United States Senator Lamar Alexander on Thursday released the following statement on the United States Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to uphold the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program:
“The Supreme Court’s decision will provide temporary relief to current DACA recipients, but it is clear to me that Congress must act to fix our broken immigration system," said Senator Alexander. "Congress should work together to achieve a permanent result both for DACA recipients and border security, and any other improvements to legal immigration that we can agree on—this means something the Senate and the House can pass and that the president will support.”
In 2013, Senator Alexander voted for the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 which would have strengthened border security, ended de facto amnesty and helped fix the legal immigration system. The legislation would have allowed law abiding children who were brought into the U.S. illegally to apply for legal permanent resident status if they earned a high school diploma and completed at least two years of college or honorably served in the military for four years.
The U.S. Senate passed the legislation, but the bill was not considered by the U.S. House of Representatives.