city in Texas, the city of San 
Antonio--I have the main San Antonio district--and you can imagine that 
we have our fair share of DACA recipients in San Antonio.
  I want to read, really quickly, the story of just one of them. Her 
name is Lisa.
  Lisa is a first-generation American who immigrated to the United 
States from Canada in October 1996 at the age of 6. Lisa learned she 
had, unknowingly, overstayed her visa on December 19, 2010, just a day 
after the DREAM Act stalled in the Senate, when she received, in the 
mail, a notice to appear in immigration court, which is the first step 
in deportation proceedings.
  She went to elementary, middle, and high school in San Antonio. 
During that time, she was a Girl Scout, logged more than 700 hours of 
community service during her high school years, and spearheaded a 
fundraiser that raised $10,000 to help pay for the bone marrow 
transplant of a young leukemia patient whom she had never met.
  In 2008, she graduated from a San Antonio high school with summa cum 
laude honors, ranking in the top 6 percent of her class. She spent the 
summer working as a congressional intern for the United States House of 
Representatives, right here--for my predecessor, Charlie Gonzalez--
before heading to Northwestern University to study journalism and 
political science. Lisa was sitting at her college graduation ceremony 
on the day that President Obama announced the DACA program, June 15, 
2012.

  Her work permit has enabled her to take out a mortgage, buy a car, 
get a job, pay taxes, renew her driver's license, and repay six 
figures--about $114,000--of student loans used to fund her Northwestern 
University degree.
  Today, Lisa is a communications associate at a nonprofit. As a 
reporter, Lisa's work has been published in The Washington Post, 
Huffington Post, San Antonio Express-News, Boulder Daily Camera, The 
Denver Post, and several other places. Her story is just one story of 
the incredible folks who are part of the DACA program that are 
contributing to the greatness of our Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. 
Torres).
  Mrs. TORRES. Mr. Speaker, we have waited too long to protect the 
DREAMers. This is unacceptable to me and to the vast majority of 
Americans.
  My Republican colleagues say that we have until March to fix this 
issue, but that is simply not true. 16,287 DREAMers have lost their 
protection since September. For those DREAMers, the deadline has 
already passed.
  This is not a partisan issue. I would like to remind my colleagues 
that the Dream Act is a bipartisan bill. Unfortunately, the Republican 
leadership and the White House have not acted in good faith. They have 
politicized this issue. They have backed themselves to the wall. They 
are holding the fate of DREAMers hostage.
  They say that they want to help DREAMers, but then they say they will 
only help DREAMers in exchange for border security, demanding that we 
give up on our commitment to keeping families together, ending the 
Diversity Visa program, knowing that these are poison pills.
  If Republicans truly want to help DREAMers, Democrats stand ready. If 
Republicans want to compromise on a comprehensive immigration reform 
bill, we are ready to do that, too.
  We can talk about all of the changes to our immigration system that 
Republicans want at the same time that we talk about how we bring 11 
million people, undocumented people, out of the shadows and on a 
pathway to citizenship. But the issue of DREAMers and comprehensive 
immigration reform should simply be kept separate.
  Show some leadership. President Trump says he wants a ``bill of 
love.'' So do I and so do my colleagues.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the Congresswoman was talking about 
the support for DACA, and it is true that surveys consistently show 
that the American people support the DACA kids at about 83 percent or 
so. That is an incredible, overwhelming majority support for this 
program.
  She mentioned the possible tradeoff. There has been this argument 
that we should pass a clean Dream Act, for example, which is a DACA 
fix, and whether it should be paired with anything else, like, if we 
are going to pass a DACA bill, what is the price to pay for that? That 
is the common debate. What is the President, or what is the majority, 
going to demand for that?
  But as Congresswoman Torres mentioned, I would just point out that 
that 83 percent support among the American people is not 83 percent 
only if you build a wall. The American people don't say: We support the 
DACA kids, but only if you build a wall across the United States of 
America. They say: We support the DACA kids, and we want to make sure 
that those kids can stay and continue to live in the United States of 
America.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa).
  Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for 
yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to stand with the DREAMers, both those 
living throughout the great San Joaquin Valley whom I have the honor 
and the privilege to represent, as well as those across the entire 
United States. We in the valley--as we like to say--and throughout our 
Nation are, let us remember, a nation of immigrants, past and present.
  So we know the integral role, both historically and today, that 
immigrants have played throughout the great history of our Nation in 
terms of the development of our economy and our communities. The 
contributions that have been made are the story of America. And our 
DREAMers, these young immigrants, also make immense contributions, and 
their story is a part of America's story.
  It is estimated that roughly 685,000 of our Nation's workers, our 
DREAMers, with protections through the Deferred Action for Childhood 
Arrivals, or DACA, program, that if we, in fact, remove them as some 
are maybe suggesting, it would impact over $460 billion to our Nation's 
economy, to our GDP. Think about that.
  In my home State of California, it is estimated that there are over 
193,000 DREAMers who are currently legal, who are working and 
contributing with these DACA protections, and that removing them from 
the workforce in California would cost an estimated $11.6 billion to 
the GDP of California.
  Does this make any sense? No.
  But the DREAMers also serve in our military, protecting our Nation 
both at home and abroad, in harm's way. They are our friends. They are 
our neighbors. They are deacons in our local churches, and many of them 
are students, hoping to contribute to the betterment of America. They, 
too, want to be a part--and they are, in fact--of the American Dream.
  In my district alone, we have over 600 DREAMers at the University of 
California, Merced, and more than that at my alma mater, Fresno State 
University.
  But these DREAMers are young men and women. They are not just 
numbers.

