Lewis Rockefeller: “I rise to offer an amendment that is designed to level the playing field when it comes to employment opportunities for…”

“I rise to offer an amendment that is designed to level the playing field when it comes to employment opportunities for U.S. citizens living in other countries. This effort is the result of many months of discussion, debate, and negotiation to work out a solution to problems that are quite technical and complex. But my goal has been and remains very simple. It is time to end the discrimination and inequities that do harm to our citizens when they need to be gainfully employed abroad by our own State Department. For the more than 3 million Americans who currently reside outside the United States, this amendment will grant them a fair shot at obtaining work and the benefits that should accompany that work. I am grateful to my colleague, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts, for joining me in attaching this amendment to the State Department authorization bill. We agreed sometime ago to work together on behalf of important principles that should govern that State Department's hiring and employment policies in its embassies and outposts around the world. As a result of good-faith efforts with the agency's new leadership under the Clinton administration, we finally succeeded in crafting the new policy and objectives embodied in this amendment.”