ared Huffman represents California’s 2nd Congressional District which spans the North Coast of the state, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border, and includes Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, and Del Norte counties. He was first elected to Congress in November 2012 and currently serves on the Committee on Natural Resources, the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. In the 117th Congress, he chairs the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife, with jurisdiction over federal water projects, fisheries management, coastal zone and oceans policy, and wildlife and endangered species. Jared also founded the Congressional Freethought Caucus to promote sound public policy based on reason, science and moral values, while protecting the secular character of government and championing the value of freedom of thought worldwide.
America’s immigration system is broken.
Comprehensive immigration reform will jump start our economy, lower our deficit, and create jobs. According to estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in 2014, fixing our broken immigration system will reduce the federal deficit by about $200 billion while increasing our gross domestic product by 3.3% over the next 10 years. Currently, more than 11 million undocumented people live and work in the United States, many of whom have lived here their entire lives. We owe it to millions of Americans and aspiring citizens to consider this issue seriously and produce a solution.
I support DREAMers. They have been raised here, attend our schools, graduate from our universities, and serve in our military. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program protected these young people. They deserve to have a chance to earn their way to citizenship, and Former President Trump’s decision to terminate DACA was a cruel, broken promise. That’s why I invited Alex DeLeon, a participant in the DACA program, to the 2019 State of the Union Address as my guest. Her story is like that of so many other young, talented, inspiring DREAMers, a stark reminder that Trump’s cruel actions have impacted millions of people, and that we must keep fighting for solutions to our broken immigration system.
Trump created a humanitarian crisis by his “zero tolerance” policy of separating parents from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border, part of a broader anti-immigration agenda that makes legal immigration more difficult and puts DREAMers in jeopardy. I have consistently opposed these lateral policies and actions and will continue to do so.