October 02, 2017

Duckworth: Congress Must Pass DREAM Act & Protect DACA Recipients

 

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] - U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) spoke at a Capitol Hill rally today with several of her female colleagues to urge Congress to pass the Dream Act of 2017 immediately and shield the 800,000 DACA recipients, including 42,000 in Illinois, from deportation. Video of Duckworth's remarks is available upon request and photos are available online here and here.

"I am a daughter of the American Revolution. My ancestors fought for the liberty of this nation ... I'm also a daughter of an immigrant. My mom became a citizen in her 50s and let me just tell you that our nation is richer and more vibrant because of immigrants," Duckworth said. "Dreamers and immigrants are entrepreneurs, they are doctors, they are students, they are providing healthcare in parts of this country that suffer from shortages of health care workers. They are part of the fabric of who we are as a nation ... We lead the world but we cannot do that if we turn our backs on the very people that will rejuvenate, renew and allow us to grow and continue to prosper into the next century."

A full transcript of her remarks are available below:

Hi everyone, I am Tammy Duckworth and I am the junior Senator from Illinois. Let me just make it clear, I stand with my colleague Senator Dick Durbin, who is the author of the DREAM Act, in accepting nothing less but the full DREAM Act in anything that we do as we move forward and we need to do it now.

I am a daughter of the American Revolution. My ancestors fought for the liberty of this nation and when they did that, they never had in mind a nation that had different types of citizenship. And these deals that we hear about, these policies that perhaps might grant citizenship to Dreamers but with a contingency where they can't take care of their parents, that starts a slippery slope where you have different types of Americans and that is not acceptable.

I'm also a daughter of an immigrant. My mom became a citizen in her 50s and let me just tell you that our nation is richer and more vibrant because of immigrants. If you have no compassion and you don't care about suffering and families being separated and young people not being able to pursue their futures, then you should at least care about our nation's strength and economy.

I served for 23 years in the military and our Dreamers make the military stronger. The language skills that they bring, the cultural understanding. It's why the United States military can go anywhere in the world and have representation from that part of the world within our ranks. It's why I introduced legislation to provide citizenship for Dreamers who choose to serve honorably in our military.

But it can't just be about military service. Everyone deserves to have that chance. Bottom line, Dreamers and immigrants are entrepreneurs, they are doctors, they are students, they are providing healthcare in parts of this country that suffer from shortages of healthcare workers. They are part of the fabric of who we are as a nation and if we lose them and we send them back to a country that they have never known, they are still going to be resilient, amazing people. But what they will do is they will be that entrepreneur who starts a new business overseas that will compete with America as opposed to being an entrepreneur that starts a business here in the U.S., that brings growth to our economy, that contributes to us.

So if you even don't have an ounce of compassion in your heart, you should at least be supporting the Dreamers and supporting comprehensive immigration reform for the strength of this nation. We lead the world but we cannot do that if we turn our backs on the very people that will rejuvenate, renew and allow us to grow and continue to prosper into the next century.

As I said before, I stand with the Dreamers. I stand for the full DREAM Act and we will fight every single day here, as long as we can to make sure that we do that. And then after the Dreamers, we need to work on comprehensive immigration reform.