[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12383-12385]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, America has a rich history of immigration. 
We are a nation of immigrants. There is hardly a person in America 
today who doesn't have an immigrant parent, grandparent, or at least 
someone in their lineage who came to this country from another place.
  I have told this story many times on the floor: My mother was an 
immigrant. She was brought to America at the age of 2 from Lithuania. 
Her son now stands in the Senate. That is my story, that is my family's 
story, but it is America's story. It can be repeated over and over and 
over again.
  We think about the Statue of Liberty and how it thrills so many 
people to see it for the first time and then to understand the message 
of the Statue of Liberty: To ``lift my lamp beside that golden door'' 
so that people are welcomed to this country. We knew it from the 
beginning: It was the key to our future.
  So many times this issue of immigration is overlooked. It is such a 
critical part of who we are in America. Think back in your own family 
history--one generation, two or three generations--to a person in a 
foreign land who said one day, ``We are going to America,'' who 
undoubtedly was questioned about that decision: You are going to a 
place you have never been, to a place where they don't speak our 
language, to a place where they eat different kinds of food? That will 
be quite a challenge. Well, it was. Millions of people made that trip 
and came to this country facing that challenge, and they made us who we 
are today.
  In the DNA of most of us who live in America is some little 
chromosome that said there is a courage to move and a courage to come, 
and I think it makes us better.
  I think immigration is one of the most important parts of America. 
Thank goodness immigration continues because it brings to our shores 
amazing people, new generations of leaders who found companies and 
worked hard so their children and their children's children will do 
better.
  If that is a fact about America and our history of immigration, there 
is also another fact. There have always been haters--people who hate 
immigrants. I don't know when it started.

[[Page 12384]]

Maybe after the Mayflower landed, the folks got off and said: Please 
don't send us any more. But it has been part of American history and 
part of American political history and part of the Congress.
  I was reading a book as we started to debate the question of 
immigration reform entitled ``Coming To America'' by Roger Daniels, and 
it is a history of immigration in America. It speaks of a Member of the 
House of Representatives in 1924 named Albert Johnson. He was a 
Republican from Washington State.
  When I read this book on the history of immigration, I came up with 
some interesting quotes. It is in 1924. Albert Johnson, a Republican 
from Washington State, is chairing the House Committee on Immigration. 
This is what he said:

       Today, instead of a well-knit homogeneous citizenry, we 
     have a body politic made up of all and every diverse element. 
     Today, instead of a nation descended from generations of free 
     men bred to a knowledge of the principles and practice of 
     self-government, of liberty under law, we have a 
     heterogeneous population no small proportion of which is 
     sprung from races that, throughout the centuries, have known 
     no liberty at all. . . .

  Congressman Johnson said:

       Our capacity to maintain our cherished institutions stands 
     diluted by a stream of alien blood with all its inherited 
     misconceptions respecting the relationships of the governing 
     power to the governed. It is no wonder, therefore, that the 
     myth of the melting pot has been discredited.

  He said:

       The United States is our land. We intend to maintain it so. 
     The day of unalloyed welcome to all peoples, the day of 
     indiscriminate acceptance of all races, has definitely ended.

