releases: http://gutierrez.house.gov/chicago-challenges-other-cities-register-more-immigration-action
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
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| 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 Gutiérrez | G000535 | gutierrez.house.gov | legacy | Chicago challenges other cities to register more for Immigration Action Rep. Luis Gutierrez speech on the House Floor December 10, 2014 As 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. Rather, it is the huge effort that will be needed to fulfill the President’s executive actions and to get millions of American families out of harm’s way by protecting them from deportation and destruction. Sure, we are celebrating the series of executive actions taken by the President, but we are also rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. So, 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 – will help with – getting people ready to sign-up when the window to submit applications opens and the Government’s review of cases begins. This coming Saturday, the 13th at 9:30 in the morning, I will be at the Rebaño Church on the North Side of Chicago and more than 500 people have pre-registered for an orientation. We will go over what the President’s announcements mean for individual immigrants and their families. Then, those who have pre-registered will have an opportunity for a one-on-one preliminary evaluation of their eligibility from people we are calling “family defenders.” We are already scheduling follow-up events this month and into the New Year – we will be ready to accommodate the huge demand for accurate and trustworthy information. Mayor 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. And the advocates, the legal community, the business community, and the public sector are all working together to make that a reality. That’s right, New York! Listen up, Los Angeles! Get ready Miami, Houston, and Dallas. 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. But it is not just the major immigrant gateway cities where we need to organize to protect American families. As the President showed us yesterday, cities in the South like Nashville are leading the way to integrate and assimilate immigrant populations. 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. I 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. And 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. States like South Carolina, Arizona and Alabama – – 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. I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said “Congressman, I don’t know if this will help my family -- or my dad -- or my neighbor -- or my parishioner – I hope they will not still have to live in fear of deportation.” And there are millions who will not be able to come forward and sign up because their cases cannot be reviewed under the President’s guidelines. And 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. But it cannot go as far and it does not replace the need for Congressional action and legislation. But 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. The 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. In the end, the House was asleep at the switch and let down the country. 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. # # # | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |