[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 44 (Monday, November 6, 2000)]
[Pages 2662-2665]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Statement on Signing the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection 
Act of 2000

October 28, 2000

    Today I am pleased to sign into law H.R. 3244, the ``Victims of 
Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act of 2000'' (the ``Act''). This 
landmark legislation accomplishes a number of important objectives and 
Administration priorities. It strengthens and improves upon the Nation's 
efforts to fight violence against women. It also provides important new 
tools and resources to combat the worldwide scourge of trafficking in 
persons and provides vital assistance to victims of trafficking. And it 
helps American victims of terrorism abroad to collect court-awarded 
compensation.
    This legislation builds on the ``Violence Against Women Act of 
1994'' (VAWA), which created new Federal crimes and enhanced penalties 
to combat sexual assault and domestic violence, and established new 
grant programs for law enforcement agencies, prosecution offices, and 
victim services organizations to fight violence against women. It also 
authorized funding for education, outreach, and prevention programs, 
which have helped to create coordinated community responses to violence 
against women throughout the United States. While we can certainly take 
pride in what we have accomplished since 1994, we know we must do more. 
To that end, H.R. 3244 reauthorizes VAWA and improves on the original 
bill by establishing several new initiatives.
    I am particularly pleased that H.R. 3244 reauthorizes VAWA's grant 
programs through Fiscal Year 2005. The Act improves several current 
programs by setting aside 5 percent of VAWA grant funds for tribes and 
directing resources toward certain traditionally underserved 
populations, such as victims of dating violence, older women, and women 
with disabilities. The Act requires certain VAWA's grantees to 
facilitate the filing and service of protection orders without cost to 
the victims. The Act authorizes a civil legal assistance program for 
victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking, who 
desperately need help with legal matters related to their abuse. The Act 
authorizes appropriations through Fiscal Year 2005 for the National 
Domestic Violence Hotline, battered women's shelters, and rape 
prevention and education grants. H.R. 3244 requires national standards 
and protocols for conducting sexual assault forensic examinations, as 
well as establishes supervised visitation programs, which will help 
ensure that children are safe when visiting with their parents and that 
battered women remain safe during visitation exchanges.
    The Act also will improve the ability of Federal prosecutors to 
prosecute interstate crimes of domestic violence, stalking, and 
violations of protection orders. The Act creates an interstate 
cyberstalking offense. The Act enhances the enforcement of protection 
orders across State and tribal lines by prohibiting registration as a 
prerequisite to enforcement of out-of-state or tribal orders and by 
prohibiting notification of a batterer without the victim's consent when 
an order is registered in a new jurisdiction. Moreover, the Act amends 
the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act to expand emergency jurisdiction 
to cover domestic violence, thus enabling victims who flee abuse to 
obtain custody orders without returning to the jurisdiction where the 
batterer resides.

[[Page 2663]]

