Dick Durbin: “it was 4 years ago that President Barack Obama announced a new program through an Executive Action. It was called the…”

“it was 4 years ago that President Barack Obama announced a new program through an Executive Action. It was called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. This was an action by the President which I had asked him to consider. I had written a letter with Senator Richard Lugar, a Republican from Indiana, and later with another 21 Senators, asking President Obama to consider the creation of this program because many of us believed that it was the right thing to do and the fair thing to do. It was 15 years ago that I introduced the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act was really a response to a constituent case in my home State of Illinois. A young woman, Korean, had been brought to this country at the age of 2, came in on a visitor's visa, and when the visa expired, she and her mother and the rest of the family stayed. The papers were filed for everyone in the family but her. Now she was here in the United States, undocumented and illegal at the age of about 18. She wanted to go on to college. She had a promising music career ahead of her. But under American law as written--and still written--it was very clear that she didn't belong in the United States and that she had to leave for 10 years and petition to come back. It seemed fundamentally unfair that a young person brought in at the age of 2 would face that sort of onerous responsibility and have to leave America, so I introduced the DREAM Act.…”