I'm Bill Treanor, and as Dean of Georgetown Law, I want to add my welcome to all those
here today, including our students.
And I'm especially pleased for Georgetown to host this annual conference, which brings
together experts from government, advocacy, the media, think tanks, and academia to address
the most challenging immigration issues facing our country.
And I'm particularly delighted to welcome back one of our graduates, Senator Dick Durbin
to campus.
In fact, Senator Durbin is a double grad.
He earned his undergraduate degree at Georgetown School of Foreign Service and his law degree
right here.
Senator Durbin is Illinois's senior senator.
He serves as the assistant democratic leader, the second highest ranking position among
the Senate Democrats.
Also known as the minority whip, Senator Durbin has been elected to this leadership post by
his Democratic colleagues every two years since 2005.
Elected to the United States Senate in 1996 and reelected in 2002, 2008, and 2014, Senator
Durbin sits on the Senate Judiciary, Appropriations, and Rules Committees.
As many of you know, Senator Durbin introduced the DREAM Act in 2001, together with Senator
Hatch.
But you may not know how that came about.
The story reflects how much care he and his staff give to individuals and constituents.
Back in the day, his then immigration caseworker was trying to assist a young woman, a piano
prodigy, who was undocumented and applying to colleges.
The young woman was accepted at a number of leading music conservatories, including
Juilliard.
She is Korean American, and her parents brought her here when she was two years old.
She thought she was American, which would make her eligible for college financial assistance.
But because she was undocumented, that assistance was not available to her.
The senator's office investigated everything they could think of in her case to help her
obtain legal immigration status, but existing law failed, and led the senator to develop
legislation to assist young undocumented immigrants in similar situations.
To give such students a chance to contribute to society and earn citizenship by attending
college or serving in the military, Senator Durbin continues to vigorously promote the
DREAM Act.
Senator Durbin continued in this leadership role as a member of the so-called Gang of
Eight Senators, who drafted comprehensive immigration reform legislation, which passed
the Senate on a strong bipartisan vote of 68 to 32 in 2013.
This year, the senator cosponsored the Fair Day in Court for Kids Act, which mandates
representation of government expense for unaccompanied children and other vulnerable populations
in immigration removal proceedings who cannot afford counsel.
Given the focus of this conference on major problems in the U.S. immigration system, we
are very fortunate to have Senator Durbin share his wisdom and experience about these
issues with us today.
Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Senator Durbin.
Thank you.
Thanks, Dean Treanor, for the kind words, it's great to be back at Georgetown Law.
The version that I went to school at was a lot different than this campus, but I'm not
going to get into those old stories because I will sound like a geezer.
But I will tell you the end of the story here that the dean started about the first dreamer.
Her name, Teresa Lee, Korean, and happy ending.
The happy ending is two families in Chicago, one of whom I knew personally, decided to
pay for her education because she couldn't get any financial assistance to go to school.
She went to the Manhattan Conservatory of Music and played in Carnegie Hall.
She now has completed her Ph.D. in music.
She had the good fortune and wisdom to marry a jazz musician, an American citizen, now
she is totally legal and a mom on top of everything.
So it was a very happy ending, but she did, in fact, inspire me to write this bill and
to introduce it.
A little political footnote is when I introduced it, I got a call from Orrin Hatch, my colleague
on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he said, what are you doing stealing my idea?
And I said, your idea?
Oh, yeah.
He said, I was working on a bill myself.
I said, well, since the Republicans were in the majority, I said, why don't we do this
together and you can be the lead sponsor.
Okay, so it was Hatch Durbin for two years, and then he lost his interest and stopped
cosponsoring and stopped voting for it.
So it's been my project ever since, and I hope to win him back into the fold eventually.
I thank conference hosts, Georgetown Law Center, Migration Policy Institute, Doris Meisner,
Catholic Legal Immigration Network Clinic, quite a gathering.
It does my heart good to see a lot of people working hard to get America's immigration
laws right.
I want to thank particularly Doris, who has not only served us well in her public capacity,
but continues as the director of the Migration Policy Institute.
I also want to recognize a young woman who I set a load to walking in.
Her name is Esther Lee, Esther, where are you?
Back here.
There's Esther.
