[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 18914-18916]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             AMERICAN SECURITY AGAINST FOREIGN ENEMIES ACT

  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the American 
Security Against Foreign Enemies Act of 2015. This act was passed by 
the House shortly before we recessed for Thanksgiving--an act dealing 
with the refugee crisis from Syria and Iraq. It is an act that is sort 
of pending before the body now as we try to decide whether to take up 
the House bill or take up the topic of the House bill as part of the 
deliberations in which we are engaged.
  First, I think everyone in this body and everyone in the House 
acknowledges the security needs of America in this challenging time as 
we are engaged in a battle against ISIL. As we have seen in recent 
weeks, the reach of ISIL--whether it is a passenger aircraft in Sinai, 
a neighborhood in southern Beirut, or multiple neighborhoods in Paris, 
ISIL's strength is expanding and mutating, and we have to take those 
concerns seriously.
  I applaud the work that has already been done to try to make sure the 
vetting process for refugees who entered the United States is pretty 
intense. Four million refugees left Syria during the course of the 
Syrian civil war. Of those 4 million who have left and registered with 
the U.N., after a fairly extensive review process, the U.N. has 
referred 20,000 to the United States for possible consideration to be 
refugees. Of those 20,000, after an 18-month vetting process, we have 
allowed approximately 2,000 into the United States. So the vetting 
process for refugees is pretty intense. If we can make it better, we 
need to do that, but it is already fairly significant. I also applaud 
efforts the administration announced yesterday and that other 
colleagues, including the Presiding Officer, are working on to ensure 
that the visa waiver program we currently have, which allows citizens 
from 38 countries to come to the United States without visas, is tight. 
We have to do our best in a careful and deliberate way to make sure our 
security in the midst of this battle against ISIL is strong.
  I rise today to speak particularly about this act because I think it 
is problematic, and I think it is problematic from the very title of 
the act. I think it raises some questions we have to be very careful 
about.
  Syrian and Iraqi refugees are not foreign enemies. Refugees are not 
the enemies of the United States. We have an enemy. The enemy is ISIL. 
We are coming up on the start of a 17-month war against ISIL that 
Congress has been unwilling to debate, vote on, and declare. ISIL is an 
enemy, and we would all acknowledge that, but the refugees who are 
leaving Syria and Iraq are not our enemies. They are victims. They are 
victims. I think before we go down the path of quickly--and this bill 
was passed in the House in just a couple of days--painting with a broad 
brush as our enemies these poor people who have suffered so much, we 
really need to reflect on what they have been through.

[[Page 18915]]

