Real ID Act of 2005
REAL ID ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - February 10, 2005)
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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Nadler amendment and ask Members, especially on my side of the aisle, to join us in striking section 101.
Section 101 purports to reform asylum-but it does not. Under the pretext that it mitigates terrorists' access to the United States, the provision actually does a grave injustice and disservice to the persecuted, such as religious believers, and all others who have a well-founded fear of persecution and who seek asylum in our country.
Section 101 imposes onerous new requirements on the persecuted, including those who have been traumatized by rape, torture, trafficking, and religious hate and persecution, to prove the persecutor's motive. Read the language. You have got to prove that persecution was a central reason you left and why you are seeking asylum.
I would remind my colleagues that I have been in Congress 25 years. Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes never persecute. It is always some other pretext, whether it be the People's Republic of China, Vietnam, Cuba. When it was Romania many years back, there was always a false reason. Slander against the Soviet state was used over and over again, never because you were Jewish or Christian or because you were an evangelical or some other reason. They always have a pretext.
I can guarantee if this is enacted into law that real asylum seekers will be denied, and then the piling on just begins to start.
How many Members have met persecuted people, traumatized people who are coming to our borders? They get their stories wrong. According to this language, if they have any inconsistency, even if it is not germane to the issue at hand, if they get a date wrong, how many Members have forgotten their wife's birthday, date or year? We all make mistakes. Get one of those things wrong and the trier of facts can exclude you based on that single situation.
This is an ugly provision. I say with respect to my friend and colleague from Wisconsin, I am against terrorism. 9/11 hurt people in my district. They were hurt big time.
This is an ugly provision, Mr. Speaker. It has not had, in my view, the kind of hearing needed in terms of the consequences that it will impose upon true asylum seekers. I hope Members will vote against this.
I have authored 3 Torture Victims Relief laws to help torture victims. I meet with a lot of torture victims. They forget; they have been traumatized. You forget something pursuant to these new requirements and you are a goner. You are being deported back to that country of origin where you have been persecuted.
Please vote against Section 101. Vote for the Nadler amendment.
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