[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 94 (Tuesday, July 18, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7743-S7744]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      AMERICAN CITIZENS IN LEBANON

  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I appreciate being able to come to the 
floor to speak about something of great urgency for people in Michigan 
and all across our country who have family and friends who are trapped 
in Lebanon--and certainly people in Israel as well--as a result of what 
is happening with the violence in the Middle East. We understand those 
Americans in Israel are able to leave and come home, but we have 
literally up to 25,000 Americans who are in Lebanon and trapped and 
unable to leave. They are frightened, and family members here are 
worried about their families in desperate situations, and they are 
asking for us to act much more quickly than has been occurring.
  It is deeply disconcerting to me as I watched other countries, such 
as Italy, Spain, Great Britain, and France, on Saturday beginning to 
evacuate their citizens from Lebanon, taking them to Cyprus or taking 
them to other places to safety, and yet I understand that even though 
we have had some helicopters that have gone in--and I am grateful to 
the Department of State for that because we have families from Michigan 
who have been evacuated because of medical emergencies--the vast 
majority of people are waiting for ships.
  One ship was supposed to come today. I understand that was delayed, 
and now they are waiting until tomorrow. And there will be, I 
understand, two ships--one that will allow 1,400 people to leave, and 
one that will allow 1,800 people to leave. But we are talking about in 
Michigan alone over 5,000 people, mostly women and children who have 
gone to see grandparents, have gone home for weddings, funerals, 
birthday parties, gone to see grandpa and grandma or elderly, people 
going home who are frightened and who are in harm's way.
  I am deeply concerned that we have not moved more quickly. I have 
images of people sitting on rooftops in New Orleans waiting to be 
evacuated, waiting to be rescued, and now we have a similar situation 
going on with people waiting now 5 days, 6 days to leave a country that 
is in a war zone.
  On top of that, we are now hearing that people who find themselves in 
a war zone, not of their making, who thought they were going to visit 
family during their vacation time while the children were off school or 
for some special event, are going to have to pay. Our Federal 
Government is requiring them to sign a promissory note to pay to leave 
to take their families to safety. That makes absolutely no sense.
  So I plan to introduce a bill that will give the Secretary of State 
the authority to waive the reimbursement requirement for U.S. citizens 
who wish to evacuate Lebanon. The bill would waive the requirement in 
two cases: if it would create an undue financial hardship for a family 
or for an individual who is evacuated or if those citizens would be 
unable to recoup the cost of or reuse or get credit for a previously 
purchased airline ticket. That is the least we can do given the current 
situation that is underway.
  This would give those who cannot afford thousands in unexpected 
travel costs an option for help. We cannot abandon American citizens 
who are currently in a war zone.
  I have been in touch with hundreds of people from Michigan. I am 
proud to have thousands of members of Michigan who are an important 
part of our community, who have family members and friends trapped in 
the conflict in the Middle East. Frankly, our Government should be 
focused on the fastest, the safest way to bring people home, not how 
much we are going to bill them once they get here.
  Let me share a couple of the hundreds of calls we have taken.
  Iman Hatoum called her two young children, girls 14 and 7, who were 
in Lebanon visiting their grandmother when the conflict broke out. She 
was terrified, of course, for their safety, as anyone would be, and was 
working to get them out, but she was worried because this promissory 
note our Government is requiring them to sign would not be able to be 
signed by a minor. So we were able to help her work through that 
situation and to move forward. But she was terrified of what was going 
to happen to her children.
  Samar Saad: Her family members--her cousins--were in Lebanon 
attending a wedding. They were all registered as requested by the 
Department of State on the Web site. But now one of her cousins was 
critically injured in the bombings and is in the hospital. We now find 
the family having to worry about medical bills because they were caught 
in a bombing and someone is now in a hospital, and they are having to 
pay for, of course, the physical injuries suffered by their family. We 
should not be charging them to come home, to come back to America where 
they will be safe.
  Hoda Amine sent this very desperate e-mail to my office:

       Here we are stuck in Beirut, Lebanon, with over 25 family 
     members. We need you and others to contact our gov. locally 
     and nationally to get us out of here. We are all U.S. 
     citizens and tax payers. Let our money be put to good work by 
     saving ``real U.S. citizens who are in desperate need to be 
     saved. We have infants (my granddaughter) and elders (in-
     laws and friends) who need help desperately.

  It goes on to indicate that they have registered with the embassy 
three times and have been informed to stay put, paying $150 each night 
at a hotel, and they say they are in a real, real emergency. Help us.
  We need to do that. We need to be doing two things. We need to be 
getting ships there as quickly as possible. They should already have 
been there. If ships from other countries could be there Saturday or 
Sunday or Monday--now we are talking about not having something happen 
until Wednesday--there is no excuse for this.

[[Page S7744]]

  The U.S. State Department estimates there are approximately 25,000 
American citizens currently in Lebanon; 15,000 have registered with the 
State Department's Lebanon task force to receive evacuation 
information. We are keeping in constant contact with the task force.
  Unfortunately, while we are working through all of this, current law 
requires that U.S. citizens and others who qualify to be evacuated by 
the Federal Government sign a promissory note pledging to reimburse the 
Government for their travel. They are later going to be billed by the 
State Department for the cost of any air, land, or sea transportation.
  I am sure we all can imagine the situation or have family and 
friends--I have many friends, I have many people with whom I have 
talked, a friend over the weekend whose wife and young child went to 
visit family and have tried various roads and avenues to leave and have 
not been able to do that. People are frightened, people who are 
American citizens, who are asking us to help quickly and to please not 
put them in a situation of more financial hardship because they thought 
they were visiting their family in the summertime or they thought they 
were going to a beautiful wedding celebration or they were sharing the 
sorrow of a funeral or visiting grandpa or grandma or schoolchildren 
going on buses.
  A colleague from the other side of the aisle has 300 members of a 
church community who are in Lebanon right now and have not been able to 
leave. Surely we can come together on a bipartisan basis. I know there 
is bipartisan interest in this issue. I am hopeful that we can come 
together and agree that we ought not to be charging for these people to 
leave in order to be able to survive with their families. They did not 
know this was going to happen. They had no idea they were going to be 
facing this situation. But now they find themselves needing help from 
their Government to bring them home and to keep them safe. We have a 
responsibility to make sure innocent people are not losing their lives 
or concerned about the safety of their children or their family members 
because of this situation. That is our responsibility, I believe, very 
strongly.

  This situation is frightening enough without people being placed in 
financial hardship to pay for a ship to Cyprus and then find themselves 
where their airline ticket doesn't work from Cyprus so they have to buy 
a whole new ticket, or whatever it takes--thousands of dollars. People 
are being told that it is anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 to be able to 
protect their families and leave. That is just not right.
  I really am hopeful--I know colleagues are concerned about this--I am 
hopeful that this legislation will be strongly embraced and that we can 
quickly give the Secretary of State the authority. We have been told by 
legislative counsel they do not now have the authority to waive these 
costs. So I am hopeful we will give them that authority very quickly 
and the Secretary of State will then be able, in a humanitarian way, to 
address a very critical and frightening situation for many Americans 
right now in Lebanon.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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