National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I am thankful to my colleague from Arizona.

I am pleased to be here on the floor because in a few minutes I am going to be offering a motion to instruct the conferees for the NDAA to extend the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa Program and to authorize additional visas for deserving applicants.

For those of us who remember the debates we had on the floor during the NDAA, we will remember that we had come to an agreement. The opponents of this program had agreed with John McCain and me that we needed to keep the promises we had made to so many of those Afghan interpreters who made a life-and-death difference in helping our service men and women on the ground in Afghanistan as they fought the Taliban.

This is a program that Senator McCain and I have worked on for several years. We have been successful in previous years in getting this extension and keeping the word--the promise we made to those Afghan interpreters and keeping the word of the American Government that we are going to help those who helped us. Yet we go into this NDAA conference without an extension of the Special Immigrant Visa Program.

Without congressional action, the Afghan SIV Program will largely sunset around December. It will leave thousands of Afghans who stood alongside our men and women and other government personnel at severe risk.

I talked to a woman this morning who told me the story of an Afghan interpreter who just arrived in the United States last night. She said he had been waiting 3 years to get his special immigrant visa. During that time, he was so worried about his family that he slept in another room at night when he went to bed so that if the Taliban found them, they would kill only him and not the rest of his family.

This country owes a great debt to the Afghans who provided essential assistance to our mission in Afghanistan, the thousands of brave men and women who, like this man who just arrived in the United States, put themselves and their families at risk to help our soldiers and our diplomats accomplish their mission and return home safely. Congress must not turn its back on these individuals. That outcome would be a moral failing, and it would also carry significant national security strategic costs going forward.

So I would hope that when we have this vote on the motion to instruct that my colleagues will agree with Senator McCain and I that this is something we need to do. We need to make sure one of the things that comes out of that NDAA conference is an agreement to extend those special visas to those individuals who were still in the pipeline.

Thank you, Mr. President. I thank my colleague from Arizona for all of his work to try to get this done, and I hope that by working together, we can make this happen.

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I have a motion to instruct which is at the desk, and I ask for its consideration.

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I rise in support of my motion to instruct the Senate National Defense Authorization Act conferees to extend the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa Program and authorize additional visas for deserving applicants. The SIV Program allows Afghans who supported the United States mission in Afghanistan to seek refuge in this country because they face grave threats as a result of helping our men and women on the ground there.

I just wish to point out that when we had the debate on the NDAA, we had an agreement on what an amendment to extend the Special Immigrant Visa Program would look like. That amendment would have allowed for 2,500 additional special immigrant visas to cover those people still in the pipeline who are facing threats because of helping American soldiers. And while we had agreement from the majority of the body, unfortunately, because of an unrelated issue, we were not able to get this amendment passed.

This is an opportunity for us to come back at this and do what is right, do what our commanders and our diplomats say we need to do for the national security interests of America. So I hope all of my colleagues will join me in supporting this motion to instruct.

I would like to now ask my partner in this effort, Senator McCain, if he would say a few words.

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Point of order, Mr. President.

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, may I ask for a clarification? The vote we are having is not on a particular piece of legislation; is that correct? This is on a motion to instruct the conferees so it does not deal with the particular piece of legislation Senator Sessions has suggested.

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