On the recordJune 7, 2017
I thank the gentlewoman from the beautiful State of Hawaii for yielding to me, and I thank her also for being a champion of immigrants, both in her State and across the Nation. It is Immigrant Heritage Month this month, and I think it is critical that we take a few moments to talk about the state of immigration here in the United States. I can't do that any better than by talking about a few stories of what I have experienced over the past few months. On January 27 of this year, we saw President Trump sign his executive order, quite expeditiously, on a travel ban that specifically targeted the Muslim community, with seven countries, where 90-plus percent of the population practice Islam. It was an interesting moment for me. My wife and I were having dinner with a few friends of ours in the district, and one of them had asked me: Well, how is this ban going to affect you? How is it going to affect your district? At the moment, I wasn't really sure, but then I got a call only a few minutes later by my district director. Our first constituent was identified as coming back on a United Arab Emirates flight back from Iraq and was scheduled to land the next morning: a girl who had graduated from the University of Central Florida and lived a very productive life as a legal resident in central Florida for the last 6 years after her graduation.…





