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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in my office here in the U.S. Capitol, which is a few steps away from this Chamber, I have behind my desk a credenza. On that credenza is a document that is dear to me and my family and really defines who I am. It is my mother's naturalization certificate.

Despite all the speeches you hear on the floor about immigrants, we are a nation of immigrants, and my mother was an immigrant from Lithuania to the United States, brought here at the age of 2. Her brother and sister were with her on that boat, and her mom was bringing them along.

They went from Lithuania to Germany and then took the ship to Baltimore, eventually catching a train that took them to what they considered to be the land of opportunity, my hometown of East St. Louis, IL. That is my story. That is my family story. It is an immigrant story, and I am proud of it.

There were problems with immigration throughout our history. But there is also an opportunity with immigration which we have taken advantage of over and over and over again. We are a nation of immigrants. You will hear many of the speeches--and even this morning-- from the other side of the aisle on what is wrong with immigrants and immigration. It is not a perfect system by any means.

But I think we can all agree on some basics. Whoever the President may be, whatever political party, we need an orderly process at the border when it comes to immigrants, No. 1. No. 2, we should never knowingly allow any dangerous person to come into the United States. No. 3, anyone who is here seeking citizenship and is a danger to the community or neighborhood they live in should be removed from the United States, period, end of story.

Finally, we need a process that allows people who have the best intentions to come here, work hard, pay their taxes, and be part of America's future. That is the story of my family. It is a story of millions of American families.

About 25 years ago, a young woman in Chicago contacted my office and asked for help. Her name was Tereza Lee--an interesting story. Tereza was born in Korea. She came to the United States through South America, and her father and mother brought her to Chicago where her father, a Protestant minister, was looking for a church to serve.

He spent many years doing that with limited success, and he brought along his little daughter Tereza with him as he visited these churches. Many times, when the services were not taking place, this little girl would go over to the beat-up old piano in each of these churches and start hammering away. Someone noticed that and invited her to be part of something called the Merit Music Program in Chicago. The Merit Music Program provides money for poor kids in public schools to buy instruments and take lessons and learn how to play. They decided to give Tereza that chance. They let her take lessons in piano. She turned out to be a child prodigy when it came to music.

At the end of her high school years, her friends and those who taught her encouraged her to apply to the very best music schools in America. Tereza applied to the Manhattan Conservatory of Music, but she had a problem. Filling out the application, there was a question: ``What is your citizenship?''

She turned to her parents and said: ``What do I put here?''

They said: ``We don't know. You came here on a visitor visa. We didn't renew the request for a permanent visa. We don't know what your status may be.''

``What are we going to do,'' she said.

They said: ``We are going to call the office of a U.S. Senator named Durbin and see if he can give us advice.''

We checked the law. The law was clear. Tereza had overstayed her visitor visa. She was in the United States as a child, grew up here, but she didn't have legal status. She was undocumented. The law was and is very clear. That 18-year-old girl had to leave the United States for 10 years and then apply to come back in.

When we found that out, my staff came to me and said this isn't even possible for her to do. She has never really lived any other place than the United States. So at that point, I decided to address this with legislation. It was 24 years ago that I introduced a measure called the DREAM Act.

What the DREAM Act basically said was these young immigrants brought to the United States as children, like any American child, were destined to grow up dreaming of getting their first job, passing their driver's license test, and applying to college. But they had a problem. Under the current law, they were not legal to do those things. So the DREAM Act gave them a chance--those brought to the United States as children to have a path to citizenship after earning their way in a rather long and rigorous process. Many of them did. These Dreamers have gone on to serve as our Nation's doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, and first responders over the last 24 years. But, unlike many of their peers, Dreamers live in fear that their lives will be uprooted and that they will be deported to a country they don't even call home. That was the threat that faced Tereza.

It was 2001 when I first introduced bipartisan legislation to provide Dreamers with a pathway to citizenship. My cosponsor was Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, who was then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In fact, we had a little argument as to who would be the lead name on the legislation. Since he was chairman of the Judiciary, I deferred to him, and the first DREAM Act was a Hatch-Durbin piece of legislation. I am sad to say that more than two decades later, Dreamers are still waiting for that bill to pass.

Just over 13 years ago, President Barack Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, widely known as DACA. He created DACA in response to a bipartisan request from myself and the late Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar. Over those 13 years, DACA has protected more than 830,000 young people from deportation. All of them were brought to this country as children, some as young as a few months old.