  This refugee crisis in Syria has been called by most NGOs and other 
organizations like the U.N. the greatest humanitarian crisis since 
World War II.
  In a country of between 25 and 30 million people, 4 million have had 
to flee because of the atrocities of the Assad regime and the 
atrocities of the civil war carried out by ISIL and other terrorist 
organizations.
  Four million had to leave their homes and 8 million more had to leave 
their homes and move to other places in their country where they would 
prefer not to live because their homes are unsafe because of the civil 
war.
  Nearly 300,000 Syrians have been killed in this civil war, and the 
atrocities are horrible. The Assad regime uses barrel bombs in civilian 
neighborhoods to kill innocents without any rhyme or reason as to where 
or when they are going to fall, creating psychological terror as well 
as physical danger. ISIL in Syria is carrying out beheadings and the 
forced subjugation of people and selling them into sexual slavery. It 
is the oppression of religious minorities, virtually any religion other 
than that of the Sunni extremists who would fit within ISIL's narrow 
definition of who they think true believers are. This is what people 
are fleeing from.
  This Senator emphasizes this point: Refugees are not our enemies. 
They are not foreign enemies. They are victims who deserve compassion.
  This is a fairly famous photograph from a suburb of Damascus, 
Yarmouk, that is filled with Palestinian refugees who have been waiting 
for food. The Assad regime had cordoned them off and would not allow 
humanitarian aid because they thought there were opponents to the 
regime in this neighborhood.
  This was a photo that was taken in January of 2014 when the U.N. 
could finally come in to try to deliver humanitarian food aid to these 
folks. You can see the tens of thousands of people who are waiting in 
the midst of their bombed-out neighborhood for a delivery of basic food 
aid, which has been very episodic during the course of this war. This 
neighborhood has gone back under blockade, and it has been extremely 
difficult to get them the food they need.
  These are not enemies; these are people who are worthy of the 
compassion of any person and especially of a nation as compassionate as 
the United States.
  More recently, we were all stunned to see this horrible photograph of 
a 3-year-old Syrian boy who, with his family and a group of 12 Syrians, 
tried to make it across water to Greece, fleeing atrocities in the 
battle between Kurds and ISIL in northern Syria. Twelve members of this 
family in a boat were killed and drowned, including this 3-year-old and 
his 5-year-old brother. These are not enemies.
  To have an act that purports to deal with this refugee crisis and to 
call this an act that is an act about foreign enemies--they are not 
enemies. There is no way we should allow the kind of tar brush approach 
that would paint these poor unfortunates who are victims of the worst 
humanitarian crisis since World War II as if they are somehow enemies. 
We should have a compassionate response that protects American security 
but is nevertheless compassionate.
  These photographs really grab me, and the rhetoric surrounding these 
refugees--that they are enemies--when this act passed really grabbed 
me. I found myself thinking about it not so much even in just a policy 
way--what is the right policy, what is the right mixture of things to 
keep the country safe? That is very important, but these pictures make 
one think about something more fundamental: Why does this happen?
  Since the beginning of time, human beings have asked: Why is there 
suffering of this kind? Why must hundreds of thousands be huddled into 
a bombed-out neighborhood and be nearly starved to death to wait for a 
delivery episodically from the United Nations? Why would a family have 
to flee from their home, with their children killed, to try to get away 
from atrocities? If you are a student from California State University, 
on a semester-abroad program in Paris, sitting in a cafe, why are you 
gunned down by ISIL terrorists? If you are a tourist coming back from a 
vacation in the Sinai with your family, why is your plane suddenly 
bombed out of the sky?
  Humans have asked this question since the beginning of time. Why do 
these things happen? There are two conventional answers to the question 
of why these things occur, and there is a nonconventional answer that 
is a challenging one that we as a body and as a country really have to 
grapple with. The two conventional answers as to why there is horrible 
suffering such as this is obviously there is evil in the world and 
there is evil within. There is evil out in the world and there is evil 
within and we make mistakes. Clearly there is evil in the world. ISIL 
is evil. Refugees are not evil.
  I think it is interesting that one of the bodies here could come up 
with a piece of legislation, draft it, debate it, and vote on it in a 
couple of days to label refugees as ``foreign enemies'' when we have 
been at war for 17 months against ISIL and we haven't been able to have 
a debate in this body to authorize military force and declare that they 
are an enemy. There is evil in the world, and part of what we must do 
is call it out and be willing to stand against it.
  The great Irish poet Yeats talked about a situation where the best 
lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity. 
I worry that this legislative body has not shown the conviction to call 
out evil in the way that we should call it out, and mistakenly we are 
calling people evil who aren't evil but who are deserving of 
compassionate help from us and from other nations. That is the first 
explanation of why evil occurs. There is evil out in the world, and 
ISIL is evil, the atrocities of Assad are evil, and we ought to call it 
out.
  The second explanation is our own weakness. When bad things happen, 
whether to yourself or to your country, you have to look in the mirror 
and ask: Did we do anything wrong? And I have a concern that when the 
chapter on the Syrian refugee crisis is written, neither the United 
States nor other nations are going to look that good. It is going to be 
like looking into the 1990s and looking at why the United States was 
able to intervene and stop atrocities in the Balkans and chose not to 
in Rwanda. The answer to why we did in one instance and not the other--
I don't think that looks good in retrospect. I worry with respect to 
this refugee crisis, the 4 to 8 million killed, these children and 
their families--we have to look in the mirror and ask ourselves whether 
we have done enough or whether we can do more.
  Last, there is a nonconventional explanation of why suffering like 
this occurs that is a challenging one. It is in the Book of Job. There 
is a Bible on the Presiding Officer's desk. It is there because it is a 
book of wisdom. I know you know the story. It is an interesting story, 
as we grapple with suffering like this and we have to ask why it 
occurs. Job was an upright and righteous man. He was a blameless 
person, a person of integrity.
  The story was written in about 500 BC and posits this debate between 
God and Satan. God is talking about how great Job is. Satan says that 
he is great because he is wealthy and has a great family, and if he 
lost that, he would cease being so faithful.
  God says: I think he would be faithful anyway.
  Satan says: Let's have a wager and see what happens.
  That is how the Book of Job begins. This upright and blameless man 
who has everything proceeds to very quickly lose everything. He loses 
his wealth, he loses his family, he loses his health--not because of 
his own sin, his own weakness, or his own error, his own mistakes, and 
not because of evil in the world; he suffers because he is being 
tested. That is the reason he suffers.
  As the story goes on, he is tested. He is tested. He argues with God, 
he fights with God, he fights with the faith, but he doesn't let go of 
his faith. At the end of the story, this Book of Job--and this is a 
book which is not only in the Old Testament and studied by Jews and