Esther is a dreamer.
Born in Taiwan, came to America at the age of two with her mom and her two older siblings.
They were fleeing domestic violence.
When their visas expired, they stayed in America.
Esther put herself through New York University working as a nanny, a house cleaner, and a
Mandarin tutor.
She earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree.
It was 2001 when I first introduced the DREAM Act to give young people like Esther the chance
to become citizens.
In 2010, six years ago, I led a letter calling on the president to grant temporary legal status
to DREAMers.
Today, President Barack Obama, because President Barack Obama had the vision and courage to
establish DACA, Esther is able to make a living as a journalist.
She's an immigration reporter for Think Progress.
Welcome Esther.
Thank you.
Any other DREAMers?
Welcome to.
When I first started this, I would give speeches in Chicago about the DREAM Act, largely to
Hispanic audiences, because they are affected more than most.
An interesting thing would happen when I'd give a speech.
I'd go out to my car afterwards to get in, and without fail, there would be a young person,
usually a young woman, I might add, waiting to see me in the darkness and shadows around
my car.
And she would look both ways and say, Senator, I'm one of those DREAMers.
But I swore to my mom and dad I would never say that to anybody, because they're afraid
I'm going to get deported.
That was the state of play 15 years ago, but it changed, as it usually does.
When young people are warned not to say things over and over, eventually they not only say
them, but start saying them loudly, and DREAMers said them loudly.
They stood up, spoke up, and gave me their stories.
I've been to the floor of the Senate, I think 100 times, with the stories of individual
DREAMers.
Color photographs, which I bring to the floor to tell the story.
Without fail, I can tell you, because I do this for a living, people listen.
Because they love stories, number one, and number two, these are real stories of some
amazing young people who just need a chance to become part of America's future officially.
So I will tell you that the DREAMers themselves have become my greatest allies.
We just had one speak at the convention in Philadelphia, who we'd worked with over the
years now an American citizen herself.
But the story of the DREAM Act is one of the reasons why I decided to run for reelection.
Sure it's a nice job and everybody would like to keep it, but I wanted to have a purpose.
And when I sat down to spell out the purpose for running for reelection, the DREAM Act
was at the top of the list.
Doris tells me we're now up to 800,000, you think Doris?
In terms of DREAMers who signed up for DACA, we have others in process.
There's estimate that there might be another 2 million eligible for this.
Their future is uncertain because of court decisions, but as long as I'm around, we're
going to protect them and do everything we can to give them a chance to become full-fledged
citizens.
Let me say that we all were moved yesterday when the president addressed the NFL football
games across America and the general population, marking the 15th anniversary of 9-11.
I'm sure everyone here remembers in some way or another what they were doing that day.
I was in the Capitol in a meeting with the Senate Democratic leadership with the majority
leader, Tom Daschle.
Tom was calling us together at 9 o'clock.
As we got on the elevator to come to the meeting, we heard a plane had struck the World Trade
Center.
It sounded so unusual, but then as we walked into the room, turned on the TV and saw the
second plane strike the other tower, we realized this was no aviation accident.
This was an attack on the United States.
There was a lot of talk about what we were going to do, and then someone looked down
the mall from the Capitol and saw the black smoke billowing across the Potomac and the
mall from the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
Within minutes, they called us to evacuate the Capitol, which was the first time that
had ever occurred and time that I've been around, and everyone stood out in the grass,
not sure what to do, tourists and staff and members of Congress.
We heard what we thought at first were bombs.
They were sonic booms as they were scrambling fighters over the Capitol for fear that the
plane that was eventually brought down in Pennsylvania was coming here to strike the
Capitol or the White House as its next target.
Well, that was seen in a moment in American history that we can never forget.
The next day, September 12, 2001, I had scheduled the first ever congressional hearing on the
Dream Act.
It was canceled for obvious reasons.
I was determined to include the Dream Act in a comprehensive immigration reform bill.
The plan would have included a path to citizenship, but on that blue sky morning, 15 years and
one day ago, it seemed entirely possible, even likely, that such a plan was within reach.
Then the planes hit, nearly 3,000 innocent Americans died, and our immigration debate
turned into a security debate.