Sadly, since President Obama established the program, many Republicans have waged a relentless campaign to overturn DACA and deport these Dreamers back to countries they left as infants, toddlers, and children--countries they may not even remember.

Now this program is hanging by a thread in the courts due to legal challenges from Republican States' attorneys general, and many Dreamers--even those who have protections under DACA--have been caught up in deportation raids by the Trump administration.

What does a person in DACA have to do to qualify for that status? First, they have to report themselves to our government; second, submit themselves to a background check so that if there is any evidence of criminal wrongdoing, it is going to come out, and they will be disqualified. They have to pay a substantial fee, and every 2 years, they have to go through that process again--and again and again. That is what DACA is.

So when we hear stories on the floor about immigrants committing crimes and such, let's make it clear that Dreamers are cleared by review and investigation by our government before they can ever qualify for the program, and every 2 years, they have to submit their names again for review.

I want to tell you about one of these Dreamers. She is a college student with a merit scholarship. She was deported from the United States without due process 2 weeks ago. This is the 150th story of a Dreamer that I have highlighted on the Senate floor. I had hoped that we would have passed the DREAM Act long before I reached this milestone.

Any Lucia Lopez Belloza was brought to the United States from Honduras when she was 8 years old. Any worked hard in high school. She was an honor student. In her free time, she volunteered as a tutor in algebra. Her hard work ultimately paid off. This year, she received a merit scholarship to study at Babson College in Massachusetts.

Like a lot of college students, Any planned to visit her family during the Thanksgiving holiday. Her dad's employer in Texas paid for her travel home to surprise her dad at work. But when Ms. Lopez Belloza arrived at Boston's Logan Airport, she was told there was a problem with her ticket. When she went to customer service, she was surrounded by Federal agents and shackled.

The next day, a Federal district court judge issued an order blocking her transfer or deportation for 72 hours. Despite this court order, the Trump administration quickly deported her to Honduras, the country she had not been to since she was a little girl. She had nothing but the few belongings she had brought with her for the Thanksgiving holiday at home with her family in Texas.

You will remember the President's campaign rallies and how often he stood before cheering crowds and said that it was time to stop the rapists, murderers, terrorists, and the criminally insane from flowing into this Nation--the worst of the worst. He repeated it over and over again.

Does this young lady look like the worst of the worst? The answer is clearly no. Ms. Lopez Belloza is one of countless Dreamers who have great potential to make this a better country. They are not asking for a free ride; they are hard-working and determined.

Think of the odds against her as she was growing up. She came to know that she didn't have legal status in this country. Her family is a hard-working family with limited income, and the prospects of her ever getting admitted to a college were limited. Yet she was damned determined to do it, and she did. It is that kind of determination and talent and skill that should be part of this country's future. She is going to be someday, I am sure, a leader in America--a small business owner, a teacher, a doctor. I am not certain what it will be.

The vast majority of Americans, including most Republicans, agree that Dreamers like her should have a path to citizenship--to earn her way to citizenship, to work hard and prove that she is part of America's future.

This is not just the right thing to do for Dreamers and their families; it is the right thing to do for America. One study found that if DACA were rescinded, the Federal Government would lose $60 billion in tax revenue and that U.S. economic growth would shrink.

The time to pass the DREAM Act is now. That is why I am proud to announce that I will be reintroducing the DREAM Act this week on a bipartisan basis with my good friend and colleague Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska.

While I have introduced the DREAM Act in every Congress since 2001, this one is different. This is my last year in the Senate. This is my last opportunity as a Senator to make it a law.

Over the years, I have met hundreds of amazing Dreamers who are American in every sense of the word except on paper.

To those Dreamers who have been with me in this fight, I promise to do everything in my power to fight for you and your future every day that I am here. As I have said to you many times, I am not giving up on you; don't give up on me.

To Senator Murkowski, thank you. It took courage to cosponsor this bill, and I will never forget it.

Can we get to work on a bipartisan basis and agree that if we are going to keep safe borders, we also want to make sure that the right immigrants are here for our future?

Any is one of those people. Without due process, she was sent back to Honduras. Her fate is still uncertain despite a court order. But there are hundreds of thousands like her who, with enough determination, hard work, and opportunity, can make America a greater nation. She is my 150th Dreamer. I hope she is part of America for years to come.

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