Washington, DC – During a must-hear floor speech today, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) cut through the GOP’s propaganda campaign on “chain migration” and brought both his colleagues and Americans back to the heart of the issue: Dreamers, families, and our nation’s values.

I can’t be the only one who thinks the term chain migration is downright insulting to the millions of Americans whose ancestors were actually brought to this country in chains. Now, I have heard a lot about family values from my Republican colleagues throughout my time in Congress. The Republican party has long claimed to be the party of so-called family values. Well, chain migration is a term that dehumanizes families. Chain migration. When we want to dehumanize something, we create an inanimate object. This chain is about a mother and a father and a son and a daughter…. It’s a term designed to make our system of legal immigration and family reunification sound threatening and illogical. But there is nothing threatening about uniting mothers and fathers, and there is nothing more common sense than uniting brothers and sisters and sons and daughters. They are not linked by chains. They are bound by blood and held together by love. Families are the essence of American values in our society

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If my colleagues want to have a debate about comprehensive immigration reform, we can have that debate another time, but not today, not this week. Not until we protect Dreamers living in fear of deportation, due to a President who once said about Dreamers “we’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud.” The polls show that deporting Dreamers will not make Americans happy and proud. The time for talk is over, the time for kind words is over, the time for excuses is over. This week Congress needs to take action. It’s time to see who stands with Dreamers and who is complicit in their potential deportation.

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