  That was a statement made by a Member of Congress in 1924. You read 
it today and you think to yourself, how could anyone possibly be 
talking about racial purity in the United States of America, as he did? 
It draws so many terrifying parallels to a debate that happened not 
many years later in Europe over racial purity, but it happened. And it 
happened in the U.S. Congress. Sadly, that was not the end of hatred 
toward immigration in the U.S. Congress.
  Twelve years ago I introduced a bill called the DREAM Act. The DREAM 
Act was a response to a constituent case in my office. A young woman, a 
Korean woman in Chicago, called our office. She had a story to tell. 
She said that she had brought her daughter at the age of 2 from Korea 
to the United States, to Chicago, on a visitor's visa, along with her 
husband. They envisioned that her husband would open a church. They 
looked forward to that day, and it never happened. Her husband 
continued to pray for that miracle for their family, but the mother 
said: I have to go to work. The mother went to work in a drycleaning 
establishment in Chicago.
  If you have been to that wonderful city, you know that the majority 
of drycleaning establishments are run by Korean families--hard-working 
people who work 12 hours a day and do not think twice about doing it.
  Well, this woman went to work, but she was not making much money, and 
her little girl, as well as the girl's brother and sister, grew up in 
deepest poverty. The little girl tells the story that when she went to 
middle school and high school, she would wait until the end of the 
lunch hour, when students were throwing away the part of their lunch 
they did not eat, and she would dig through the wastebasket to find 
food. That is how poor they were.
  But something came along in her life that made all the difference in 
the world. In Chicago we have something called the MERIT Music Program. 
A woman decided 10 or 15 years ago to leave some money, and she said: 
Use this money to provide musical instruments to children, poor 
children in public schools, as well as the lessons they need so they 
can play the instruments. The MERIT Music Program is an amazing 
success. One hundred percent of the students who are enrolled in that 
MERIT Music Program go to college--100 percent.
  Well, this little girl, this Korean immigrant girl, was brought into 
the program and introduced at the age of 12 to a piano for the first 
time. She fell in love with the piano, and she started working and 
practicing on it. She would stay at MERIT Music Program headquarters 
late into the night. They finally gave her a key because it was warm 
and she wanted to practice her piano.
  She became such an accomplished pianist that by the time she was in 
high school she was accepted into the Juilliard School of Music and the 
Manhattan Conservatory of Music--amazing for this poor Korean girl. 
When she applied and went through filling out the application, she came 
to the line that said ``nationality and citizenship,'' and she turned 
to her mother and said: What do I put here?
  Her mom said: I don't know. We brought you here at the age of 2, and 
we never filed any papers.
  The girl said: What are we going to do?
  The mom said: Let's call Senator Durbin.
  So they called our office, and we checked on the law. The law in the 
United States is very clear and very cruel. The law in the United 
States said that little girl had to leave this country for 10 years and 
apply to come back--10 years. She had been brought here at the age of 
2. She was only 17 or 18 at the time.
  Well, that is when I decided to introduce the DREAM Act. The DREAM 
Act said that if you were brought here as a child to the United States, 
if you complete high school, if you have no criminal record of any 
concern and you are prepared to either enlist in our military or finish 
at least 2 years of college, we will put you on a path to becoming a 
citizen of the United States of America. That was the DREAM Act, 
introduced 12 years ago, called on the floor many different times for 
passage. It finally passed just a few weeks ago as part of 
comprehensive immigration reform.
  I might tell you the end of the story about this young girl. She did 
not qualify for any financial assistance because she was undocumented. 
Two families in Chicago and one woman who is an amazing friend of mine 
named Joan Harris said they would pay for her education. She went to 
the Manhattan Conservatory of Music. She excelled in the piano. She 
played at Carnegie Hall. She married an American jazz musician and 
became a citizen of the United States, and now she is working on her 
Ph.D. in music. She just sent me her tape for her Ph.D., and she is 
amazing.
  Tereza Lee is her name. She is the first DREAMer, and it is because 
of her that I come to the floor today. You see, just yesterday it was 
disclosed that a Member of the House of Representatives, Congressman 
Steven King of Iowa, spoke to the issue of the DREAMers. I do not know 
how many DREAMers--students who would qualify for the DREAM Act--
Congressman King has met. I have met hundreds of them. They are 
amazing, incredible, living their entire lives in the United States 
undocumented, fearing deportation any minute of any day, wondering what 
tomorrow will bring, standing up in the classrooms of America and 
pledging allegiance to the only flag they have ever known, singing the 
only national anthem they know, and being told by so many people: You 
don't belong here. You are not part of this country.
  They are completely conflicted and worried and uncertain about their 
future, and they are nothing short of amazing. These young people have 
done things with their lives that are just incredible. They are the 
valedictorians of their classes in many cases. They have gone on to 
college and paid for it out of their pocket in many cases.
  I have come to the floor on 54 different occasions with colored 
photos of these DREAMers from all over the United States, when they 
gave us the permission to disclose their identities, and told their 
stories. And every time I have told that story about that DREAMer, 
someone has stopped me in the hall and said: That is an amazing story 
about this young person who just wants to be part of the United States 
and its future.
  So it was troubling yesterday to pick up and read the quote from 
Steven King, who is a Congressman from Iowa. Mr. King is no newcomer 
when it

[[Page 12385]]

comes to criticizing immigration. He introduced a bill 3 or 4 weeks ago 
in the House of Representatives that would have removed all of the 
Federal funds that are being used now to spare these DREAMers in the 
United States from deportation. In other words, the President has 
issued an Executive order so the young people who are eligible for the 
DREAM Act can stay. He wanted to remove all the funds so they would 
have to be deported immediately. He called that for a vote. It passed 
in the U.S. House of Representatives just a few weeks ago, 
overwhelmingly supported by his Republican side of the aisle. So Steven 
King has a record of opposing immigration and doing it in a very 
forceful way.
  But they found a quote he had made, a statement he had made on the 
issue of DREAMers, and that is why I come to the floor today.
  In an interview with Radio Iowa, Mr. King said yesterday, as reported 
in the Washington Post:

       ``It seems as though I have a few critics out there, but 
     those who have been advocating for the DREAM Act have been 
     trying to make it about valedictorians,'' King said in an 
     interview with Radio Iowa. ``I don't disagree that there are 
     DREAMers that are valedictorians, but it also would legalize 
     those that are smuggling drugs into the United States.''