It wasn't until 2011, 10 years later, that the Senate finally held the first hearing
on the Dream Act.
Instead of moving forward on comprehensive immigration reform after 9-11, Congress turned
its attention to security.
We tightened up non-immigrant visas for students and visitors, the sort of visas that 9-11
terrorists had abused.
We established new restrictions and enhanced security measures for U.S. citizens.
We spent hundreds of billions of dollars and literally changed our lifestyle when it came
to catching an airplane.
Despite repeated efforts by some of us in Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform
for the last 15 years, changes in our immigration law and policies have focused overwhelmingly
on keeping dangerous people out of America.
Left unresolved or other questions are urgently important.
How do we fix our system to let the right people in, or let them stay if they're already
here?
How do we align America's immigration policies with the real needs of our future, instead
of forcing millions of undocumented workers to live fearfully in the shadows in poverty
or near poverty?
A number of events since 9-11 have made passing comprehensive immigration reform even more
challenging.
Let me tell you three.
First, the global economic meltdown of 2008 and 2009 cost millions of Americans their
jobs.
When the President was sworn in, his first day, it was in a month where we lost 800,000
American jobs.
Life savings were disappearing.
Many Americans still felt economically battered and vulnerable as a result of that cataclysm.
But who could blame them?
Some fear that immigrants might take their jobs, or they might be costly-drained on public
budgets.
That makes comprehensive immigration reform harder.
Second, the global refugee crisis is causing anxiety in America and much of the rest of
the world, especially Europe.
Look at the UK and the Brexit vote.
The Leave forces in the UK succeeded partly by demonizing immigrants and refugees as
terrorists, criminals, addicts, or welfare cheats.
They persuaded a bare majority that the only way to save Great Britain was to wall it off
from the rest of Europe.
To quote former British Foreign Secretary William Haig, the Leave campaign is really
the Trump campaign with better hair.
And Britain isn't alone.
Last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that her nation would take as many
as a million refugees fleeing violence in Syria and elsewhere.
It was a stunning act of statesmanship.
Look what happened last week, the backlash.
Chancellor Merkel, center-right Christian Democratic Union Party, finished a dismal third place
in a regional election in her home constituency.
Second place went to a three-year-old hardline anti-EU, anti-immigrant party, alternative
for Deutschland.
Anti-immigrant parties and politicians are gaining new supporters in France, Italy, Austria,
Holland, Greece, Poland, and Hungary.
Even in nations long considered bastions of tolerance, attitudes are hardening.
Any immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment in Europe is even harsher than in the U.S.
It is fed not only by economic anxiety, but also by fear and anger in the wake of unconscionable
terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice, and elsewhere.
A third factor that makes many in Congress hesitant to take up comprehensive immigration
reform is, frankly, the bigoted bloviations of Donald Trump and his followers.
So you ask, what's next?
Is there a chance that we could finally see progress in the next Congress on matters affecting
immigrants and refugees?
Can we return to that larger debate, or has the ugly anti-immigrant rhetoric that we
hear in the presidential campaign poison the debate, and will we remain stuck in stalemate?
I think there is a reason to be hopeful.
You may have seen a CNN poll that was released last week, and let me caution you in advance.
I never use a PowerPoint.
So you're about to see the only PowerPoint I have ever used in my life.
Here it is.
People were asked, thinking about the way the U.S. government deals with the issue of illegal
immigration, which of the following policy goals should be the government's top priority?
If you read from right to left, starting in early September of 2015, then November 2015,
then September of 2016, 51 percent of respondents now say, up from 49, the top priority of American
immigration laws and policies should be developing a plan to allow those in the U.S. illegally
who have jobs to become residents.
The pathway to legal status, 51 percent.
That's up 5 percent from a year ago.
Another interesting point.
Look at the percentage of respondents who said that America's top immigration priority
should be deporting immigrants who are already in the country illegally.
A year ago, 14 percent ranked that as a top immigration priority.
Today, 11 percent.
Out of three possible priorities, deporting undocumented immigrants comes in a distant
third.
Instead of poisoning well, perhaps Mr. Trump's ugly rhetoric could actually help to build
momentum for a balanced immigration reform.
