[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 16 (Tuesday, January 31, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S505-S506]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Travel Ban

  Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, I am going to make a couple of brief 
comments and then yield my hour of postcloture debate.
  Let me just say that nothing the President did made us safer. And one 
of the most outrageous claims the President made was that we don't have 
extreme vetting.
  The Presiding Officer and I both serve on the Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Committee, and after we realized that we needed to 
take a closer look at refugees and making sure bad guys weren't getting 
into this country, we instituted an amazing array of vetting processes.
  Let me first start with this important principle. Nobody applies to 
the United States for refugee status; they apply to the United Nations. 
Less than 1 percent of the people who apply for refugee status with the 
United Nations are granted the opportunity to go forward. So we start 
out with 99-plus percent of the people who apply to be a refugee turned 
down at the United Nations, so the less than 1 percent who come to us, 
come to us for another aggressive screening process. I went to Jordan 
and watched it. There are multiple interviews. It takes 18 months to 2 
years. They are vetted through every possible intelligence agency, 
every possible database. And by the way, we check what they are saying 
even if they don't have papers. There are iris scans. It is the most 
extreme vet you can imagine. Of course, because it was so extreme, we 
realized that the hole in our system was not the refugees; it was, in 
fact, the Visa Waiver Program, which is why we passed a law after Paris 
to make sure that anybody who was in certain countries had to get a 
visa. Obama didn't do a travel ban. Obama never identified countries 
for a travel ban. All President Obama did was say: If you have been in 
these countries, you have to have a visa so we have information on you.

[[Page S506]]

  I wanted to clarify that because the misinformation that is coming 
out of the White House about what we currently have and what is in 
place is an insult. I wish they understood the vetting processes we 
have in place now for refugees; then maybe we could get back to really 
joining arms and trying to figure out what we can do for national 
security. One thing we need to do for national security is not give the 
back of our hand to the pilots and the other soldiers who are fighting 
shoulder to shoulder with us in Iraq against ISIS.
  I yield the remainder of my hour of postclosure debate time under 
rule XXII to Senator Schumer.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
  The Senator from Iowa.