[[Page H459]]

These are people. They are people, many of whom we have trusted to be a 
part of our country, to uphold its word, when they basically enrolled 
to be a part of the DACA program.
  Just today, I spoke to two DREAMers in my office. One of them is a 
remarkable young person, currently getting her Ph.D. in physics--she is 
27 years old--at the University of California, Merced, focusing her 
research on solar energy.

                              {time}  1830

  Just think about this: helping America with the next generation of 
our energy development.
  Her name is Bo. She hopes to work in renewable energy when she gets 
her Ph.D., but now with the possible removal of DACA, her future is 
uncertain. She came here when she was 3 years old. Her DACA protections 
expire in less than 1 year.
  Another DREAMer I spoke to today was a student body president while 
working on his bachelor's degree at Fresno State, my alma mater. His 
name is Pedro. He has graduated now. He has earned his master's degree 
in public policy and urban affairs and is contributing to the economy 
of our valley and to our State. His DACA protections expire within 
months.
  Think about that. Think about the gravity of these two students, Bo 
and Pedro. In less than a year, they don't know if they are going to be 
here. This is their country, as far as they are concerned.
  Our DREAMers have shared stories time and time again of uncertainty 
and fear that is gripping their families and our communities as they 
are forced to wait and see if the only home that they have ever known, 
this country, will keep its word when they enrolled in the DACA program 
and create the protections that allow them to stay here and ultimately 
become citizens.
  That is the question. That is what we are trying to achieve.
  So I stand here today to say to my colleagues, as Members of the 
Congress, we all take an oath every 2 years. We swear to protect and 
defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign 
and domestic, and to promote, guess what, the general welfare for the 
good of our country.
  Well, that is what this is all about, promoting the most positive 
things that can be a part of our country. These DREAMers are a part of 
that. So this has to be a part of our permanent solution.
  Eighty-six percent of the people in this country support providing 
legal designation for these DREAMers, and it is imperative that we do 
the right thing. This is America. I will continue to work with my 
colleagues on the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and other Members of 
Congress in a bipartisan fashion to ensure that we do the right thing. 
This is the American way.
  More than just protecting these young people, America needs a stable, 
just, and commonsense immigration policy. Let's face it, our 
immigration system is broken. I will continue to work on a bipartisan 
basis for comprehensive immigration reform more broadly so that we 
don't end up back right where we are here today in bickering and in 
partisan, piecemeal, and often contradictory fashion that does nothing 
to fix our broken immigration system.
  We must improve the dialogue and the debate. This problem is very 
solvable. It really is. Let's get past the political posturing, let's 
fix DACA and provide support for our DREAMers, let's move on in the 
second phase, which the President has suggested, and let's work on the 
other elements. We are for border security. It is important. We all 
support border security. Let's do the other things that are a part of 
fixing this broken immigration system.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for recognizing me.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, Congressman 
Costa, for his remarks. He made several very important points. One of 
them was the economic benefits of the DREAMer population, the DACA 
population, on their communities and how not only for California and 
his district, but for so many other parts of the country where you do 
have DACA recipients, it would be a real economic blow to deport these 
folks, to uproot them from the communities and simply get them out of 
here. It would be an economic blow to the economies of those cities and 
towns and States and, of course, to our Nation.
  The second thing that I thought was very important is really the 
human element that right now, as you can imagine, these 800,000 young 
people are watching the United States Congress. Their parents, their 
brothers, their sisters, everybody who loves them realizes that their 
future hangs in the balance. They are living in fear and incredible 
anxiety wondering whether they are going to be allowed to stay in what 
is for most of them the only place they have ever known as home.
  It would be like deciding that I am going to go live in Egypt or live 
in Uruguay or anywhere else. I simply have no connection to those 
places as home.
  That is what these young people are facing if this Congress refuses 
to act. That is what they are facing now.
  Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely correct. That is 
why this debate is so important and that is why we must come together 
not just on behalf of Bo and Pedro, as I cited their examples, but for 
the 800,000-plus DREAMers across this country and their families.
  This is just good common sense. It is the right thing to do and it is 
the thing that we must do to move our Nation on a positive track.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for all his hard work. I am 
honored to be a part of this Special Order.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for being a 
champion on this issue.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Soto).
  Mr. SOTO. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Castro for his great 
leadership on this issue.
  I want to take a moment to talk about the story of Mariana Castro. 
Mariana is going to be interning for us this year, and she is an 
ambitious young DREAMer from Florida.
  In 2005, Mariana left Lima, Peru, at the age of 10 with her mother, 
leaving her father and brothers behind for a safer life.
  She was in the high school IB program. Not until the 10th grade did 
she realize that regardless of her excellent grades and involvement in 
hundreds of hours of community service, her undocumented status would 
be a hurdle to pursuing higher education.

  A few months before graduation, DACA--Deferred Action for Childhood 
Arrivals--was a miracle. She would now be able to provide for her 
family, drive, and no longer live in the shadows.
  Mariana enrolled in the University of Florida, but faced severe 
financial difficulties due to her status. As her only way to higher 
education, she temporarily paused her education and fought for tuition 
equity in the State of Florida. I had the honor of having a role in 
that, having been in the Florida Senate at the time when we passed 
instate tuition along with a bill that I had that admitted DREAMers 
into The Florida Bar. This would spark her passion for social justice.
  Throughout her time at UF, she utilized her voice to speak for 
immigrant rights and human rights by taking several leadership 
positions within Chispas, the only student-led immigrant advocacy 
organization at UF.
  She has helped start programs that provide training for professional 
staff under student affairs about relevant immigration laws that affect 
students as well.
  She has helped raise thousands of dollars for Out of the Shadows, a 
scholarship specifically for undocumented students in Florida that she 
oversaw for 3 years.
  She spent a semester working for the Florida Senate and has also 
worked as a Know Your Rights trainer for the Florida Immigrant 
Coalition, where she was able to educate the immigrant community about 
their rights in the United States through mobile consulates.
  Due to her status, she is unable to qualify for loans and only 
qualifies to be eligible for a very limited amount of scholarships. 
Mariana has been paying for her education out of pocket, working 20 to 
30 hours during school and 50-plus hours during school breaks.
  Her only close relative in the States, her mother, has been 
undergoing difficult medical procedures, including treatment for human 
papillomavirus