  In his original comments, Congressman King of Iowa said, ``For 
everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there who weigh 
130 pounds--and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because 
they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.''

       In his interview Tuesday evening, [Congressman King] 
     doubled down on those comments--
  According to the Washington Post--

     saying, ``We have people that are mules, that are drug mules, 
     that are hauling drugs across the border and you can tell by 
     their physical characteristics what they've been doing it for 
     months.''

  Mr. President, if you are going to be part of this political 
business, you better have a pretty tough spine and a pretty hard shell 
because people throw criticism around all the time, and if you cannot 
take it, this ain't beanbag, do something else.
  But I deeply resent what was said by Congressman King about these 
DREAMers. It is totally unfair. It is mean, and it is hateful. Do not 
take my word for it; take the words of the Republican leaders who 
responded to Mr. King.
  House Speaker John Boehner, commenting on Congressman King's 
comments, called them ``wrong'' and ``hateful.'' That is from Speaker 
Boehner.
  House majority leader Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, said they 
were ``inexcusable.''
  During a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing Tuesday, 
Representative Joseph Garcia, Democrat of Florida, described King's 
words as ``beneath the dignity of this body.''
  Representative Raul Labrador, Republican of Idaho, who has been 
heavily involved in immigration reform, expressed hope Wednesday that 
King regretted his remarks. ``There's nobody in the conference who 
would say such a thing and I hope that he, if he thought about it, he 
wouldn't say such a thing again,'' Labrador said.
  It is heartening to know that Members of Congressman King's own 
political party--Republicans--have stated unequivocally how awful his 
statement was. It troubles me and it is heartbreaking to think that 
these DREAMers--these young people who are simply asking for a chance 
to be part of the United States--would be characterized as dope 
smugglers and drug smugglers.
  Obviously, Congressman King has never read the DREAM Act because if 
you have ever been convicted of a crime, you cannot be approved through 
the DREAM Act for citizenship--not a serious crime. That is part of the 
law. He should know better, but I am not sure that he cares.
  I am glad Members of his own party have stepped up and branded these 
comments for what they are. What I have to say to him is, take a moment 
away from the media, meet some of these DREAMers, and hear their 
stories. Hear what they have been through, and hear about what they 
want to do with their lives for the future of the United States of 
America.
  To the DREAMers themselves, this is not the first criticism they have 
run into. They have taken a lot. They are courageous young men and 
women.
  When I started this trek, this 12-year trek on the DREAM Act, I used 
to give speeches in Chicago about the bill, and there would be 
audiences full of Hispanics usually. Nothing much would be said. I 
would go out to my car afterward, and in the darkness there would be a 
couple students waiting by the car. They would call me to the side, 
after they looked both ways to make sure no one was around, and they 
would say: Senator, we are DREAMers. We are counting on you to give us 
a chance. Over the years, these young people who waited to greet me in 
the darkness when no one was around have now stepped up. They are 
identifying who they are so America knows what is at stake.
  When you meet the DREAMers, you will realize how awful and wrong 
these statements by Congressman King are. There will always be critics 
of immigration in America. It is part of our national tradition. But I 
do believe the vast majority of Americans are fair people. They are 
people who believe in justice. They do not believe that a child--that a 
child--should be held responsible for any wrongdoing by their parent. 
If their parent brought them to the United States as a baby, they had 
no voice in that decision. Why should they be penalized for that 
decision? They should be given their own chance to become part of this 
Nation's future.
  I will close by saying that maybe Tereza Lee was not the first 
DREAMer in my life. My mother was brought here at the age of 2 and 
certainly did not have much of a voice in the decision to come to 
America. But thank goodness her mother and father decided to make that 
trip and that my grandparents located in Illinois and gave me a chance 
to grow up in a great place with a great family. That is my story, and 
that is America's story.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, Senator Durbin is such an eloquent 
champion for righting injustice, and I am always impressed with him, 
and I do agree that the American people are good and decent people. 
They want the right thing. They want the right thing on immigration. 
Part of that is a lawful system of immigration that serves the national 
interests of our country. We disagree on how to get there sometimes, 
but you cannot dispute the passion of Senator Durbin.

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