{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://gutierrez.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/floor-speech-rep-guti-rrez-calls-dream-act-vote-now", "In Floor Speech, Rep. Gutirrez Calls For DREAM Act Vote Now", "2017-12-06", "2017", "2017-12", "Democrat", "House", "IL", "Luis Guti\u00e9rrez", "G000535", "gutierrez.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Washington, DC \u2013 Rep. Luis V. Guti\u00e9rrez (D-IL) delivered a speech on the House floor this morning calling for a vote on the DREAM Act (HR 3440), which would allow immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children to apply for permanent legal status.\u00a0 Later today, the Congressman will speak at a massive rally in Upper Senate Park to advocates who are gathering to send the same message: Pass the DREAM Act now.\u00a0 Yesterday, 34 House Republicans wrote Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to ask him to allow a vote on legislation to protect DREAMers and those with DACA before the end of the year.\u00a0 Rep. Guti\u00e9rrez says \u201cYou take the 34 Republicans that wrote the Speaker and add them to 194 of my Democrats and you are comfortably in the majority and the DREAM Act passes.\u201d\u00a0 Before the end of this week, a Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government past the midnight deadline for funding on Friday will be voted on and Rep. Guti\u00e9rrez and others are calling for the inclusion of the DREAM Act on this must-pass legislation, because DREAMers with DACA are already losing their protection from deportation. \u201cEvery day that Congress does not pass the DREAM Act, 122 DACA recipients lose their protection from deportation,\u201d the Congressman said in his floor speech.\u00a0 He went on to compare the unpopularity of the recent Republican tax proposal (supported by just 29% of the American people in a Gallup poll released yesterday) and the DREAM Act, supported by 86% of the American people in a recent Fox News poll \u2013 and 63% of Trump voters \u2013 and the Congressman had a chart to show the vast differences in popularity of the two proposals. Yet, as the Congressman said about the DREAM Act, \u201c[H] here is a proposal supported by an overwhelming number of people; an overwhelming number of Republicans; and an overwhelming percentage of people who voted for Donald Trump and we cannot get a vote.\u201d With regard to the news that short-term CRs are in the works to kick the decisions on the DREAM Act until next year, the Congressman said: He urged the Speaker to allow a vote on the DREAM Act as an \u201cact of charity in the Christmas spirit\u201d to those Republicans who are anxious to vote against the DREAM Act, despite its popularity. Rep. Luis V. Guti\u00e9rrez is a Member of the Judiciary Committee and the Chair of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.\u00a0\n\tEvery day that Congress does not pass the DREAM Act, 122 DACA recipients lose their protection from deportation.\n\tThat\u2019s 122 every day \u2013 young people who arrived in the U.S. as children, have gone through multiple background checks and have lived in the U.S. for a minimum of 10 years.\n\tEvery week that passes nearly 1,000 DACA recipients lose their protection from deportation.\n\tBy Christmas, the number of DACA recipients who will have lost protection will reach 13,492.\u00a0\n\tBut now we are hearing that we may have a short-term CR or a series of CRs and that the whole budget and funding debate might get kicked down the road to next year, when all 800,000 young immigrants who signed up for DACA will begin losing their status on a rolling basis.\n\tMr. Speaker, with Republicans in control of the House, Senate and White House, I am pretty sure you will not need my vote to pass these must-pass bills to secure the integrity of the nation.\u00a0\n\tSo I will vote against any short-term CR because I assume you have the votes to govern as you see fit, no matter how much I and other Democrats disagree with your priorities on women, on children\u2019s health insurance, the environment, or the DREAMers.\n\tNow, if Republicans decide they do need help from Democrats to carry out the most basic functions of government, they know where to find us\u2026and we are more than willing to help, if what we are voting on meets minimal standards of the priorities of the American people.\n\tFor me and a lot of my colleagues, that means a vote on the DREAM Act right now, this year.\u00a0\n\tThe votes are here, the legislation is here, the American people are already in support, so Mr. Speaker, at some point, Republican leadership should just get out of the way and let America vote.\n\tThat is what leadership, compromise, and bipartisanship look like.\n\tNow, we certainly know what it doesn\u2019t look like.\n\tIn the middle of the night last weekend, Republicans voted to give a tax cut to the richest Americans.\u00a0 They dressed it up as a tax cut for everyone, but we all know this is an obscene tax cut for the obscenely wealthy.\n\tNot a single Democrat in either House supported it and this chart explains part of the reason why.\u00a0 It is tremendously unpopular with the American people as the small slice in red on this chart shows us.\n\tAccording to Gallup yesterday, just 29% of Americans support the Republican tax cut for billionaires and multinational companies.\n\tThat is what partisanship looks like.\u00a0\n\tSo what does bipartisanship look like?\u00a0 It looks like the DREAM Act.\n\tOverall, 86% of Americans support the DREAM Act, a bill to legalize the immigration status of immigrants who arrived in the United States as children.\u00a0 86%!!!\u00a0 That\u2019s the big slice of red on the chart.\n\tAnd that number comes from a Fox News poll, just in case you think I was using a partisan poll where they put their thumb on the scale to show things in my favor.\n\tAnd 63% of Trump voters back citizenship for DREAMers.\u00a0\n\tSo here is a proposal supported by an overwhelming number of people; an overwhelming number of Republicans; and an overwhelming percentage of people who voted for Donald Trump and we cannot get a vote.\n\tYesterday, 34 Republicans in this body wrote to the Speaker asking him to please allow a vote on something to protect DREAMers and those with DACA.\u00a0 Clearly all 34 know how to read this chart.\n\tThey want to do something that is both politically popular and the right thing to do from a moral standpoint.\n\tThe reason Republican leaders will not allow a vote on the DREAM Act \u2013 or at least are acting like they won\u2019t \u2013 is because they know it will pass.\u00a0\n\tYou take the 34 Republicans that wrote the Speaker and add them to 194 of my Democrats and you are comfortably in the majority and the DREAM Act passes.\u00a0\n\tAnd for all of those Republicans who oppose the DREAM Act, they get a Christmas present!\u00a0 They get to vote against it.\u00a0 What better way to associate yourself with the comments of your President, on Mexicans, on Muslims on everything else, than to vote against the DREAM Act?\n\tSo Mr. Speaker, I urge you to let your members vote against the DREAM Act as an act of charity in the Christmas spirit.\n\tRepublicans will get what most of them want: an opportunity to send a message to their base voters by voting on something the rest of us agree on \u2013 just like the tax bill \u2013 but this time, with passage of the DREAM Act, at least the majority of the American people will get something out of it too.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://gutierrez.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/floor-speech-rep-guti-rrez-calls-dream-act-vote-now"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.6202271692454815, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}