The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“HONORING THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF TERRY SLOAN” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E684-E685 on July 27, 2020.
The Department includes the Census Bureau, which is used to determine many factors about American life. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, said the Department is involved in misguided foreign trade policies and is home to many unneeded programs.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
HONORING THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF TERRY SLOAN
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HON. EMANUEL CLEAVER
of missouri
in the house of representatives
Monday, July 27, 2020
Mr. CLEAVER. Madam Speaker, I rise today to commemorate Terry Sloan for thirty-two years of federal service, including five years as the National Records Center Director within the Department of Homeland Security's United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Prior to joining USCIS in 2008, Ms. Sloan held various legal and leadership positions within the Department of Defense and the Department of Commerce. Recognized as an outstanding public servant throughout her illustrious career, Ms. Sloan's long list of accomplishments have been celebrated with several prestigious awards, including the Department of the Army Civilian Service Achievement Medal. Once named the USCIS Manager of the Year, Ms. Sloan was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 2015, making her a civil-
service equivalent to a general officer within the United States military. Having served the US, federal government for over three decades, including a half-decade at the helm of the USCIS National Records Center, Ms. Sloan's example of leadership and public service is well-worth reflecting upon.
Lee's Summit, Missouri became home to the USCIS National Records Center in 1999, when the country's most extensive collection of immigrant records was moved to a limestone cave sixty feet below ground. Currently holding nearly sixty-million immigrant files, another one-and-a-half million records are added each year to the countless shelves within this four-hundred-and-fifty-thousand square foot repository. Among these, the National Records Center houses the immigration files belonging to highly acclaimed cultural icons who immigrated to the United States, including John Lennon, Salvador Dali, and Elizabeth Taylor. Receiving over six hundred FOIA requests each day, the USCIS National Records Center documents contain our country's immigration history through the eyes of individual immigrants who journeyed across the globe before stepping foot on American shores, As new files arrive at the National Records Center by the truckload, the eight hundred employees and contractors employed within the vast facility work around the clock to retrieve documents needed to determine immigrant status for granting government benefits.
As the Director of the USCIS National Records Center, Ms. Sloan had the profound responsibility of managing this immense, ever-growing repository to ensure that the history of immigration to the United States is properly archived, made accessible to the public, and preserved for future generations. In 2016, while serving as the National Records Center's Director, Ms. Sloan oversaw efforts to locate photographs of five immigrants who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. For fifteen years, it had proved impossible to find images of these five individuals. However, when Ms. Sloan and the team she oversaw was put to the task, portraits of all five victims were quickly discovered and then shipped to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum for public display--a striking testament to the record center's archival excellence. Ms. Sloan has promoted innovation and efficiency through strategic initiatives such as document digitization, the proactive disclosure of records, and the use of modern case-processing technology. Ms. Sloan championed the Freedom of Information Act Immigration Records System, otherwise known as FIRST--the only government-used, end-to-end, automated, electronic FOIA system that allows users to submit and track FOIA requests and receive their documents digitally.
Madam Speaker, please join me in commemorating thirty-two years of public service from Ms. Terry Sloan. At the base of the Statue of Liberty, a poem written by Emma Lazarus welcomes people from all lands with the promise of the United States. ``Give me your tired, your poor,
/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,'' the poem reads. Thanks to the service of Ms. Terry Sloan, the millions of people who embraced those words as they made way to America will have their history preserved for future generations of scholars, authors, genealogists, and curious descendants.
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