{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://gutierrez.house.gov/chicago-challenges-other-cities-register-more-immigration-action", "Chicago challenges other cities to register more for Immigration Action", "2014-12-10", "2014", "2014-12", "Democrat", "House", "IL", "Luis Guti\u00e9rrez", "G000535", "gutierrez.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Chicago challenges other cities to register more for Immigration Action \nRep. Luis Gutierrez speech on the House Floor\n\tDecember 10, 2014\nAs the New York Times said in an editorial last week, there is an immigration crisis looming next year, but it has nothing to do with the border.\nRather, it is the huge effort that will be needed to fulfill the President\u2019s executive actions and to get millions of American families out of harm\u2019s way by protecting them from deportation and destruction.\nSure, we are celebrating the series of executive actions taken by the President, but we are also rolling up our sleeves and getting to work.\u00a0\nSo, I want to talk just a little bit about what we are doing in the City of Chicago and what I am hoping my colleagues here in Congress and my colleagues across the country in community-based organizations, the legal community, and in immigrant and Latino neighborhoods in every state \u2013 will help with \u2013 getting people ready to sign-up when the window to submit applications opens and the Government\u2019s review of cases begins.\nThis coming Saturday, the 13th at 9:30 in the morning, I will be at the Reba\u00f1o Church on the North Side of Chicago and more than 500 people have pre-registered for an orientation.\u00a0\nWe will go over what the President\u2019s announcements mean for individual immigrants and their families.\u00a0 Then, those who have pre-registered will have an opportunity for a one-on-one preliminary evaluation of their eligibility \u00a0from people we are calling \u201cfamily defenders.\u201d\nWe are already scheduling follow-up events this month and into the New Year \u2013 we will be ready to accommodate the huge demand for accurate and trustworthy information.\u00a0\nMayor Rahm Emanuel has been my consistent, outstanding partner in the effort and we are both committed to making Chicago the model for the rest of the country.\u00a0 And the advocates, the legal community, the business community, and the public sector are all working together to make that a reality.\nThat\u2019s right, New York!\u00a0 Listen up, Los Angeles! Get ready Miami, Houston, and Dallas.\u00a0 We are going to work to protect as many families as we possibly can in the City of Chicago and we are challenging you to try to keep up.\nBut it is not just the major immigrant gateway cities where we need to organize to protect American families.\u00a0 As the President showed us yesterday, cities in the South like Nashville are leading the way to integrate and assimilate immigrant populations.\u00a0 This spirit of inclusion is of utmost importance as we help families come forward, register with the government, submit their paperwork and fingerprints, and get in the system.\nI have told my House colleagues that I plan to be on the road a lot at the start of next year, traveling anywhere they need me to travel to help them conduct outreach and educate immigrant communities where they live.\nAnd it is not just in the Blue Districts where we must support our immigrant communities and make sure they register; it will be necessary in the Red Districts too.\u00a0 States like South Carolina, Arizona and Alabama \u2013 \u2013 states that tried unsuccessfully to push their immigrant communities farther underground -- I will accept invitations from those states, too, to get the word out and educate the community in whatever way I can.\nI can\u2019t tell you how many people have come up to me and said \u201cCongressman, I don\u2019t know if this will help my family -- or my dad -- or my neighbor -- or my parishioner \u2013 I hope they will not still have to live in fear of deportation.\u201d\u00a0\nAnd there are millions who will not be able to come forward and sign up because their cases cannot be reviewed under the President\u2019s guidelines.\nAnd I tell them that what the President announced is bold, it is broad, and it is extremely helpful to the United States and her immigrants who have no other way to get in the system and on-the-books.\u00a0 But it cannot go as far and it does not replace the need for Congressional action and legislation.\nBut let us all remember that by the end of this week the clock is going to have run out on the best chance the House has had in decades to address immigration in a bipartisan and measured manner.\u00a0\nThe Senate did half the work by giving us more than a year to craft a bipartisan answer to their proposal and we tried in many, many different ways to help this House rise to the occasion, to get the House out of the partisan ditch we have dug for ourselves, and to put the country on a path to a safe, legal, and orderly immigration system that protects the country and its people while welcoming the strivers and the innovators from around the world.\nIn the end, the House was asleep at the switch and let down the country.\u00a0 But even as I work with people across the country to protect as many American families as possible, I pledge to my colleagues in both parties in the most sincere way possible, please work with us to solve the immigration issue so that we can move forward as a nation.\n# # #", 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": ["http://gutierrez.house.gov/chicago-challenges-other-cities-register-more-immigration-action"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4935219660401344, "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"}