Democrat holds marathon speech for dreamers

washington - The democratic leader of the American House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi held a more than eight-hour long speech on Wednesday about the 'dreamers'. The marathon speech is the longest speech that has been proposed in the House since 1909.

The 77-year-old Pelosi wanted the speech to put pressure on the Republicans to find a solution for the approximately 700,000 established foreigners who came to the US as a young child illegally and live there. She wants a renewed protection program for them to be set up. Donald Trump decided to terminate the program of his predecessor Barack Obama with effect from 5 March.

The future of the dreamers was also the bottleneck last month when the Democrats blocked the government budget, after which a shutdown of the American government went into effect.