[[Page H460]]

and, most recently, severe glaucoma, making her unable to support her 
daughter.
  After graduation, she hopes to attend law school to continue her 
fight for immigrant families across the Nation. But if the DACA program 
doesn't exist, if DREAMers aren't given their rights, then she will 
never be able to practice law under Florida law.
  I am proud to announce that Mariana will be completing a 
congressional internship in my office this semester.
  In Florida, we have 92,000 individuals who would be eligible for 
DACA, 92,000 DREAMers, and I have met so many of them. They are 
ambitious. They are attending college. They are starting small 
businesses. They are joining our military. They are the very best of 
what this Nation has to offer. Their struggles have shaped them. Their 
obstacles have made them better, sharper, and hungrier for it.
  We need to encourage these new American DREAMers, much like so many 
generations before them, in fact, the generations of ancestors of so 
many who occupy the seats in this Chamber. The time for action is now.
  We want to have a clean Dream Act. That is our priority. But at the 
very least, rather than talk about shutdowns, let's talk about 
solutions.
  There is a bill in the Senate. It is not perfect. There are things in 
there that I really don't like at all and that I know a lot of the 
members on the Congressional Hispanic Caucus don't like--in the Graham 
bill, along with Senator Durbin--but it is a compromise and it is a 
start.
  I challenge for them to put it on the floor, have a vote, and send it 
over to the House. And then I challenge Speaker Ryan to put this bill, 
whatever comes over from the Senate, on the floor. Let's put together 
amendments. Let's take the very best of our debate, of our ideas in 
this august Chamber, and let's put forward a product that deals with 
DREAMers, that deals with TPS, that deals with border security, and 
let's put it on the desk of the President. Let's dare the President not 
to sign something that could be the embodiment of a generational 
opportunity to resolve so many issues that are so important to both 
parties.
  Mr. Speaker, let us not talk about shutdowns. Let us talk about 
solutions. I am honored to be here today with Congressman Castro to do 
just that.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Soto for his 
wonderful words. He also brought up a few important things that I think 
we need to remember.
  The first is this issue of DREAMers, or undocumented immigrants, is 
often in the American debate reduced to the idea that all of these 
folks are Mexican or from Mexico, when, in fact, it is actually a very 
diverse group of folks who are in the category of DREAMers or who are 
part of the DACA program.
  So I would like to ask Mr. Soto to describe the community that he 
represents around Orlando and some of the different groups that are 
represented in the DACA program.

  Mr. SOTO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for giving me that 
opportunity.
  Florida has every color in the rainbow, every religion, every 
background. Where you have Mickey Mouse, you tend to have a lot of 
folks around the world who are familiar with Orlando. So we have 
Haitians who are DREAMers. We have Peruvians who are DREAMers. We have 
folks from Vietnam and from Laos who are DREAMers. We have folks from 
every continent other than Antarctica.
  I want to make this point: the law makes all the difference in these 
statuses.
  I am of Puerto Rican descent. My father was born on the island, so, 
therefore, he is a citizen by a statute. We have a large Puerto Rican 
population, where most of my constituents who are from the island are 
only citizens because of an act passed over 100 years ago.
  We also have a huge amount of Cuban Americans. Because of wet foot, 
dry foot policy, and because they were escaping tyranny, they are 
citizens.
  So a law makes all the difference, and we know that for a fact and we 
live it every day in Florida, and that is what these kids need. The law 
needs to be on their side because it is the right thing to do. A law 
makes all the difference in these families' stories and these kids' 
opportunities.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman again for giving me this 
opportunity.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, there are people of European 
descent, of Asian descent, certainly of Latin American descent, and of 
African descent who are part of the DACA program. So I am glad that the 
gentleman went through the variety, the diversity of the people in his 
area who are part of this program.
  Now, bear in mind, my grandmother was from Mexico. My grandmother 
came here around 1922 as a 6-year-old orphan. I remember a few years 
back, this professional genealogist for a publication looked at my 
family's history because we had never formally looked it up, and she 
found the documents of when my grandmother came to the country. I 
remember there was a box in the form that said, ``Purpose.'' In other 
words, the purpose for why she was coming. And it said, ``To live.''
  I mean, that is how easy it was back then around 1922 to come to the 
United States, to live in this Nation.