    Of great importance, H.R. 3244 restores and expands VAWA's 
protections for battered immigrants by helping them escape abuse and by 
holding batterers accountable. The Act establishes a new nonimmigrant 
visa classification, which will offer greater protection to victims, 
while strengthening the ability of law enforcement agencies to detect, 
investigate, and prosecute cases of domestic violence, sexual assault, 
trafficking, and other violent crimes.
    I am confident that enactment of these provisions and the other 
improvements to VAWA contained in H.R. 3244 will substantially enhance 
our efforts to end violence against women in America and provide 
essential services to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
    Similarly, the Act's anti-trafficking provisions represent a major 
step forward in my Administration's ongoing effort to eradicate modern-
day slavery. In 1998, on International Women's Day, I issued an 
Executive Memorandum directing my Administration to combat this 
insidious human rights abuse through a three-part strategy of 
prosecuting traffickers, protecting and assisting trafficking victims, 
and preventing trafficking. We worked hard with Democrats and 
Republicans in Congress to craft comprehensive and effective legislation 
that would strengthen our ability to implement this strategy. I am 
pleased that this bipartisan effort has resulted in this landmark anti-
trafficking legislation.
    Over the past several years, we have taken every opportunity to 
shine a bright light on this dark corner of the criminal underworld, in 
part by continually raising with leaders around the world the need to 
work together to combat this intolerable and reprehensible practice. 
Last spring, the United States and the Philippines co-hosted a regional 
conference attended by over 20 Asian and Pacific nations to develop a 
regional action plan to combat trafficking and protect trafficking 
victims. The United States proposed and recently concluded 2 years of 
negotiations on a United Nations protocol to combat trafficking in 
persons which, for the first time, will require countries everywhere to 
criminalize trafficking and will provide a framework for enhanced 
protection of and assistance to victims.
    I want to thank the First Lady, the Secretary of State, and the 
Attorney General for their leadership on this important issue. The 
Secretary of State, as Chair of the President's Interagency Council on 
Women, has led my Administration's interagency development and 
coordination of international and domestic anti-trafficking efforts. The 
First Lady has worked tirelessly to bring this issue out of the shadows. 
She has helped to mobilize the international community to address 
trafficking as both a human rights issue and a global crime problem. The 
Attorney General created the National Worker Exploitation Task Force to 
work in partnership with other agencies, particularly the Department of 
Labor, to coordinate the investigation and prosecution of trafficking 
and other cases of exploitation. The Task Force is training our Nation's 
Federal law enforcement officials and has established a hotline to 
report trafficking cases.
    The Act creates new felony criminal offenses to combat trafficking 
with respect to slavery or peonage; sex trafficking in children; and 
unlawful confiscation of the victim's passport or other documents in 
furtherance of the trafficking scheme. It also creates a new ``forced 
labor'' felony criminal offense that will provide Federal prosecutors 
with the tools needed to prosecute the sophisticated forms of 
nonphysical coercion that traffickers use today to exploit their 
victims. Under H.R. 3244, any person convicted of any of these new 
criminal offenses would be subject to forfeiture of his or her assets 
and required to pay full restitution to his or her victims. These new 
offenses and the tougher sentences called for by this legislation will 
assist Federal prosecutors in ensuring that traffickers are convicted 
and appropriately punished for their crimes.
    The Act also authorizes essential services and protections for 
victims of trafficking. Within the United States, H.R. 3244 establishes 
a Cabinet-level interagency task force to combat and monitor 
trafficking, provides eligibility to trafficking victims for a broad 
range of Federal benefits, and requires procedures to improve Federal 
law enforcement's identification of trafficking cases and

[[Page 2664]]