I was part of the gang of eight, as Dean Trainor mentioned, that tried to put together
a comprehensive bill, a bill which ended up passing the Senate, 68 to 32, with 14 Republicans
on board.
That was a little over three years ago.
If Republican leaders had allowed the bill to come to the House floor, it would be the
law of the land today.
There were more than enough votes in the House in both sides of the aisle.
Didn't happen.
They held it off, and they wouldn't let any immigration bill come to the floor.
Last year was tough.
Republicans gained control of the Senate, and Republican leaders threatened for months
to shut down the Department of Homeland Security unless the Senate voted to deport Dreamers.
I'm not making that up.
But Democrats refused, and in the end, we won the standoff with the President's support.
Well, I'm ready for the gang of eight to suit up again and get ready in the next session
of Congress.
Two of the four Republican gang of eight members are still publicly supporting our work.
The other two missing in action.
But the two who are supporting are Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake, who I want to say I
admire very much for standing up for this concept of a bipartisan approach to comprehensive
immigration reform.
I hope to join them in the next Congress to make another effort.
I think the majority of Americans are going to reject Donald Trump's immigrant bashing.
I hope the election results in numbers like those in the new CNN poll will persuade more
of our friends across the aisle to join us.
If they want to be a presidential party, it has to be an expanding party reaching out
to new populations.
When President Obama was reelected in 2012, the highest percentage vote on an American
electorate for him, naturally, expectedly, came from African Americans.
Third highest, Hispanic Americans.
Second highest, Asian Americans.
Why?
Asian Americans.
They heard every word that was said between Romney and Obama in that election campaign
about immigration.
And though they are, by nature, more conservative in their thinking and their background and
their families, when it came to the issue of immigration, they knew where the party
stood.
Now, there were times when John McCain and others would stand up and say, if our party
has a future, we have got to be an expanding party open to new populations.
Well, they've taken a reversal this time with their current nominee.
Whether or not the anti-immigrant hardliners continue to block comprehensive immigration
reform in the next Congress, our next president needs to be prepared from day one to use her
legal authority to make our immigration system fairer and more rational.
Now, I've heard the tired argument that President Obama has poisoned the well with his executive
orders on immigration, nonsense.
The president was using his well-established legal authority to set immigration priorities.
Congress certainly had its chance to lead.
Let me mention three important steps the new president should take.
One, the president should authorize all qualified dreamers to serve in America's armed forces.
Immigrants have fought and died to defend America's freedom since the Revolutionary
War.
One Humayun Khan, whose parents spoke so eloquently at the Democratic Convention, is part of that
hallowed tradition.
Well, it was a week ago, almost 10 days, that the Islamic Foundation had its national convention
in Chicago.
And it didn't work in my schedule, but then I heard that Mr. Kizir Khan and his wife were
going to be there, the man who'd spoken at the Democratic Convention.
I changed my schedule and said, I have to meet him.
And I did, sat down with this gracious man, this well-spoken and educated man, who, with
his wife, lost a son in service to our country, and has continued to be dedicated to the young
men and women who were joining our armed forces.
He entertains him at the University of Virginia campus at his home, and he gives a copy of
the Constitution to each of them.
You may remember at the convention when he held up his copy of the Constitution.
I thought to myself, what do I need from this man?
I know what I need.
I need him to sign my copy of my Constitution, which he did.
In 2003, Marine Lance Corporal Jose Gutierrez, a permanent resident of the U.S. born in Guatemala,
became the first American service member killed in the war in Iraq.
He was awarded U.S. citizenship posthumously.
There are so many dreamers, young men and women, who want the opportunity to defend
America, patriots like Captain Kahn, Lance Corporal Gutierrez.
I've met a lot of them.
In 2014, I held a hearing on dreamers serving in the military.
The law is clear.
The president can do this.
I have been begging this president, whom I dearly love, but can't quite get across the
finish line.
Under the current law, any president can make the decision that, vital to national interests,
they would accept dreamers in the armed forces.
Bringing them to enlist would give us a new pool of educated, motivated, homegrown talent,
makes our military more diverse and inclusive.
And I'll tell you, I've met young men and women who are anxious to serve.
They have been in ROTC programs.
They want to serve, and they should be given that chance.
