Averting Loss of Life and Injury By Expediting Sivs Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding.

I stand here alongside my colleagues in solidarity that we should be standing with the Afghans who stood together with our men and women in uniform. There is zero question that we should do that, and every veteran that I represent in the Texas 21 District shares that, as we have heard here on this floor.

I am supportive of that underlying principle, however, a self- executing manager's amendment was included that I had concerns with. It expands the program to include nonprofits and grantees, private organizations, that contributed to the United States mission in Afghanistan.

We don't know who would be included. We don't know how many people would now be eligible.

It expands the program to individuals who worked for the International Security Assistance Force without the need to perform sensitive and trusted activities for the United States forces. These people do not have to be Afghans, and we don't know how many people this would be. It weakens the standard for qualification.

Under current law, an alien has to verify that they have experienced or are experiencing an ongoing serious threat as a consequence of the alien's employment by the United States Government.

The new standard is, has asserted a credible basis for concern about the possibility of an ongoing or serious threat. A credible basis for concern about the possibility of is concerningly low, lower than even the credible fear standard of significant possibility we currently employ.

The bill allows for another 8,000 principal aliens to be granted this special immigrant status. We agree we want to try to help those principal aliens. There are 10,000 currently unused. That would be about the 18,000 number. Let's also remember that we have 3\1/2\ people come in per person on average. We have had about 125 to 130,000 folks come in. This would be about another 75 to 80,000. That does not include dealing with the NGOs.

So we are now massively expanding this program, which means we are going to be back down here at the well talking about new numbers and more expansions based on nebulous standards with respect to NGOs and private entities that aren't individuals who worked for the United States Government directly alongside our men and women in uniform.

That is more than concerning, and it brings me back to my final point: We have got to restore regular order in this body. We are not amending this, we are not debating it in committee, and we did not have a hearing on the specific manager's amendment that was added. It was just added, put on the floor, and put under the title of something that everyone supports, which means, Mr. Speaker, that you are put in the position of figuring out whether you are going to support the underlying matter while all these things are added to it which have serious concerns we should have debated in committee and debated and amended on the floor.

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