Homeland Security

In the wake of the election, House Speaker John Boehner says he is confident that Congress and the White House can work together to enact a comprehensive approach to fix our broken immigration system. Senators Charles Schumer and Lindsay Graham have started working together on a bipartisan, immigration bill. If Speaker Boehner and Republican House Members are willing to fix our immigration system with urgency, my Democratic colleagues and I are ready and willing to work with them.
 
President Barack Obama’s re-election and the record turn-out by Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Latino voters demonstrate the nation’s support for comprehensive immigration reform. Sixty-five percent of all voters support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, according to the CNN National Exit Poll. The overwhelming AAPI and Latino support for President Obama illustrates the demand for prioritizing immigration reform.

Republicans, fresh from their electoral defeat, are considering their own legislation to compete with the DREAM Act. Sen. Kay Hutchinson (R-Texas) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) have put forward the ACHIEVE Act, similar to the alternative that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) worked on last summer and which would offer a untenable type of legal status for undocumented youth. However, a significant difference between this bill and the original DREAM Act is that the ACHIEVE Act does not even guarantee a path to citizenship.

The DREAM Act is already conservative in nature and has even gathered support in the past from prominent conservative leaders, including Senator Hutchison herself, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has indicated he will bring the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 to another vote in the Senate before lawmakers break for Thanksgiving. The majority of the Senate supported the bipartisan bill in early August, but the bulk of the Republican caucus blocked it from proceeding.  Here are five reasons why Congress should pass the bill before the 112th Congress adjourns:

President Obama unquestionably owes his historic victory to an overwhelming 71 percent of the Latino vote. In 2004, George W. Bush won 44 percent of Hispanics. Four years later, John McCain, the author of an immigration reform bill, took 31 percent of Hispanics. And this year, Romney captured only 27 percent of Hispanics. Last Tuesday’s result shows that being against the DREAM Act and immigration is no longer good politics for the Republican Party. In fact, for the past eleven months, undocumented youth from across the nation rallied to expose the extreme position of Mitt Romney on immigration in swing states, including his threat to veto the DREAM Act.
 
But the election is over and it’s time for genuine leadership on immigration and the DREAM Act: it begins not only with the president, but also with Congress, specifically Republicans.

November 6, 2012, my time as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives in the Sixth District of Florida came to an end. Not before, however, I have been witness to a troubling pattern. My opponent and now Congressman-elect Ron DeSantis, a military veteran himself, many times opened his remarks by thanking me for ‘keeping the home fires burning’ or ‘holding down the fort’ while my husband is away. I accepted this as a true expression of appreciation. That is until the media picked up on his words when they wrote “she is holding the fort at home while her husband is stationed in Afghanistan.”

Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of last Tuesday’s elections was the Fox News exit poll in Virginia declaring, “Veterans and active military split their support evenly between the two candidates”: Obama 49% to Romney 49%. After decades of being viewed as everything from “weak on defense” to “cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys” Democrats today — personified by President Obama — are viewed as at least as strong as their Republican counterparts, even within the military community.
 
Clearly this was a long journey. From the Vietnam War through the 1970s and 1980s, Democrats were seen as incapable of defending America. They were often depicted in American popular culture as having betrayed the military and prevented our troops from fighting-to-win in Vietnam.

This year marks the first Veterans Day since President Obama became the first sitting president to embrace the freedom to marry (and win reelection on a freedom to marry platform). Explaining his change of heart – the same change in favor of the freedom to marry that a majority of Americans have made – the commander in hief cited his conversations with, and respect for, lesbian and gay service members, their spouses, and their families.
 
But because of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), gay and lesbian people serving our country continue to be treated unequally, and their families denied critical protections provided to all others.

Every year, our country comes together on Veterans Day to honor the brave men and women of our armed services who risk their lives daily to protect our freedoms and to remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice defending our country.  America would not be what it is today without the heroism and sacrifice of those individuals bravely serving our country.  Our service men and women risk their lives to protect our country and it's our duty as leaders in Washington and Sacramento to ensure America keeps its promises to our veterans. 

"This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave." – Elmer Davis

Every year it seems the Christmas season starts earlier and earlier. It is only November and already radio stations are filling the airwaves with Christmas music and department stores have decorations on full display. In the haste of readying for Christmas, we often overlook one of our nation’s most important holidays: Veterans Day. 

The best way to honor and take care of our veterans is to ensure the country they come home to is vibrant, prospering, and ripe with opportunity. Our veterans represent what makes America great, they served their country with honor and distinction. These American patriots and their families model the service and sacrifice that have made and kept our country great. United States military veterans volunteered to serve at the front lines of freedom. They knowingly committed to place their lives at risk to advance the cause of freedom, protect the Constitution, and the rights granted by it.  No cause and no sacrifice can be greater.