[[Page 18916]]

Christians alike, this is in the Koran. This is a story which all the 
Abrahamic faith traditions have grabbed on to because it has a 
fundamental piece of wisdom to it.
  Sometimes when suffering such as this occurs, it is not just because 
there is evil in the world or because of our own sin, it is because bad 
things happen to test us as individuals. Bad things happen and 
sometimes test us as a country.
  I look at this refugee crisis as a test. It is a test on whether we, 
like Job, will be true to our principles or whether we will abandon 
them. Job was true to his principles, and things came back to him 
multiplied. Are we going to be true to our principles?
  My State of Virginia began when the English who were starving were 
helped out by Indians down near Jamestown Island. There was the 
extension of a hand to strangers in a strange land that enabled them to 
survive, unlike earlier parties who had been wiped out by starvation or 
battles with Indians.
  My people came from Ireland in the 1840s. They were chased out by 
oppression. They were chased out by hunger. My people have the same 
story that virtually everybody who came to the United States has. Some 
came under much worse conditions, brought over in slavery and 
servitude.
  The nation of France recognized the United States for what it was--a 
beacon of liberty for people from around the world--when France gave to 
the United States the Statue of Liberty, which we planted in New York 
Harbor right next to Ellis Island, where so many people came into this 
country. Nobody who came here had it easy. People faced signs that said 
``No Irish need apply'' or they faced discrimination or oppression, but 
they didn't face a door being shut in their face and being told they 
were foreign enemies when they were really refugees looking for a 
better situation in life.
  As I think about what we are grappling with and what we may be called 
to vote on in the next 10 days in this body, I think about this massive 
scale of human suffering that is going on with respect to Syria, and I 
think about that wisdom from the Book of Job, which is that sometimes 
suffering and adversity is to test us. Are we going to abandon our 
principles? Are we not going to be the Statue of Liberty nation? Are we 
not going to be the nation that will extend a hand of welcome or 
friendship for those who suffer? Are we going to be true to our 
principles?
  Again and again in our Nation's history and in the history of 
nations, it has been shown that if you are true to your principles--
especially true to them during times of adversity--then you are worthy 
of respect. You teach important lessons to your kids and to the 
generations that follow, and usually things work out. I think our 
Nation's principles are solid. They are rock solid. In the heat of the 
moment, we shouldn't abandon them, and we shouldn't abandon people who 
have suffered and are suffering with the kind of hot legislative 
language that would label them as ``foreign enemies'' when they are 
just refugees in the same way that people throughout history have been 
refugees needing a compassionate response from others.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted 
to complete my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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