On the recordDecember 1, 2016
I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy) for his eloquence on this and for his empathy in allowing us to try to think about what it must feel like to be working on that finals paper or that homework assignment in high school or at community college or at one of our great universities and not know if at the start of next semester you will find yourself in another country, in a place that is now strange to you, with a language that you don't speak. When we think about this, when we think about these mass deportations, literally using the information that these young people and their families came forward with to register under the DACA program, and then using that against them after they voluntarily came forward, to find out where they live, pick them up, process them, deport them back to their country of origin, beyond the incalculable emotional human psychological toll, beyond what that would do to the conscience of this country, look at what it would cost us in financial terms. We would lose 2 to 2.6 percent of our GDP. We would lose nearly $5 trillion over the next 10 years, and government receipts on the trillions of dollars that these DREAMers would otherwise earn would also be gone with those DREAMers--nearly $900 billion that we would lose from the United States Treasury.…