The second action, the next president, thank you.
Second action the next president can take to break the stalemate on immigration refugees.
She could dramatically increase the number of refugees America accepts to 200,000 a year,
including 100,000 from Syria.
Two weeks ago, the Obama administration met the president's goal for this fiscal year
of accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees.
The administration hailed it as a major achievement.
Maybe it is.
But considering the unease of many Americans feel about welcoming refugees, I understand
it's controversial.
The unease that stirred up intentionally are not by people who wrongly conflate refugees
with terrorists.
You know who I mean.
But we have the ability and the moral responsibility to do better.
There are 65 million refugees in the world today, the largest refugee crisis in recorded
history.
They have been driven from homes in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and far beyond.
From South Sudan, Burma, Somalia, by wars, terrorism, famine, and drought.
Many have fled to neighboring countries which are now overwhelmed.
Today, Lebanon hosts over a million Syrian refugees.
To put that in perspective, that would be the equivalent of America taking in 64 million
Syrian refugees.
Jordan and other so-called frontline countries are equally overwhelmed.
Here's a number to think about.
Last year, 10 nations with an average GDP per capita of about $3,700 were hosting 45%
of the world's refugees, America's GDP by comparison, 34,600, nearly 10 times.
Canada has now accepted more than 30,000 Syrian refugees in the past 10 months, pledged to
accept even more.
I support creating safe zones in Syria.
I hope this effort at demilitarizing or bringing peace to Syria prevails.
But we need to protect the victims of war from that country and also ease the burden
on frontline nations.
The third action our president can take on her own to break America's immigration reform
stalemate is to help ease a desperate refugee crisis in our own hemisphere.
There are tens of thousands of children and families fleeing widespread, horrific violence
in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.
The Northern Triangle has some of the highest homicide rates, highest child murder rates,
highest female homicide rates in the world.
Ruthless gangs and drug cartels dominate.
I'm strongly opposed to immigration raids targeting mothers and children who've left
everything behind and may face arrest and deportation.
These raids create fear and insecurity in immigrant communities.
They deter children from school.
They deter parents from medical care or reporting crimes when they're victimized.
But I'll tell you what ICE agents and raids don't deter.
They don't deter terrified mothers and children from fleeing life-threatening violence in
their homeland.
We know that some people who are forcibly returned to the Northern Triangle from the
United States have been killed, often just days after their deportations.
I recently led a letter to the president from 26 Democratic senators asking the administration
to stop deportations of vulnerable persons from Northern Triangle if they have no criminal
record and if they were not represented by counsel.
The next president should use her clear statutory authority to grant temporary protected status
to recent arrivals from the Northern Triangle.
Temporary protected status, TPS, would protect children and adults from being returned to
dangerous conditions at even life-threatening situations.
How can we ask our allies in the Middle East and Europe to keep their borders open to Syrian
refugees if we return desperate children and parents at our own borders back to lawlessness
and lethal violence?
Action from the next administration, guaranteeing refugees from the Northern Triangle, refuge
from harm, and fair representation in court, will show the world that we are who we say
we are, a generous and decent nation, a nation of immigrants.
In these three actions, may not send the next president's poll number soaring.
Not at first anyway.
History shows us that Americans are often slow to come to this issue.
There's the historic tale of the SS St. Louis, a ship which sailed in 1939, a German ocean
liner that left Nazi Germany with 908 Jewish refugees aboard.
The St. Louis was turned away at Cuba, Canada, and the United States.
The refugees were returned to Europe.
It's estimated that a fourth of them died in death camps during World War II.
America learned something from the bitter experience of World War II.
And after that war, our attitude toward asylum and refugees started to change.
But not without some public resistance.
In 1958, 58 percent of Americans opposed taking in Hungarian refugees fleeing the communist
regime in that nation.
In 1979, 62 percent of Americans opposed a plan to take in refugees from Vietnam and
Indochina.
Well, look what's happened despite that initial opposition.
We have absorbed over half a million Cubans who came to us after the Castro regime came
to power.
They were coming from a communist nation, and yet we accepted them and made them a vital
part of America and its future.
