Political Quotes

“10 years ago, I received a telephone call in my Chicago office that I have recounted on this floor many times. But it started me on a journey that resulted in where we stand today on the passage of the DREAM Act. It was a phone call from a Korean-American mother with an amazing daughter who was a musical prodigy who had been accepted at the Juilliard School of music in the Acting President pro tempore's home State of New York. This excited young woman, in filling out the application, came to the question about her citizenship and nationality and turned to her mother and said: What do I put here? And her mother had to tell her the sad news that when that young girl was brought to America from Korea, at the age of 2, the mother did not file any papers and so that young girl was literally undocumented, literally illegal in the eyes of some. She asked us for help. What can we do to help in this situation? Here was a bright young woman, with a bright future, who had done everything right and excelled in so many ways. We contacted the Immigration Service and they said: It is too bad. Under American law, this young girl--who never consciously did anything wrong in her life--was a person without a country. Her only recourse at the age of 18 was to return to Korea--a country she had no knowledge of, could not speak the language, and had never visited anytime in her life. When I heard about that, I thought that was fundamentally unfair.…”