Daca

Floor Speech

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Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, I am honored to join my colleagues here today, and I appreciate Senator Durbin's leadership in bringing us all together because today is truly an important day for hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children across America.

It was 14 years ago today that President Obama took action to memorialize an important truth: that young people who were brought to the United States as young children through no choice of their own--who have grown up in our communities, who have attended our local schools, many graduating at the top of their class from high school as valedictorians and who know no other home but the United States--that they deserve an opportunity to continue to be part of this country, free of the fear of being deported for a decision they had no say in.

Fourteen years ago, the U.S. Government made that promise: that if they came forward, passed a background check, and followed the rules, did everything that we asked of them, that they could stay here and pursue their dreams in the only country that they have ever known. And hundreds of thousands of brave young people did exactly that.

Now, to be clear, DACA was never intended to be a permanent solution. It was meant to be a temporary stopgap until Congress took action by passing the Dream Act or, ideally, modernizing our immigration system as a whole. Yet here we are, 14 years later, still having the same debate about these young people and their future because while the hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients kept their promise--they did their part--Congress has repeatedly failed to do ours. And now these individuals, who were young children back then when this program began, are now adults with careers and families of their own. They are even more deeply ingrained in our communities and our country than they were 14 years ago.

There are over 530,000 people enrolled in DACA today--somewhere between 140,000 or 150,000 of them in my home State of California alone. Listen to this. The average DACA recipient is 33 years old now. The average DACA recipient has lived in the United States for 27 years. They are not recent arrivals. They are our friends and neighbors, our family members, our loved ones. They have grown up to be teachers and nurses, caregivers, lawyers, small business owners.

We would call them model citizens if we would allow them to become citizens, but they are model, nonetheless. Eighty-seven percent of them are gainfully employed. Collectively, they contribute $17 billion to the American economy. That ought to be celebrated, not shunned for political purposes. About 1 in 3 are married, and roughly 240,000 U.S. citizen children live with at least 1 parent who is a DACA recipient.

They are among the people being targeted now by an administration claiming to be only going after the worst of the worst. Not only are they being swept up in the administration's mass deportation campaign, but many are now facing extraordinary, monthslong delays when trying to renew their DACA and work authorization--delays that are having real impacts, with real consequences, as this administration seemingly tries to undermine this program.

And on this anniversary of the DACA Program, I want to share a couple of stories of DACA recipients in my home State. Twenty-five-year-old Maria Fernanda Hernandez has been a DACA recipient since she was 15 years old. Thanks to DACA, Maria was able to attend college, earn a bachelor's degree in psychology, and find a full-time job as a project manager at a market research company. But Maria recently had to take a leave from her job, as many others, because even though she submitted her application on time back in January, it still hasn't even been reviewed by USCIS nearly 6 months later. In the months she has been forced to wait, Maria's DACA and the work permit that went along with it expired.

If that wasn't bad enough, her father has been battling a number of health issues over the last year. He spent months in the hospital and, at one point, had to have his legs amputated. I mention this because Maria was doing as much as she possibly could to help support her parents financially during all of this. But now, with her renewal stuck in limbo, Maria can no longer work or help her parents at a time when they need her the most.

Teresa is another DACA recipient who came to this country as a very young child. Teresa worked hard, got a good education, and built an impressive career not just as a nurse but as an award-winning nurse at one of Los Angeles County's largest hospitals. And like Maria and so many others, Teresa filed her renewal application on time. Yet months later, despite repeated outreach to USCIS, she still hasn't received any updates. And because of those delays, Teresa's work authorization has expired, and she is facing the possibility of losing the career she worked so hard to build because she is not able to provide her employer the necessary documents to keep working. That is what these cruel delays have caused.

Jose Morales Perez is 32 years old. He has lived in Los Angeles most of his life, ever since coming from Tijuana as a young child. He attended local schools, eventually graduating from Garfield High School in East Los Angeles and later attending Glendale Community College. Jose has built a life here. He has worked a steady job. He started a family. He helps care for his mother, whose diabetes complications have left her unable to walk.

Jose was up for a promotion at work earlier this year, and instead of celebrating that promotion, he lost his job when his DACA expired while waiting for the administration to process his renewal application.

And now his family is struggling to make ends meet, to the point where they are now pawning family heirlooms just for a little bit more cash to continue to scrape by.

Maria, Teresa, Jose--these and thousands of others just like them are the people that we are talking about when we discuss and debate DACA, people who followed the rules and did everything that we asked of them. The only choice that they ever made was to trust the U.S. Government when the government made them the promise that, if they came forward, they would not be punished for doing the right thing. That promise is being broken today by the Trump administration.

These men and women that I am talking about--not just the three that I mentioned--all of them deserve better. They deserve certainty. They and all Dreamers like them deserve the opportunity to continue contributing to their communities and to our country. They deserve the chance to become full-fledged members of this country--their country, our country--the only country that they have ever known, that they have given so much of their talent and so much of their leadership to each and every day.

Colleagues, 14 years after the creation of DACA, it is past time that we finally do what is right by the hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients and Dreamers who have already proven their commitment to this country. They kept their promise, and now it is time for Congress to keep ours. It is finally time to pass the Dream Act.

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