We've accepted we believe somewhere in the range of 300,000 Soviet Jews who came to the
United States from the Soviet Union, which was our bitter enemy in the Cold War, brought
here so that they would have a safe place to live and practice their religion.
We took in 1.9 million Vietnamese Americans in our country.
We were refugees of children refugees.
They have a higher per capita income than the national average in our country and lower
unemployment.
Today's immigrants and refugees have the same potential to strengthen our economy and
enrich our culture wherever they come from.
For those who say we have to build walls because immigrants are criminals, get your facts straight.
Study after study shows that immigrants are more law abiding than native-born Americans.
Let's be clear, refugees are the most carefully vetted of all the travelers to the United
States.
Before refugees are admitted to our country, they must pass careful, rigorous security
screening that can last 18 to 24 months while they languish many times in refugee camps.
All of that screening takes place while they're still overseas, before they even set foot
in America.
Syrian refugees are subject to another test beyond that, called Enhanced Review.
Of the thousands of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States in September 11, not
a single one has been arrested or deported on terrorism-related grounds, not one.
Of the 800,000 refugees admitted into the United States since 9-11, not one has engaged
in domestic terrorism, not one.
If it's terrorist threats we're worried about, let's be honest.
Let's focus on real threats and vulnerabilities.
Let's take a look at our visa waiver program.
20 million people from 38 nations travel to America every year without visas.
That's a third of all the visitors to the United States.
They arrive at our airports without undergoing fingerprint scans or other biometric checks.
Zacharias Masawi, the so-called 20th hijacker and 9-11 co-conspirator, tried to enter the
U.S. through the visa waiver program.
So did Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, every participant in the terrorist attack on Bataclan
Theater last year in Paris held a passport that was eligible for the visa waiver program.
If we're really concerned about protecting America from terrorists, we should be strengthening
the visa waiver program and requiring biometric checks of travelers before they reach this
country.
I don't know if any of you are in the global entry program.
I am.
It's a good deal if you aren't in it and you do some international travel.
But when you arrive at the airport, what do they ask you for?
Your passport and your fingerprints.
Not too much to ask, and it's pretty quick.
We could be doing the same thing when it comes to the visa waiver program.
We could expect that if we ask for biometric checks before they come to the U.S. on visa
waiver, they'll ask the same of us.
It is not a major inconvenience and doesn't slow us down at all, but it adds a level of
security.
So instead of picking on the refugees who have a solid record of having been vetted
and need our help in finding a peaceful place to live, let's really make security stronger
when it comes to travel by taking a look at this program in a reasonable way.
If we're serious about protecting Americans, Congress should also close the loophole that
lets those who enter the U.S. through the visa waiver program buy guns, even assault
weapons, and even if they're on the FBI's terrorist watch list.
What are we thinking?
I support the Second Amendment, but I agree with Abraham Lincoln, being from Illinois,
you might expect that, and Justice Robert Jackson.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
We must also address the root causes of the current global refugee crisis, economic inequality,
conflict, war, and climate change.
Now let me close with a little story.
When I went to Georgetown School of Foreign Service, I had a professor in my first year.
He was in the government department, and he taught a course called Modern Foreign Governments.
His name was Jan Karski.
I remember that class because Jan Karski showed up every day in a suit, a clean white shirt,
tie, set there, ramrod straight, and lectured to us about governments around the world,
particularly in Europe.
That was 1963.
Now I am dating myself.
My first year at Georgetown School of Foreign Service, the height of the Cold War.
I knew that Karski had been a Polish Army officer during World War II, but I didn't
know the rest of the story, and I didn't learn it till much later.
He'd also been a member of the Polish Underground during the war.
He told us that, but he didn't tell us his assignment.
We didn't know that they had sneaked him into a Warsaw ghetto so that he could see it firsthand
as Jews were being harassed and violated and killed.
And they snuck him into a Nazi death camp in Poland as well so he could see it firsthand.
Why?
Because they wanted him to come to the United States and to tell the story.
He'd been a courier for the Polish Underground.
He was assigned to carry messages from Nazi-occupied Poland to the Polish government in exile in
London, ultimately to the United States.
He sought and received a meeting with President Roosevelt, Justice Frankfurter, and told him
what he saw.
