On the recordJune 15, 2015
I want to thank the Democratic leader for his kind words. Today is the third anniversary of DACA. It was 15 years ago when I received a call to my Senate office in Chicago. A Korean-American woman who worked at a drycleaners in the city of Chicago had a question for me. It turned out that her daughter, Tereza Lee, had been offered an opportunity to go to school at one of the best music schools in America, but she had problems filling out her application. The whole story is that this family had come through Brazil from Korea to the United States years before. The family, including Tereza, who was then 2 years old, came in on a tourist visa. The idea behind their arrival in America was that her father was going to open a church. He would be a minister with his own congregation. It was a dream that was never realized. The family struggled. They were very poor. Tereza's mother went to work at a drycleaners. Her father didn't work much. He had health problems. Luckily, Tereza, this young girl, when she was about 10 or 12 years old, was enrolled in a music program in Chicago called the Merit Music Program. The Merit Music Program offers to children from poor families musical instruction and instruments. They introduced Tereza to the piano, and an amazing thing happened. She turned out to be an incredible musician. So she was finishing high school and was offered an opportunity to go to school in New York to a music school--the Manhattan School of Music.…