                              {time}  1845

  It obviously has become much tougher since then. It just speaks to 
the wonderful, incredible diversity of people who have come here from 
different places around the world.
  And then Congressman Soto mentioned one other important thing, which 
is the historical context by which we find ourselves in this place. 
When you think about it, there is this intense debate going on right 
now and this incredible push to do a DACA fix by the end of the week, 
hopefully; and a lot of people, I think, who may not have followed the 
volleying and the back and forth for a while are wondering why this is 
such a crisis now.
  We know the immediate answer, which is, if we get to March 5, there 
are 800,000 of these young people who will be deportable, subject to 
deportation, who are part of the DACA program. Already, every day that 
passes, 122 more become deportable.
  There was an opportunity a few years ago to deal not only with this 
part of the immigration issue, but to achieve what is called 
comprehensive immigration reform. And by ``comprehensive,'' that just 
means that you are dealing not just with one part of immigration, but 
you are dealing with all of the different issues associated with 
immigration.
  So it was DACA, but it was also issues with visas, like tech visas 
and agricultural workers. It was dealing with the parents of the 
DREAMers, for example.
  And that bill that passed through the Senate with 68 votes, a wide 
majority in the Senate in 2014, it came over to the House and, based on 
public reports and what the Members of Congress had stated their 
support would be for or against that bill, there was a majority, over 
218 Members--again, based on public reports; we never took the vote, 
but based on public reports--who said that they basically would have 
supported a bill like that.
  At the time, Speaker Boehner refused to put that bill on the floor 
for a vote because of something called a Hastert rule. The Hastert rule 
is basically an informal rule that says that the Speaker of the House 
won't put a piece of legislation on the floor for a vote unless that 
piece of legislation already has the support of a majority of the 
majority. And at that time, the piece of legislation, even though it 
probably had 225 or 230 supporters in Congress, a clear majority to 
pass, didn't have over 50 percent support of the Republican Conference, 
which represented the majority party.
  Now, my last point on this, and I know you know this, but when a 
Speaker governs with the Hastert rule, oftentimes the will of the 
majority is ignored in this House of Representatives, but it also does 
something very insidious. It allows about 25 percent of this body to 
control 100 percent of the legislation that comes through here.
  So I thank the gentleman for bringing up the history and the context 
because this Congress and this country missed an incredible opportunity 
in 2014 to deal not only with the DACA issue, but also with the many 
other issues associated with immigration. So I thank Congressman Soto.
  Now I yield to Congressman Correa, a wonderful new Member from 
California, and welcome him.

[[Page H461]]

  

