[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5326-5327]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, immigration is an issue which divides 
America. You only have to tune into the Presidential debate to hear it. 
Most everyone would agree that the immigration system in America is 
broken. I believe it is. I was part of an effort with some colleagues 
to try to come up with a comprehensive immigration reform bill, which 
passed the Senate 3 years ago by a vote of 68 to 32. We worked long and 
hard on that bill. We brought this bipartisan bill to the Senate, and 
it passed with an overwhelming majority. The House refused to consider 
the measure. Speaker Boehner never called it to the floor. The bill we 
passed never ever got a vote on the floor of the House of 
Representatives, and so here we sit today with the same broken 
immigration system.
  Let me tell you that one part of that is very important to me and to 
many of my colleagues. Fifteen years ago I introduced a bill called the 
DREAM Act. The genesis of that bill--as I have said on the floor many 
times and will quickly repeat--began after we got a call in my Chicago 
office from a Korean American woman who had a daughter who was a 
musical prodigy. She was an amazing pianist and had been accepted at 
two of the best music schools in America. She was filling out her 
application and asked her mom: What do I put down for my nationality or 
citizenship. Her mom said: I don't know. When we brought you here, 
Tereza, you were 2 years old and came here on a visitor's visa. I never 
filed any more papers. So I don't know. The daughter said: What are we 
going to do? The mom said: We are going to call Durbin's office.
  So they called our office and we said: Let us check the law.
  The law was very clear. This 18-year-old girl, brought here at the 
age of 2, under American law had to leave the United States for 10 
years and apply to come back in. Does that sound right? When she was 2 
years old, she had no voice in the decision to come to America, no 
voice in the decision of filing papers. Yet our law basically told her 
to leave.
  That is when I introduced the DREAM Act. It says that if you are 
brought here under the age of 16, complete high school, no serious 
criminal issues in your background, we will give you a chance. We will 
give you a path to become legal and ultimately become a citizen. That 
is what the DREAM Act is.
  We haven't passed that bill. We have passed it maybe once in the 
Senate, once in the House but never brought it together to be sent to 
the President. This President, Barack Obama, was my fellow Senator from 
Illinois for 2 years and he cosponsored the DREAM Act.
  So a few years ago, I joined in a letter to the President, with 
Senator Dick Lugar, a Republican from Indiana, and said to him: Help us 
protect these young people from being deported until we can finally 
pass comprehensive immigration reform or the DREAM Act. The President 
listened and did it. He created what is known as DACA. What DACA says 
is, if you are such a young person, you may step forward, register with 
the government, submit yourself to a criminal background check, pay a 
several-hundred-dollar filing fee, and then we will give you temporary 
protection from deportation. Then, 2 years

[[Page 5327]]

later, 3 years later, you have to reapply--go through the same 
process--pay a fee and do it again.
  As it turned out, 700,000 young people, who were in the same 
situation as the Korean girl I mentioned from Chicago, have applied for 
this DACA protection so they can stay here on a temporary basis and go 
to school, work, and be a part of the United States. There is no 
guarantee they will ever become permanently legal or citizens--I hope 
they will--but at least they are protected on a temporary basis.
  Two years later, the President said: If you are in a family where one 
of the kids in the house is an American citizen or here legally in the 
United States as a permanent resident, we are going to give parents the 
same opportunity to register with the government, to go through a 
criminal background check, to pay their fee to the government, then to 
be given a temporary work permit to work in the United States. That is 
known as DAPA. So we have DACA and DAPA. It is currently being 
challenged in the Supreme Court.
  I went over for the argument before the Supreme Court last week. The 
State of Texas and 25 other States have challenged this saying it will 
create benefits for these individuals under DACA and DAPA that will 
cost the States money. It turns out, the whole story is that once these 
people are working in the United States and paying taxes, the State of 
Texas and all the other States are going to make quite a bit more money 
off these workers when they actually are required to pay taxes, as they 
should. So this economic argument doesn't go too far.
  The point I have tried to make to my colleagues in the Senate, as 
long as I have been here and as long as I have had this opportunity to 
talk about the DREAM Act, is that they ought to take a moment, stop 
listening to the Presidential debates, and just pay attention to the 
lives which are at stake in this conversation.
  I have come to the floor quite a few times to talk about young people 
who would be helped if the DREAM Act became the law of the land. This 
morning I am going to introduce Cynthia Sanchez to those who are 
watching.
  Cynthia Sanchez is another young person who is living in the United 
States and is undocumented. She was brought here at the age of 7 from 
Mexico. She grew up in Denver, CO. She was an excellent student. In 
high school, Cynthia was a member of the National Honor Society and 
made the President's honor roll every semester with a 4.0 grade point 
average. I wish I could say the same about my high school experience.
  Cynthia was vice president and co-president of the Student Council. 
She volunteered as a peer mediator and volunteered at the local 
library. She went on to attend the University of Denver where she 
received lots of awards and scholarships and was an active volunteer.
  For the record, undocumented young people like Cynthia receive no 
Federal assistance to go to college--no Pell grants, no government 
loans. They have to find a way to pay for it. They can't use any 
government benefits to move forward with their education.
  She was a member of a student organization called the Pioneer 
Leadership Program. She helped to develop Denver University Senior 
Connect, an organization to help raise awareness about the needs of 
senior citizens.
  As a member of the Volunteers in Partnership Program, Cynthia 
organized workshops at high schools and middle schools with low-income 
and minority student populations. She helped the students fill out 
their college applications and write scholarship essays, and she 
brought the students to visit her campus at the University of Denver.
  She graduated in 2010 with a degree in cognitive neuroscience, which 
is a double major in psychology and biology, and she even minored in 
chemistry on top of that.
  Because of her immigration status--and despite the fact that she had 
this amazing college experience and was academically successful and had 
this important degree--she couldn't find a job. She wasn't even able to 
volunteer at a local hospital because she lacked a Social Security 
number, being undocumented.
  I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Thank you.
  Cynthia's dream to become a doctor was on hold because of her 
immigration status. Only nine schools told her she might be able to 
apply and be considered as an undocumented student. Two years after 
graduating, Cynthia was working as a nanny and questioning whether all 
the hard work and time in school was wasted.
  Cynthia cried as President Obama made the announcement about creating 
DACA. She realized she was going to be given a chance. She applied for 
DACA immediately. She was approved in the summer of 2013. By September, 
Cynthia was working at Northwestern University in Chicago doing 
clinical research in the Department of Medicine's Division of 
Cardiology. Her research focuses on improving treatment options for 
patients facing heart failure.
  She sent me a letter, and this is what she said:

       DACA has meant a new realm of opportunities for me, it has 
     opened new doors for me, and it has allowed me to once again 
     see my dream as a reality. I truly believe that if those 
     opposed to DACA or the DREAM Act had the chance to sit down 
     and meet undocumented students, their opinions might change. 
     They would see capable, smart, hard-working individuals who 
     are Americans in every sense of the word, love this country 
     and want to contribute to its prosperity. After all, this is 
     our home.

  Cynthia and the other DREAMers have a lot to give to America. Like 
many Americans who have come to this country, they are willing to 
sacrifice. They are willing to go to the back of the line. All they are 
asking for is a chance.
  I urge my colleagues--particularly my Republican colleagues--to join 
us in doing the right thing for these DREAMers, doing the right thing 
for Cynthia, and thousands of others who are just asking for a chance 
to make America a better nation.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.

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