[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9234-9235]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1020
                HELPING OUR CHILDREN ACROSS THIS NATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I've had the pleasure of 
chairing the Congressional Children's Caucus for a number of years, 
having founded it almost a decade ago.
  I'm delighted to have, as part of our agenda, a number of issues 
dealing with mentoring, nutrition, obesity, issues dealing with now a 
phenomena that is raging across our Nation, bullying, and introduced 
legislation just 6 months ago and now revised legislation that deals 
with renewing the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant, as well as 
providing intervention on these issues.
  I'm looking forward to bipartisan support because, as we've seen 
statistics across America, children as young as pre-K and kindergarten 
now can interpret actions as bullying. We need to give help and relief 
to school districts and parents and families, and most of all, a public 
statement that that action is intolerable and that we want our children 
to go to schools and playgrounds and places that they will find comfort 
and enjoyment as a child.
  That brings me also to my commitment to science, technology, 
engineering, and math. I was very pleased to be involved in a program 
that provided opportunity for sixth and seventh grade boys at risk. It 
gave them math and science in the morning with what we called the SMART 
board, and then in the afternoon they played with college football 
players and learned the skills of football with various sports leagues. 
Of course, we had the corporate support.
  So I raised the question to my good friend, the company Halliburton, 
and asked for their CEO, who was supportive of this program last 
summer, to recognize the value of science, technology, engineering, and 
math, and respond to the needs of these inner-city boys in Houston, the 
place where the company is located with so many employees. I'm reminded 
of going to give comfort to many of their employees when KBR was owned 
by Halliburton and they had tragically lost employees in Iraq. It was 
my chance to go and respond to that crisis and to give my sympathy. 
That's the way we are as neighbors, but they are not acting neighborly 
now. And there are a number of boys, the same kind of children that I 
see that come here to Washington all the time. Of course, these at-risk 
boys have probably never been out of the city of Houston, but they are 
in school districts across the city. Isn't it a shame that we can't get 
a response, with all the great employees that I know care about the 
city, to be able to support these children? I ask for the CEO to 
respond to these at-risk boys. I'll certainly be looking forward to 
engaging and making sure that that happens. It's very important.
  I understand that there has been some question about an executive 
order that deals with helping children again across this Nation, 
children who have come to the United States not of their own accord, 
who were brought by their parents and have been here since the age of 
16 and have attempted, like many children that I see, to do the right 
thing, to get a high school diploma, to be in the United States 
service, to get a GED that happened to have come and they're 
unstatused.
  This issue has been before the Congress for 11 years. In fact, there 
was an effort passed by the House that moved to the Senate, as was 
instructed, and the Senate refused to move forward on something called 
the DREAM Act. If you look at all of our cases and our caseload in our 
respective districts, particularly those of us in the Southwest, there 
are tons of cases that have come in that will bring tears to your eyes, 
children being deported away from their families or families being 
separated.
  Let me disabuse you of the notion that this is not done under the 
law. There is a regulatory scheme under the Homeland Security 
Department that allows discretionary determination

[[Page 9235]]

about deportation or whether or not someone should go into deportation. 
These are children. The President did the right thing by having an 
executive order that utilized the powers by the Secretary of Homeland 
Security under the Code of Federal Regulations to be able to use that 
discretion. It's the right thing to do.
  Congress, it's not too late, my colleagues, Republicans and 
Democrats, to come forward and support the DREAM Act that has been 
introduced over and over again, that had bipartisan support. In fact, 
it's not too late to help the farmers, to help the high-tech industry, 
and pass comprehensive immigration reform. Who are we, other than 
Americans, who are humanitarians, who are empathetic, who love the 
values of this Nation and believe in opportunity?
  I don't want people to be equating the loss of jobs with allowing a 
few children to be able to be saved from deportation, whether they come 
from South and Central America, they come from Ireland, they come from 
Italy, they come from the continent of Africa, the Caribbean. It is 
time to be the Nation that we know we are, which is lifting up people, 
giving opportunity. This is the greatest country in the world, and I 
look forward to corporations responding to at-risk boys, Mr. Speaker, 
and, as well, that we recognize the importance of helping children 
wherever they are.

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