Zoe Lofgren: “Imagine this: You are 17 years old. You have worked hard, and you are the valedictorian of your high school class, the…”

“Imagine this: You are 17 years old. You have worked hard, and you are the valedictorian of your high school class, the quarterback on the football team. You go down to apply for your driver's license, and you find out for the first time that you were actually not born in the United States and that you are undocumented. There is no possibility for you to get right with the law, but you did nothing wrong. You don't even remember the place that you were born. That is the circumstance that tens of thousands of young people find themselves in, and this bill allows those young people to get right with the law--they have done nothing wrong--and go on to become the full Americans that they are except for their paperwork. It does something else that is important, which is it recognizes that there is a group of people who are here under visas, but because the Senate messed up--that is a term of art--the per country cap bill that this House passed by 365 votes in the last Congress, there is a huge backlog from large countries so long that the dependents of lawful temporary visa holders age out. They have no remedy, just as the other Dreamers. They can't go back to the country they were born in because their parents are legally here. They have no capacity to become the full Americans that they are. This also resolves that problem. It is distressing to hear the rhetoric about the border.…”