Political Quotes

“Madam President, last week the media reported that 17 Afghan military trainees had gone AWOL--absent without leave--from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio, TX. The shocking thing about this is not that 17 Afghan trainees left the military base without leave, but that we hadn't heard anything about it. Even though these officers went missing over a period of 2 years, neither the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Air Force, nor the Department of Defense notified me. No one advised the Congress or the American people, to my knowledge, that this had happened. Obviously, it created a lot of consternation and concern. The fact is, this is just one example--really the tip of the iceberg--of some of the problems with our broken immigration system-- our inability to track individuals who come into the United States with visas, whether it is a tourist visa, a student visa, or a visa like those issued to the Afghan military officers. We have virtually no ability to track individuals who overstay their visa and then simply choose to melt into the great American landscape. This is true in spite of the fact that in 2007, Congress passed on a recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, which highlighted visa overstays as a potential national security threat to our country.…”