  Mr. CORREA. I thank my colleague from Texas.
  I represent Orange County, California. I would like to say that 
California is now the sixth largest economy in the world. My home 
county of Orange County, if it were a country today, would be the 32nd 
largest economy in the world.
  My district is exploding with jobs, unemployment at a record low. We 
have biotech, high-tech, tourism, home to Disney land, the Angels. We 
also have recycling, manufacturing. You name it, it is there.
  It is about Americans working hard; former immigrants, now Americans, 
also working hard; and new immigrants, like DACA students, DACA members 
of my community, also holding hands with all of us, working hard to 
enrich our communities, our neighborhoods, our county, our State, and 
our Nation.
  Today, DACA recipients, model immigrants. Nobody in this body would 
ever debate the fact that we want immigrants who come to work hard, 
follow the laws, pay taxes, learn English, and study hard. Those are 
model citizens that any nation in the world would want, and we have 
them here in this country.
  Just a few weeks ago, my daughter came home, 17 years old, from high 
school. Two of her best friends came with her, and they said: We want 
help, Mr. Congressman. You are a Congressman. We want some help.
  And I said: What is the issue?
  They said: We are both DACA students, and we are afraid. We are 
concerned. We want to go to college. We don't know what is going to 
happen.
  I didn't have any answers for those two young ladies, but, really, 
the answer I gave them was the same answer I give all the DACA 
individuals, students I meet in my district, which is: Let me fight the 
fight for you in Washington, D.C. What you have got to do is continue 
to study hard, continue to follow the law, and don't give up praying.
  I am convinced that, in this body, there are enough people to vote 
for DACA students, to vote to change the laws. Why? Because it is the 
right thing to do.
  This is a country of immigrants, and nobody, again, can debate the 
fact that these are good immigrants. These are good, hardworking folks 
who want a shot. They don't want a gift, but they want the opportunity 
to earn American citizenship.
  These folks have taken an oath, the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag 
and our country to defend it against foreign and local enemies. These 
folks are Americans in the true sense of the word. Let's give them a 
shot, a true shot, at being Americans.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. I thank Congressman Correa. He is right. The 
DACA kids are going to school with our kids, are going to college with 
our kids, are in our workplaces. They are people who are contributing 
and whose futures hang in the balance, depending on what this Congress 
does or does not do.
  Mr. CORREA. If the gentleman will yield.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Certainly.
  Mr. CORREA. I would like to say, they serve in our military. They are 
police officers, teachers, doctors, nurses. They are part of our 
fabric.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. He is right. And they are part of a long legacy 
of immigrants to this country.
  The United States has this paradoxical history when it comes to 
immigration. We are, of course, very proudly a nation of immigrants, 
but each wave of immigrants has also faced its own bouts with 
discrimination.
  When the Germans came here in the 1800s, they were said by some to be 
too dirty to be considered Americans. The Irish were greeted in cities 
like Boston and New York with signs that read ``NINA,'' no Irish need 
apply, for the jobs that were available. The Chinese were excluded from 
our country for decades.
  During World War II and the frenzy that ensued, Japanese Americans, 
but also Italian Americans and German Americans, were interned, 
including in my home State of Texas.
  In every generation Americans have also stood up and changed course 
and become more welcoming for each of those groups, and I believe that, 
in this generation, in this time, this is part of that shift, for 
