DACA

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I join with the Senator from Illinois, and I thank him for his great leadership on this issue. He has been doing this for a long time. His partnership with Senator Lindsey Graham is inspiring.

I want to begin by thanking Senator Durbin and Senator Graham for leading this effort and making it bipartisan and making it possible for us to talk about an issue as Americans and not as Democrats and Republicans and having a discussion about who falls into the category of being an American who is entitled to the benefits of being in this country.

For the last 5 years, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--or DACA--Program has created security and opportunity for young immigrants across this country. Now, the futures of some 800,000 young people-- 7,900 of them in Massachusetts--have been needlessly put in jeopardy because President Donald Trump feels the need to keep an ill-considered campaign promise made to his base and to break another one made to the best and brightest of our young people by repealing DACA. And because the House of Representatives has refused to debate and hold a vote on comprehensive immigration reform legislation, our immigration system remains tragically broken.

Yesterday, I met one of these Dreamers, Diana Ortiz. Her mother brought her to the United States nearly 20 years ago. Diana studied history at Pomona College in California, and she recently received a master's degree of divinity from the Harvard Divinity School. She hopes to become a U.S. citizen. Diana literally wants to do God's work here on Earth.

DACA has provided Diana and more than a million other young immigrants safety, security, dignity, respect, and opportunity. These are young people who play, study, work, and live next door to us each and every day.

What will the repeal of DACA mean for the Dreamers and for our country? It will mean bad news for our economy. Many of these Dreamers have started their own businesses and are beginning their careers. Over the course of the past 5 years of the program, 91 percent of the Dreamers have found gainful employment. Removing DACA recipients from the workforce would reduce our gross domestic product by more than $460 billion over a decade and would cut contributions to Medicare and Social Security by more than $24 billion over that same 10-year period.

It will mean misplaced criminal justice priorities, with law enforcement focusing not on targeting drug dealers, human traffickers, and the real criminals in our society, but on the Dreamers instead. These young people are not the so-called ``bad hombres'' that President Trump said would be the focus of his administration.

Most tragically, it will mean unnecessary pain and suffering for countless young people and families across Massachusetts and across the United States whose futures will be uncertain. Instead of going to sleep tonight knowing they will be able to live their lives in peace and plan for the future, they are again left with uncertainty, vulnerable to deportation and unable to work legally.

This is heartbreaking. It is unjust, and it is just plain evil. We should not punish these young people who have no other home than the United States of America. We should not go back on the word we gave when we told these young people to come out of the shadows.

These Dreamers are engineers. They are police officers, teachers, and students, many in our great Massachusetts universities. They serve bravely in our military right now--in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. They are our best and our brightest, and they are making the most of the opportunities that the United States has always provided immigrant communities.

I stand here this evening as a testament to the future that any family can achieve in this country. When I announced for the Senate 4 years ago, I decided--really, for the first time in my life--to go up and ring the doorbell of the house that my father grew up in. You pretty much grow up where your mother tells your father he is going to live. So my mother was from Malden, and my father was from Lawrence, and we grew up in Malden.

My father always said: Well, Lawrence is just this great city. So I went up to ring the doorbell at 88 Phillips Street in Lawrence, in the shadow of the old south mill. It is a triple decker; that is, a three- family home, stacked one on top of the other. My father grew up on the first floor of 88 Phillips, with five brothers and sisters and a mother and father in this very tiny space.

I rang the doorbell to see who lived there now, and the door opened. It was a Dominican family with their children. The accents were different, but the aspirations are just the same for that family as it existed for the Markeys.

Now, my father graduated from Lawrence High School, from the vocational program, and his son is a U.S. Senator from the State of Massachusetts. That was a dream that my father had or his father and mother had to be here in America and to give opportunities, not so much for themselves but for the next generation.

Well, that is what we are talking about. We are talking about these young people whose parents brought them here to give them a better chance, but the children didn't have a choice in whether or not they would come here. They saw the promise that hard work, education, and opportunity--helped a little bit by the government--worked for the people.

So that is really what we are talking about, and that is why I believe it is a new level of inhumanity for President Trump to betray the foundational values of this Nation by repealing DACA. He is no better than Pontius Pilate by having Attorney General Jeff Sessions make the announcement yesterday. President Trump is providing absolutely no leadership for his party or the American people on an issue that even he says is an important one, and I can only hope that he recognizes and understands the cruelty that repealing DACA will inflict on innocent young families, innocent young people all across this country.

So if President Trump wants to take away these protections, then, Congress must act. The ball is in the court of the Republican leadership in the House and in the Senate. Speaker Paul Ryan and Leader Mitch McConnell can either listen to a growing chorus of their own colleagues and to the business leaders and CEOs--including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, General Motors--and to academic leaders and countless college and university presidents who all support DACA, or they can side with the forces of intolerance and injustice.

Congress should pass the Dream Act so that individuals who were brought here at a young age can earn citizenship by serving in the military or pursing higher education.

Ultimately, the House of Representatives must also debate and vote on comprehensive immigration reform. I have long supported a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants who are living here in the shadows.

We are the United States of America. We are a nation of immigrants. We are called on not simply to tolerate but to celebrate our immigrant communities, to understand not only the need but the value of our immigrant communities, to embrace not just the differences but the diversity of our immigrant communities.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: ``Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.'' No one knows that better than the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We have always believed that no matter who you are or where you come from, you can achieve the American dream. We recognize that our economy and our security are stronger because of the immigrant families who have enriched our Nation since its founding.

That is why this decision from the Trump administration cannot stand. We will not let it. With Congress now back in session, Republicans should prepare to have a historic debate--a debate about the fairness that we should extend to all of these young people. There are going to be voices, calls, marches, and protests all demanding protections for these innocent Dreamers.

I pledge my support to the 800,000 Dreamers all across our country, and I will not stop fighting for them. We will not stop fighting for them. Millions of people are going to stand up. I believe that the American dream for all of these young people is achievable, and it must be here in the Senate that the realization of that dream begins.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

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