Adriano Espaillat: “As the whip of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, I am pleased to lead this monthly Special Order hour. It comes at a…”

“As the whip of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, I am pleased to lead this monthly Special Order hour. It comes at a critical time in America, a critical time for our Nation and for the communities that we represent. Yesterday morning, Madam Speaker, you may know that the Supreme Court heard a case. They heard arguments on Dreamers. This decision will determine the lives of nearly 1 million young Americans in the Supreme Court of the United States, a million people who were brought here at a very early age, at a very young age, and have known no other country but the United States of America. We have come to call them Dreamers because they symbolize, in a quintessential way, what the American Dream stands for. They derived the name from bipartisan legislation introduced in 2001 by none other than the former Republican president pro tempore of the Senate, Orrin Hatch of the State of Utah and Dick Durbin of the State of Illinois. That legislation, which was reintroduced multiple times, would have granted residency status to immigrants who came here as minors, assuming they had no criminal record and had a high school diploma; and they could become permanent residents if they got a college degree or served honorably in the U.S. military. This proposal was seen as a critical component of any comprehensive immigration reform and for many was considered a low-hanging fruit, the easiest thing we could all agree on, both sides of the aisle.…”