For many years, Karski couldn't bear to speak about his role and how his warnings had fallen
on deaf ears.
There's a quote from Professor Karski I think about.
It echoes the words of men and women of great faith and moral courage through the ages.
He said in a quote, self-imposed ignorance or insensitivity, self-interest or hypocrisy
or heartless rationalization when others are suffering is a sin.
I believe Americans are good and decent people.
And although the ugliness of this presidential campaign might lead you to think otherwise,
we are more prepared to accept real, comprehensive immigration reform now than we were since
9-11.
I hope our new president will use her authority to help.
I hope my Republican Congressmen and Senators, for political reasons, are for the right reasons.
Together, sometimes they're both, will join us in a bipartisan effort to get it done.
I'm ready to try to help.
With that, let me stop and answer a few questions.
Thank you so much, Senator.
I'm sure there will be some questions.
The microphones are here.
We have just a minute or two.
So let's look for one or two questions.
I always got nervous when I was called on at Georgetown Law, so let's see how this goes.
I'm in a different place.
Hi.
Peggy Ochausky.
I'm a congressional reporter for the Hispanic Outlook.
I wanted to ask you about the dreamers.
Does that also include the children of temporary visa holders, or is it only for the children
who are here illegally?
Maybe you know the answer to that, Doris.
I don't know the answer.
Joe, where are you?
No, you're asking about the DACA legislation.
I'm talking about the dream, the dreamers.
In your dream legislation.
Does it include also children who are here under temporary visas, who may graduate as
valedictorians, but they don't get a pathway to citizenship, but someone who's here illegally
does.
Many of them are undocumented because the visa expired, the visitor's visa, the student visa.
But if they're here illegally, so it's only for people here illegally.
Yes.
Here.
Hi.
What kind of universities and institutions do children part of the dreamers program?
I'm sorry, what kind of university, what?
The children are part of the dreamers program.
What kind of universities and institutions are they having the opportunity to attend?
A lot.
And many of these universities don't publicize it.
They give an example.
The Stritch College of Medicine at Loyola University in Chicago decided to allow dreamers
to compete for admission to the medical school.
For many of them, this is the first opening ever for them to compete.
Twenty of them are now dreamers or now in the medical school.
They don't get any help from the government being undocumented, but they have a program
that if they will pledge a year of service to Illinois after they graduate from medical
school, they'll forgive the expenses for a year and eventually for their entire education.
I've called other universities in my state, I'm going to hold back from naming names to
ask them to give a chance for dreamers to enter law school and they've done it.
So I think there is a mood and a large part of higher education that they want to be cooperative
and helpful.
This is where my question comes in.
I'm 17 years old, I'm a freshman in college right now and in the fall I was accepted into
New York University, but I could not afford to go there, both my parents, police officers
in the New York Police Department, my mom's going back to work so she can afford to put
me now through public college, a very nominal tuition compared to some of the places I was
accepted into.
And when we were talking on the panels before about why immigration has become such a hot
topic in this election and why Donald Trump's rhetoric is resonating with so many Americans,
for me it's not a question.
I mean I grew up in a very middle class neighborhood where we weren't poor enough to get full tuition
to the universities we're accepted into, but we were by no means rich enough to be able
to afford them on our own.
So when we're wondering why there's such xenophobic tendencies running throughout our nation, for
me I'm not someone who supports Donald Trump, not saying that I agree with his policies
whatsoever, but it's not a question for me because as one of the other panelists was
saying as well how in middle America you know there's this view that immigrants are coming
into our nation and taking our jobs.
So I didn't know if you had any response to that kind of view for people.
Thank you for what you said because I really think you put the finger on it based on your
family and life experience.
The uncertainty about your future, where you're going to be going to school, and I'm sure
your parents are sharing it with you because they want you to succeed.
When they listen to the politicians, they might have listened to my speech and said
wait a minute, what about my daughter?
She's not here illegally, she's here illegally, why wouldn't she get the first chance?
I don't think it is a matter of choice here between fairness to the dreamers and fairness
to you as well.
We've really lost our sight as a nation if we've reached that point.
The number of people we are talking about here is relatively small percentage wise in terms
of the impact on higher education.
I think they are especially motivated people and will be very successful in school and
in life.
