Political Quotes

“I wanted to refer back to an amendment that was in the previous en bloc that dealt with the special immigrant visas. I want to express my appreciation to the committee, the chairman, the ranking member, and to the staff. This is a complicated issue. It is in your bill, but it is not entirely within your jurisdiction. And there has been an ebb and flow. It has been something that I have, as you know, been working on for a decade, and that is for the United States to keep faith with the people in Afghanistan who made the mission possible--the people who literally risked their lives as guides, construction workers, interpreters, and truck drivers--the men and women who made it possible for us to succeed. It isn't just the Department of Defense. There are men and women who worked with the State Department and USAID, which are an important part of our activities in those countries. Those foreign nationals are every bit at risk as somebody who is guiding our troops in the field. I appreciate your willingness to put in the en bloc amendment a little bit of flexibility. I hope it is not the last word, because we need to think seriously about what we do for the people who work on base, people who work for the State Department, and the people who work for USAID so that we are able to make sure that we have an adequate number of visas and that we don't have an arbitrarily short period of time because the pipeline has been hopelessly complex and flawed.…”