Congress to finally address this issue head-on and fully welcome these 
DACA kids as Americans and pass legislation to do that.
  I thank Congressman Correa for his words.
  I yield to Congressman Suozzi, from the other side of the country, 
the wonderful State of New York, a freshman Congressman.
  Mr. SUOZZI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman so much for having us 
here tonight. Based upon what he was just talking about, I am going to 
talk about my father first. I am a first-generation American.
  My father was brought to the United States by his mother when he was 
4 years old. His father was already here. He came from Italy. His 
father was already here working. He had joined the U.S. Army during 
World War I and got his citizenship because of that, and my father was 
naturalized as a citizen because of that. He was the first one in the 
neighborhood to go to college, and he then fought in World War II and 
got the Distinguished Flying Cross with three oak leaf clusters as a 
navigator on a B-24.
  He came back after the war, and he went to Harvard Law School on the 
GI Bill. Imagine that, an Italian immigrant going to Harvard Law School 
on the GI Bill in the 1940s.
  He was discriminated against as an Italian American at the time--the 
gentleman was just talking about that--and he couldn't get a job at a 
big law firm. So he went back to our hometown of Glen Cove, Long 
Island. He teamed up with another Italian guy. He started a law 
practice. He ended up running for city court judge, and he became the 
youngest judge in the history of New York State, at 28 years old.
  My father really lived a great American success story. He was a man 
who would proudly say ``what a country'' all the time.
  My father died 2 weeks before my election in 2016. As I went through 
his papers, I saw his yearbook from St. Dominic High School, when he 
was 18 years old. They asked all the students: What's your goal in 
life? Most people would talk about I want to become a lawyer or a 
doctor or an engineer, or I want to do some sort of exotic travel. My 
father wrote: ``My goal is to be a real American.''
  Now, I had seen that when I was a kid, and I thought: Boy, I can't 
believe how patriotic my father was as an 18-year-old.
  But he died in 2016, in the middle of the Presidential campaign. A 
lot of the rhetoric that we are hearing now was really hot then as 
well. I realize that my father was 18 years old in 1939 and Mussolini 
had teamed up with Hitler, and Italian Americans here in the United 
States of America were viewed as fascists or mafioso, and that 
discrimination was rife.
  But the good people of this country and people in this body and 
people like my father held on to the basic, fundamental concepts of 
what makes America work. What makes America great are these basic, 
fundamental ideas.
  So, in dealing with the question of DACA and with immigration, we 
have to look at some basic, fundamental American concepts. Let's first 
remember that all immigrants, whether they are documented or 
undocumented, are human beings and are entitled to be treated with 
human respect and dignity.
  The most fundamental concept in America is that all men and women are 
created equal--not all men and women with a green card are created 
equal, not all men and women who are citizens are created equal, not 
all men and women from a particular country are created equal. All 
human beings are equal and should be treated with human respect and 
dignity.
  I am concerned that the rhetoric that we are facing right now, that 
the negativity that we are facing right now, that the uncertainty that 
we are facing right now, that the outright assaults that we are facing 
in some cases right now are causing so much anxiety in our country, and 
it is diminishing our status as a beacon of hope to the world.
  That is the great thing about America. That is what makes America 
great is that we are a beacon of hope to the world. That beacon is 
being diminished by the rhetoric and by our failure to address this 
immigration crisis.
  This is not a new phenomenon. This started in the 1980s when death 
squads and civil wars and abject poverty