to provide for trafficking victims' safety and assistance while in the 
Government's custody. The Act also authorizes the Attorney General to 
provide grants to develop programs to assist victims of trafficking. A 
cornerstone of H.R. 3244 is that it makes trafficking victims eligible 
for a temporary nonimmigrant visa so that they can remain in the United 
States to help law enforcement in the prosecution of traffickers and 
receive needed protection and assistance.
    The Act establishes international initiatives to enhance economic 
opportunity for potential victims and public awareness programs on the 
dangers of trafficking and available protections for victims. The Act 
encourages other countries to take steps to implement protection and 
assistance for trafficking victims and to prosecute traffickers, and 
authorizes the President to assist countries to help them meet certain 
minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. The President may 
withhold assistance from countries that are not making significant 
efforts to bring themselves into compliance with these minimum 
standards. Traffickers can themselves be sanctioned. H.R. 3244 also 
expands existing reporting on the nature and extent of traf-ficking in 
each foreign country, which will build upon the Department of State's 
current coverage of this issue.
    Traffickers who prey on vulnerable women and children should have no 
place to hide, and victims of trafficking must be treated with dignity 
and afforded vital assistance and protection. I expect this legislation 
to be of immense benefit in rooting out this despicable practice and in 
helping future Administrations carry on the vital work that this 
Administration has begun.
    The Act also contains new authorities to compensate American victims 
of terrorism and their families. I am pleased that the Congress and the 
executive branch have been able to reach agreement on legislation that 
reflects our shared goals: providing compensation for the victims of 
international terrorism and protecting the President's ability to act on 
behalf of the Nation on important foreign policy and national security 
issues.
    There are certain provisions worth noting. First, those persons 
electing to receive 110 percent of their awarded compensatory damages 
with statutory interest and court-awarded sanctions relinquish all 
rights and claims to all amounts awarded and will be deemed to be 
compensated in full for their judgments. Those persons electing to 
receive 100 percent of their compensatory damages with statutory 
interest and court-awarded sanctions relinquish all rights and claims to 
compensatory damages and amounts awarded as judicial sanctions, and, 
necessarily, any related interest, costs and attorneys fees. So as not 
to interfere with important national interests, H.R. 3244 makes clear 
that persons who receive such payments are prohibited from attaching or 
executing against certain types of property in order to satisfy other 
amounts awarded.
    Second, Congress has reaffirmed in this Act my statutory authority, 
which is the authority provided under the Trading with the Enemy Act (50 
U.S.C. App. 5(b)), where appropriate and consistent with the national 
interest, to vest foreign assets located in the United States for the 
purpose, among other things, of assisting, and where appropriate, making 
payments to victims of terrorism.
    Third, H.R. 3244 repeals the Presidential national security waiver, 
provided by section 117 of the Treasury and General Government 
Appropriations Act, 1999, which was applicable to the requirements of 
subsections (a) and (b). Section 117(b), which amended the Foreign 
Sovereign Immunities Act to permit awards of punitive damages against 
certain defendants in certain circumstances, as well as section 117(a), 
have never been operative because I executed the national security 
waiver on October 21, 1998. In its place, H.R. 3244 provides a national 
security waiver applicable to section 1610(f)(1) of the Foreign 
Sovereign Immunities Act, and addresses the other national security 
concerns covered by my earlier waiver by repealing section 117(b) of the 
Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act, 1999, and modifying 
section 1610(f)(2) of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Upon my 
signing of H.R. 3244, I am exercising the discretion given to me by 
section 2002(f) of this Act to waive section 1610(f)(1) of the Foreign 
Sovereign Immunities Act.
    Fourth, H.R. 3244 makes the United States fully subrogated to the 
rights of the

[[Page 2665]]

persons who receive payments under this Act, to the extent of the 
payments. The Congress reaffirms my authority to pursue these subrogated 
rights as claims or offsets against Iran in appropriate ways, including 
negotiations leading to any normalization process. In addition, no funds 
are permitted to be paid to Iran, or released to Iran, from property 
blocked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act or the 
Foreign Military Sales Fund, until such claims have been dealt with to 
the satisfaction of the United States. The determination that the claims 
have been dealt with to the satisfaction of the United States will be 
subject to Presidential discretion.
    This legislation is a measure of the United States Government's 
commitment to the victims of terrorism, to deter future acts of 
terrorism, and to defend the United States from its evils. It is not 
designed to preclude any other means to this end. The United States will 
continue to pursue an aggressive, comprehensive policy incorporating 
diplomacy, law enforcement, intelligence, and other means to protect its 
citizens.
    In conclusion, I would like to recognize and congratulate the 
bipartisan sponsorship of, and support for, the ``Victims of Trafficking 
and Violence Prevention Act of 2000.'' Its enactment is an achievement 
of which all involved may be justly proud. It will serve us well in the 
years ahead as we continue to do what is needed to detect and eradicate 
trafficking in persons, violence against women, and other reprehensible 
forms of criminal conduct.
                                            William J. Clinton
 The White House,
 October 28, 2000.

  Note:  H.R. 3244, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection 
Act of 2000, approved October 28, was assigned Public Law No. 106-386.