I have a larger view of things, much like your own, and that students like you, mom and
dad, both members of the police force, have every right to a good education in this country.
I don't think there should be any obstacles to you.
And there are.
Cost is the first one if you're admitted and you just mentioned New York University and
the challenge that you face.
It's really short-sighted of us as a nation to think that this is a static pool of opportunity.
I think it's an expanding pool and should be to include you as well as those who are
willing to pay the sacrifice.
I might add that those who are dreamers going to school get no government assistance.
I mean, they really have to do it on their own.
And it's very difficult and challenging.
For clarification, I have to actually stop this so that we, because we need to let you
go and, you know, if you'd like to talk about it further on the side, we can do so.
But what I'd like to do is allow the two people behind you to quickly state their point or
their question quickly.
And then if you have a moment and want to respond, it's up to you.
Thank you for your comments.
Thank you.
Go ahead.
My name is Nicole Crawford.
I'm a business owner from state of Ohio.
I own a Christian Early Learning Center for the last 11 years.
I serve about 43 immigrant families from Rwanda, Burundi, the Congo, and beyond.
And my program is in the process of they're trying to close me down.
And I am going to a hearing in the next four days to fight, of course.
But I know that I'm here for a reason.
And I wanted to see if there was any feedback that you could give me in terms of because
of the population that I serve being so large with the immigration community and what if
there's anything that you might suggest that I could utilize as a resource so that I, when
I go into this hearing, can approach it from this perspective because I serve the whole
community, but my largest portion is immigrants.
Do you think most of the immigrant families are undocumented?
No.
We've actually come through Catholic Social Services.
I'm partners with them in my state.
And we are the primary for my community.
They come through my Early Learning Center before they are moved outward for early learning
care.
So if the choice, I would say, if I were in your shoes, if the choice is to take someone
who is legally in America and can work but needs a safe daycare for their children during
the day, if the choice is whether they should work or stay home, we want them to work, right?
And to help our country and to pay taxes and to be part of it and making sure the kids
have a safe place to stay should be part of the equation.
Absolutely.
That, to me, just makes imminent sense.
Okay.
Good luck.
Thanks for what you're doing.
Hi.
Thank you so much for being here and all your work on behalf of Immigration Reform.
Do you have any suggestions for us, advocates who want immigration reform, to work with
people who are on the other side, and help convince them, especially your colleagues
in Congress, what would our best arguments be and how can we best address the blockages
as constituents, as people who care?
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
There was a fellow named Jack Valenti.
Jack Valenti was around Washington for a long time, and he worked for President Lyndon Baines
Johnson and eventually became the lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association.
He was a pretty big deal and a very interesting guy.
And he used to say, every speech should include six words, six words.
Let me tell you a story, okay?
And the reason that he said that was that people hate speeches, but they like stories,
okay?
And what I have found, when I was arguing for the Affordable Care Act against Tea Party
folks standing in front of my office in the street with television cameras going, I would
just say, well, what about so-and-so?
I've been to Lincoln, Illinois here 30 miles away.
You know what happened to her?
They finally reached a point, 10 minutes into this, where they started saying, stop telling
stories.
We don't want to hear any more stories.
I tell stories about dreamers.
I go to the floor and tell stories about dreamers.
Kay Bailey Hutchison, a very conservative Texas Republican senator, came to me one day
out of the blue and said, I want to talk to you about how we're going to pass the DREAM
Act.
Kay, you're not even voting for it.
Well, I could vote for it.
And so we went through all the different things that were on her mind, and her staffers,
she would turn to every once in a while and say, would that take care of Maria?
She had met a dreamer who made an impression on her.
The point I'm making to you, this issue, as much if not more than any other issue, is
a very personal issue, an issue of stories.
I tell them on the Senate floor.
You need to tell them to people as well.
Why do you think that we have marriage equality in this country?
It's because more and more young people got to know people who were lesbian, gay, transgender
and others and said, why do we want to deny them this opportunity?
This exposure to real life people, real life stories, can bring even the hardest hearts
around.
And I think that ultimately that is the best weapon we have.
And thank goodness these dreamers have such spectacular stories to tell.
Thank you very much, George.
Senator, thank you so much.
