Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016
Floor Speech
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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, make no mistake, we have been attacked in the past by refugees or by people posing as refugees. The two Boston bombers were here as refugees. They didn't take very kindly to what we gave them--education, food, clothing--and they chose to attack our country. In Bowling Green, KY, we had two Iraqi refugees who came through the refugee program, posing as refugees, and then promptly decided to buy Stinger missiles. Fortunately, they bought them from an FBI agent, and we caught them. But when we caught them, we discovered their fingerprints were already on bomb fragments in Iraq in our database, yet we had no clue and admitted them anyway.
I think we have an insufficient process for knowing who is here legally and illegally. We have 11 million people in our country illegally, and 40 percent of them have overstayed their visa. Do we know who they are? Do we know where they are? If we extrapolate those statistics to those who are visiting our country from the Middle East, do we know where the 150,000 students are who say they are going to school in our country from the Middle East? I don't think we do.
I don't think we should continue adding people to the rolls of those coming from the Middle East until we absolutely know who is in our country and what their intentions are. So my bill says this--my amendment says this: We are not going to bring them here and put them on government assistance.
When the poem beneath the Statute of Liberty said give me your tired, give me your poor, it didn't say come to our country and we will put you on welfare. In those days you came for opportunity. Many Christian churches have supported refugees. My church has supported refugees coming here. That is charity. But when you put them on welfare, that is not charity.
We borrow $1 million a minute. We don't have enough money to do this; it is a threat to our national security. My amendment would end the housing assistance for refugees in order to send a message to the President: The people have spoken. We are unhappy with your program. If you will not listen to the American people, we will take the money from the purse.
I thank the Chair.
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