Campaign Action
All Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients want for Christmas is the DREAM Act now, but Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are so far refusing to allow it to come to a vote despite widespread bipartisan support in Congress. If it came to a vote, it could pass. But the fact is that if legislators vote on a spending bill which does not include a DREAM Act, they’ll be voting for the deportation of Dreamers. With just days left before members of Congress go home for the holidays, a new ad from the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is taking the scrooges who aren’t standing for Dreamers to task:
Funny or Die and BOLD PAC released a video Friday featuring comedians skewering GOP members, including two in California, for their inaction.
In the video, Oscar Nuñez, best known for his role on “The Office,” calls out Reps. Steve Knight (Palmdale), Ed Royce (Fullerton), Carlos Curbelo (Florida) and John Culberson (Texas), who “get to go ahead and celebrate as thousands of Dreamers are banished from the only country they’ve ever called home.”
“How many broken promises can fit in a stocking?” Nuñez asks later. “I’m asking for a congressman.”
The political action committee says it’s spending six figures on the weeklong buy, which will go out nationwide across Funny Or Die’s social media channels. They are known for blasting out irreverent, often viral parodies that play to young audiences.
Thought not so irreverent in this instance. Forget the Trump administration’s arbitrary March 2018 deadline, because without the DREAM Act now, 122 DACA recipients continue losing their work permits and protection from deportation every single day. Already, more than 11,000 DACA recipients have fallen out of status. Without their DACA—and without the DREAM Act—they can’t work legally, will lose their driver’s licenses, and could be torn from their families and homes. This is a crisis, and while DACA recipients can’t vote, many of us can, and we’ll remember at the polls next year which legislators treated this like the emergency it is, and those who didn’t. Click here to watch Funny or Die’s “Merry Christmas Republicans in Congress” video.