Adriano Espaillat: “I want to take this opportunity to thank the Congressional Progressive Caucus for allowing and facilitating this Special…”

“I want to take this opportunity to thank the Congressional Progressive Caucus for allowing and facilitating this Special Order hour on DREAMers and DACA. On my previous intervention, I highlighted how we contemplated tonight, as this House passed a continuing resolution to fund government, and how for many months we contemplated three pieces of legislation to address the issues of DACA recipients and DREAMers that were drafted in a bipartisan way. As I mentioned earlier, the first one is the clean Dream Act. The second one, put together by the Problem Solvers Caucus, is the USA Act. The other Chamber, which is convening right now as I speak to debate whether or not the government should continue to be funded and to take up the continuing resolution that we sent over to the other House, as they debate that, they will realize that none of the three proposals that I highlighted earlier--the Dream Act, the USA Act, and also the immigration framework that came over from bipartisan Senators--is included in that continuing resolution, leaving the DREAMers and DACA recipients out in the cold, propelling me to once again vote against the continuing resolution, as I did over 3 weeks ago. This particular issue impacts 800,000 DREAMers across the Nation, a population bigger than any one of our congressional districts. Mr. Speaker, they will have a profound impact on the economy if they are left out in the cold.…”