[[Page H462]]

forced people to flee from El Salvador over the border into the United 
States by the tens of thousands. Starting with President Reagan, 
through President Bush and President Clinton and on, we haven't 
enforced our borders for that entire time, and now 11 million people in 
this country are suffering with this uncertainty because we failed to 
enforce our borders.
  I am all for securing our borders, but let's return to being a beacon 
of hope to the rest of the world, and let's stop the suffering and the 
anxiety as we push people underground and we treat them as nonhuman 
beings, entitled to human respect and human dignity.
  I believe that this is the greatest country on Earth, and I believe 
that my dad knew that. He also knew that a central part of our being 
the greatest country on Earth is being that beacon of hope to so many 
people, that said to the tired and the poor yearning to breathe free: 
Come to our shores.
  If we really want to make America great again, we have to reclaim 
that mantle of being that beacon of hope.
  I agree with all the wise comments that have been made by my 
colleagues here today that the votes do exist in this House to resolve 
this issue if we could get a bill put on the floor. There are so many 
groups, so many Democrats, so many Republicans meeting throughout this 
town on a regular basis to try to find a compromise to solve this 
problem--Democrats and Republicans--but because there is nothing on the 
floor, we can't get the votes presented in a public way. If it was put 
on the floor, it would pass. We would have DACA. We would have the 
Dream Act. We would have solutions to border security.
  We need to recognize that we are all in this together, and we need to 
rise up to the challenge to be the beacon of hope that we once were and 
still should be to the world.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Castro for giving me the opportunity to 
speak.

