Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am always a little more than awed and inspired to be here on the floor of the United States Senate, a place that my father never could have predicted that I would be when he came here in 1935, an immigrant, fleeing persecution in Germany at 17 years old with not much more than the shirt on his back, speaking no English, and knowing virtually no one. This country gave him a chance to succeed. This great country opened its arms to him, much as the Statue of Liberty did, when he entered this country through Ellis Island.

We are a nation of immigrants and of refugees. It has given us strength. Our diversity is what makes America the greatest, strongest country in the history of the world.

Sadly, the kind of displacement that caused him to come to this country is far from unprecedented. This country has opened its arms again and again and again, generation after generation, to provide for refugees displaced by war and oppression. Inhumane dictators, territorial disputes, environmental degradation, all are contributing now more than ever to the largest refugee crisis since World War II.

We are going through a humanitarian crisis in this country. Part of it is due to the brutality and inhumanity of the Assad regime in Syria, the horrors unleashed by ISIL in Syria and Iraq. Neighboring countries have been overwhelmed by fleeing refugees.

During my Middle East trip in July 2013 with Senator McCain and others, I visited a refugee camp in Jordan that houses many of these refugees and, since my visit, the situation has only worsened significantly.

Syria alone has produced an estimated 4 million registered refugees--those are the individual ones counted--in addition to the 7.6 million internally displaced people.

Turkey bears the brunt of this refugee crisis, housing nearly 2 million of them. Lebanon shelters over 1.1 million refugees, while Jordan has taken 600,000 or more, and Egypt recently exceeded the 130,000 mark.

These numbers are abstract. For every one of them, there is a human voice and a face. Many are children barely able to comprehend the fate that has befallen them. This year alone, Germany is expecting 800,000 asylum seekers, a marked increase from 626,000 in 2014 and 431,000 in 2013. Again, these numbers have impact on those countries, on their populations.

We met this morning with the Ambassadors of the European countries to hear about that impact on them and about their plans to do even more.

The Atlantic Ocean separates us from this crisis physically, but morally we have no separation at all. The destabilizing effect of that massive displacement ultimately affects us as well, our national security, and the stability of regions where we have a vital economic stake and a moral obligation.

I strongly support a policy of American generosity and humanitarian relief toward those refugees seeking to escape the untenable and unlivable conditions in Syria and Iraq. Exactly what steps this Nation should take will be a matter of contention and continuing debate, but clearly, we have obligations--moral obligations, self-interested obligations, economic obligations--to the men, women, and children who have walked hundreds of miles in search of safety and security and to the countries currently searching for ways to accommodate them.

Our obligation is multifaceted. First, we have provided $4 billion in aid--which is real money--to countries where those refugees now live temporarily in camps. But humanitarian aid is desperately needed in greater amounts and rising magnitude in countries where refugees are flowing fast. Regional countries, including Turkey and Jordan, as well as the European Union, must be able to provide refugee camps that provide basic necessities for people to live, with adequate food, water, shelter, clothing, education, and other elements of a safe and stable life for adults but also for children who can be seen running, laughing, playing in these camps in the most rudimentary of conditions.

The United States must show international leadership as well in ensuring the availability of resources from other nations that, frankly, have failed to meet the test of moral and political obligation. Saudi Arabia is one. The Gulf States are others. Our allies in this region must fulfill their obligation to do more and to do their part in assisting those fleeing war and bringing about a diplomatic resolution to the crisis. The absence of these nations from this challenge is reprehensible and regrettable. Ultimately, Syria must seek and achieve a resolution internally but, in the meantime, its neighbors have an obligation to do more.

I applaud the President's announcement that the United States will resettle approximately 10,000 Syrian refugees within our borders next year. As my colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin, has said this step is certainly in the right direction. But increasing the number of refugees coming here is an insufficient response alone if we fail to provide the expanded capacity and services that are necessary to effectively resettle and bring to this country refugees fleeing their homeland. Our focus should be on devising an effective program so that candidates for resettlement can have that hope without waiting years for assistance. Now, under the present system, they are waiting here.

In particular, I wish to cite a group of refugees that merits the special conscience and conviction of this Nation. They are the refugees--mostly women and young girls--who are victims of what the New York Times, in an extraordinary report, has called enshrining the theology of rape.

These girls and women have been enslaved. They are members of the Yazidi community. This New York Times report shows the systematic enslavement and rape of women and children held in the territory that ISIL controls. Approximately 5,000 Yazidis have been abducted by ISIL and 2,700 remain in captivity.

These reports, which are shocking and horrifying, challenge our conscience to do more. Nobody reading them can think of our daughters, the women in our family, without revulsion and shock. At the end of this week, several of my colleagues and I will be sending a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry urging him to take further action to help the Yazidis, the Christians, and other religious minorities who have been systematically kidnapped, enslaved, tortured, raped, and brutalized by ISIL simply because of their faith.

We talk a great deal on the floor in this body, in this building, and in this country about faith. The horror of this persecution calls to our conscience.

I am calling on the State Department to declare religious minorities as protected, priority groups, able to seek refugee assistance within Iraq's borders. As of now, the only Iraqis allowed to leave the country with assistance in this way are the people who have been affiliated with the U.S. Government during the war. That category should be expanded to include these refugees.

Second, I am calling on Secretary Kerry to improve the in-country processing for refugee claims in Iraq, specifically, the time required for that processing. The estimated time for Iraqis who served alongside U.S. military personnel is at the unacceptably high rate of 5 years to 8 years. This issue has been brought to me by numerous veterans--Iraq and Afghanistan veterans--who owe their lives, in some cases, to the service of these Iraqi and Afghan colleagues. Yet they wait there 5 to 10 years simply to be processed to come here. We must assure timely access to refugee assistance for both Iraqis affiliated with the U.S. Government and Iraqis within persecuted religious minorities such as the Yazidis and Christians. There is mounting, irrefutable evidence of that persecution on a scale that sometimes defies imagination and comprehension.

There are many ways the State Department can accelerate processing times: Double the number from 10 to 20 of in-country State Department personnel processing Iraqi refugees; consult with the Department of Homeland Security on the use of video interviews, consistent with security requirements, to be conducted in addition to the in-person interviews currently required; identify a nongovernmental organization to work with the U.S. Embassy to identify and screen religious minorities seeking refugee assistance in Erbil; and establish a facility in Erbil where the U.S. Government can conduct refugee processing. These steps are not particularly complicated or ingenuous; they are common sense.

The United States has a proud, moral tradition and heritage of aiding refugees. That tradition and heritage are epitomized by the Statue of Liberty and by Ellis Island. The Nation has not always lived up to the high standards that have been set for it by us. We are still very much a work in progress, and there are times in our history when we have failed the high test of morality.

But the Statue of Liberty stands tall at our harbor and embodies what is best about our Nation. We are a nation of immigrants truly because we welcome the tired and hungry, yearning to be free. We need to demonstrate the international leadership that has made us proud in the past to establish a new, inconclusive vision for Syria; to abate this refugee crisis; to provide a path for them to come here; and to provide them, consistent with our security, the opportunities that fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers had--going back in history, all of us have come here from somewhere else, or almost all of us--and humane and effective policies that help us to keep alive that great tradition and heritage, serving millions of people who are tired, weary, yearning to be free and seek that lamp beside the golden door.

I yield the floor.

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