Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, today I rise with great urgency to sound an alarm because we have a community in peril. The Liberian community in Minnesota and around the Nation is dealing with a crisis of our very own making. When the DED, Deferred Enforced Departure, program expires on March 31, thousands of our Liberian friends and neighbors will be at risk of losing their jobs and their homes and being deported back to a nation that they no longer know. Thousands of Liberians settled in the United States in the 1990s and early 2000s when their country was devastated by civil wars. My friend Louise Stevens was one of them. She was a woman with a dream of a good life who worked hard to get an education and worked hard to get a good job; and because of a civil war she had nothing to do with, she had the courage and bravery to flee her home and start over in America. She slept on a mattress in a friend's living room for over a year. She and her kids shared two rooms for another year. And when President Clinton introduced the DED program in 1999, she was finally able to work without fear of being deported. She went to Boston Scientific and, with her education and work ethic, was able to get a good job and start a career that spanned 18 years. Now, she is over 60 years old, and she could lose everything once again. ``The world took everything from me,'' she told us. ``Now I have a home; I have a job; I have a hospital to go to; I have friends; and Minnesota is my home. America is my home.…”