Young Oak Kim: “a year ago, my two little boys sat right up there, in the Gallery above, as I raised my right hand here on the floor. It…”

“a year ago, my two little boys sat right up there, in the Gallery above, as I raised my right hand here on the floor. It was a moment unlike any other moment I have ever had in my life. My dear colleagues, I hope it is never lost upon us that we get to work a job whose job description is written in the Constitution of the United States; what a deeply humbling experience, one we should treasure every chance we get. Never in my life have I felt the call to serve so strongly and viscerally as I do right now. I believe we are in a moment of extraordinary consequence and magnitude and that the next 5 years will shape the next five decades. There is nowhere else I would rather be than to be able to have a voice in this room and a vote in this Chamber on the monumental decisions that will shape our Nation's future through tumultuous times. But there is a bittersweet taste now, a year later, as I look back upon the day that I was sworn in. By my children's side, as they watched me a year ago, were my parents, both born during the Korean war, born into poverty, and they struggled to survive. Both saw America as a place where they could achieve the closest thing that they could get to a guarantee that the family they had raised would have a better life than they did. It was actually predecessors in this room who passed the immigration reform that allowed my parents to come here.”