Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.

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Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today with a heavy heart to express my condolences to the people of France for the tragedy they have experienced. No words can describe the barbaric and senseless acts of terrorism committed against the innocent victims in Paris, people who are simply going about their lives, people who are just enjoying a meal with their family or attending a concert with friends. These barbaric acts were an affront to the people of France and to all humanity.

This is a time for solidarity with France and with all victims of terrorism. The world has rightly come together to condemn these barbaric acts. Now we have to work together and redouble our efforts to defeat ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere.

SYRIAN REFUGEE CRISIS

As we remember the victims of the attacks in Paris, we cannot forget all those who are fleeing the terror in Syria. The ongoing conflict in that country has created 4 million refugees. These are people who are fleeing Assad's barrel bombs, his brutal assault on them on the ground, and they are fleeing murderous terrorist attacks committed by ISIS and other groups. Of those 4 million refugees, 1.9 million are in Turkey; 650,000 are in Jordan, a country of 6.5 million people; and 1.2 million are in Lebanon, making up a fifth of Lebanon's entire population.

The White House has a very modest plan to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States over the next year. It is a tiny number compared to what other countries are doing. Even France--the country that just suffered the terrorist attacks--is going to honor its commitment to take 30,000 refugees over the next 2 years. Each one of the 10,000 refugees we are accepting is important because it could be the difference between life and death for those individuals. That is why I was proud to join Senator Durbin and other Members to urge the White House to do more--because we can and we should do more.

The United States has always been a refuge for the vulnerable, for those who are fleeing political repression or those who are persecuted simply because of their religion. The Syrian refugees the administration is prioritizing for entry are, in fact, the most vulnerable. These are survivors of violence and torture, people with medical conditions, and women and children.

The news site BuzzFeed has published a series of images of children, of young Syrian refugees. I encourage everyone to look at these images because they capture the vulnerability and desperation of the people we are trying to help, children like Ahmed, who is sleeping in this picture I have in the Chamber. As the BuzzFeed story says, Ahmed is a 6-year-old who carries his own bag over the long stretches his family walks by foot. His uncle says: ``He is brave and only cries sometimes in the evenings.'' His uncle has taken care of Ahmed since his father was killed in their hometown in northern Syria.

There are children like Maram. Maram is an 8-year-old, and the story describes how her house was hit by a rocket. A piece of the roof landed right on top of her, and the head trauma caused her brain hemorrhage. She is no longer in a coma but has a broken jaw and cannot speak.

We can only hope these children won't share the fate of Aylan Kurdi, whose image I can't get out of my mind. He is the drowned 3-year-old boy whose photograph on that beach galvanized the world. He was part of a group of 23 who had set out in two boats to reach the Greek island of Kos, but the vessels capsized. Aylan drowned, as did his 5-year-old brother Galip, and so did the boys' mother, Rehan.

In the aftermath of the gruesome terrorist attacks in Paris, some have taken the view that we should turn our backs on these people, the very people who are fleeing from the terrorists. Some argue that we cannot both help these vulnerable men, women, and children and keep our country safe, but they paint a false choice. We can do both and we should do both.

I wish to take just a minute to describe the stringent and very extensive security screening procedures these individuals go through before they can even enter the country, procedures so extensive that it can take up to 2 years--usually between 1 1/2 years and 2 years--for them to be cleared to come here.

These refugees are subject to the highest levels of security checks of any category of traveler entering the country. Those screenings include the involvement of our security and intelligence agencies, such as the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense.

All available biographic and biometric information of these refugees is vetted against law enforcement and intelligence community databases so that the identity of the individual can be confirmed. Every single refugee is interviewed by a trained official from the Department of Homeland Security.

Finally, the screening process accounts for the unique conditions of the Syria crisis and subjects these refugees to additional security screening measures.

We absolutely need to make sure these security measures are as stringent and as thorough as possible, and if there are ways to enhance these screening protocols, we should make sure we are doing that.

Each year the United States accepts tens of thousands of refugees from around the world, and there is no reason why some of those can't be Syrian refugees who are the most vulnerable. We can strike the right balance. We can protect our security and do our part to address the largest refugee crisis since World War II. But rather than showing compassion and standing up for American values, many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to close the door to people who are fleeing the most horrendous forms of persecution. I believe that would betray our core values, and it would send a dangerous message to the world that we judge people based on the country they come from or from their religion, and that would make us less safe by feeding into ISIS's own propaganda that we are at war with Islam.

We are better than this. Remember the closing lines of the poem that is inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, the gift from France to the United States that is a symbol of freedom and of generous welcome to foreigners. The poem, ``The New Colossus,'' was written by Emma Lazarus, who was involved in charitable work for refugees and deeply moved by the plight of Russian Jews--like my grandfather--who had fled to the United States. These are the closing lines of her poem:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

There should always be a place in this country for men, women, and children who are fleeing horror--the same kind of horror that befell so many innocent people in Paris last week. This is not the time to score political points; this is the time when we come together and show leadership. This is the time--this is now the time--when we uphold the values of the United States of America.

I thank the Chair.

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