                              {time}  1900

  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Congressman for sharing 
his dad's life story and what this country meant to him and the 
importance of coming up with a solution, a fix, as soon as possible.
  Mr. SUOZZI. Mr. Speaker, I want bring up one thing I forgot to 
mention.
  I was the young mayor of the city of Glen Cove in 1994, and we had 
day workers from Central and South America gathering on the street 
corners seeking work. The community was divided. This was 1994. Just 
think how long ago this is now, 23 years ago.
  One group saying: Get those people out of here. And other people 
saying: These poor guys are trying to live the American Dream the same 
as your family did.
  I ended up setting up the first day-worker gathering spot anywhere on 
the East Coast of the United States of America in 1994. It was one of 
the first things I did as mayor. We ended up bringing them indoors. If 
you didn't get hired for the day, you could learn a skill, you could 
learn to speak English, you could learn about the cultural norms of our 
community. We said: If you play by the rules, we are going to help you. 
If you break the rules, you are going to get in trouble.
  The same guys that were on the street corners now have their own 
businesses, they own their own homes, and their children go to school 
with my children. That is the American Dream.
  We have so much potential in this country if we could unleash it for 
people who want to work 6 days a week and go to church on Sunday, if 
only we could remove this anxiety and this threat that we are pushing 
people underground and forcing them into an underground economy and 
underground communities. If only we could lift this back up again, we 
could accomplish so much.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for reminding 
us of something that is often lost in this conversation and debate, 
which is the fundamental humanity of the people that we are talking 
about. Whether they have a green card, whether they are documented or 
undocumented, the fact that we are talking about the lives of human 
beings, too often that is lost in what is sometimes a contentious 
debate.
  Mr. SUOZZI. Think about it. You are a kid going to school, you are 
worried about taking tests. You are working every day, you are worried 
about your job. You are worried somebody is sick in your family. You 
are worried you don't have enough money to pay your bills. The normal 
concerns of life. Heap on top of that a national debate that is 
treating you as a pariah and creating such anxiety to rip families 
apart. Think about how challenging that must be for those individuals, 
those families that are facing that type of threat.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. There is no question that for a lot of them, as 
you talk to them, you can see what a soul-crushing experience it is, 
and, as your dad wrote in his yearbook, I think many of these kids have 
the same feeling. They want to be fully accepted as real Americans, 
which they obviously feel part of this country, feel like it is home, 
but are not sure whether America accepts them.
  Mr. SUOZZI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership.
  Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Mr. Speaker, just to make some closing remarks 
before I yield back the balance of my time, Congress has to take action 
now. We can't wait any longer for another 122 DREAMers every day, DACA 
recipients, to become subject to deportation, and certainly can't get 
to March where 800,000 of the DACA kids will lose their futures in 
America and become subject to deportation.
  The issue of immigration and border security, all of these things are 
among the thorniest issues in American life no matter where you go in 
the country.
  But we are a nation of immigrants, and this is one way that we will 
gauge the soul of this Congress and of this Nation and determine 
whether we are going to continue to live up to the Nation that we 
strive to be, which is a nation of immigrants, of people from different 
countries who have made such a beautiful, incredible, strong and 
powerful nation, have crafted that Nation together.
  And I would just remind those who are against the DACA kids, who 
would argue for inaction, who argue that they should get the hell out 
of here, that this country has been blessed throughout the generations 
that people from every corner on Earth have wanted to come to the 
United States of America. Fifty years ago, if you asked somebody who 
was living in Europe or Asia or Latin America or anywhere else around 
the world where on Earth they would want to go if they were going to 
leave their home country, the answer 50 years ago was very clearly the 
United States of America.
  There is a scarier day in this country than the day when everybody 
wants to come here. That is the day when nobody wants to come here. The 
challenge for all of us as legislators and basically as Americans is to 
make sure that when you ask that same question of somebody 50 years 
from now who is living abroad where on Earth they would want to go if 
they were going to leave their home country, that they still feel 
comfortable believing it is the United States of America.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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