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Democratic U.S. Senator Dick Durbin Congressman Bill Foster met with current and former students at Aurora University who have benefitted from the Obama Administration's recent immigration directive. The program, which is modeled after Durbin's DREAM Act, allows young immigrants brought to the United States as children a chance to apply for a two-year renewable work permit and exemption from deportation.

From a news release:

When he was little, Jemuel Stephenson had the bug to make things.

So when he was 10, his mother took him to Fab Lab, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology creation that provides free access to sophisticated­ computer-controlled manufacturing equipment.

"It was just like heaven," Stephenson, now 18, said recently as he was using the equipment at one of the labs, a mobile facility sponsored by MIT, to make an acrylic model of a turbocharger for car engines.

AURORA – U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Naperville, and Waubonsee Community College President Christine Sobek on Thursday announced a proposal to put a manufacturing laboratory in Waubonsee's downtown Aurora campus as a way to invest in the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators.

AURORA — A federal bill could be just what Waubonsee Community College needs to secure funding to build a state-of-the-art "Fab Lab" in Aurora.

U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, a Democrat representing the 11th District, joined Mayor Tom Weisner, Waubonsee Community College President Christine Sobek and others Thursday afternoon to talk about the project.

"Fab Labs," including the mobile lab that visited Waubonsee in 2010, are fabrication laboratories open to the public where children and adults can invent, design and manufacture products using design equipment.

When Congressman Bill Foster was raising his daughter, Christine, he once bought an old mill drill machine in the hope she would start designing and creating whatever inventions her young mind could manufacture. The effort didn't result in a Fortune 500 company, but she did walk away with some basic design and machine skills as well as some Styrofoam toys.

Now Foster wants to bring an upgraded version of that same learning process to the 11th Congressional District he represents.

An Illinois congressman is proposing legislation that would promote advanced manufacturing in the United States while investing in the next generation of entrepreneurs. U.S. Rep. Bill Foster (D-Naperville) is introducing the "Fab Lab" legislation. Fab Labs are fabrication laboratories available to the public throughout the country where children and adults can invent, design and manufacture products. "We have a great tradition of innovation in manufacturing in America," Foster said.