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“THE PRESIDENT'S EXECUTIVE ORDER IS NOT A MUSLIM BAN” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H929-H932 on Feb. 2, 2017.
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THE PRESIDENT'S EXECUTIVE ORDER IS NOT A MUSLIM BAN
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) for 30 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I regret I wasn't able to work with all of the speakers here tonight they wanted to pack within that hour. I understand that they have prepared themselves to give this speech tonight, and there will be opportunities in each succeeding day. I just wanted to recognize their right to speak on this floor under the rules and be as lenient as I can, and also, of course, defending my own rights at the same time.
But I would acknowledge that we did have a discussion before the Judiciary Committee today, and I want this Congress to have the level of comity so that we can exchange ideas and bounce them off of each other. And I have long believed that if I can't sustain myself in debate, I have got two choices. One of them is go back and do more research and build enough information that I can to sustain myself; and the other is adopt the other fellow's position. I am not very inclined to do that, but I am inclined to listen to their positions.
So, as I have listened to these positions here for more than an hour here on the floor, things come to me and I hear these words recurring over and over again. I didn't get a full count on it, but I know I heard 7, 8, 10, or maybe even more, times saying that the President's executive order is a Muslim ban.
Now, looking through that executive order--and I haven't read it thoroughly word by word, but those who were vetting that executive order, to use that term, tell me the word ``Muslim'' is not used in that executive order. I am going to assert that is the case, that President Trump did not use the word ``Muslim'' in his executive order, and that the executive order is not a Muslim ban, but is a ban on travel from seven countries that are Muslim majority.
If it was his intention to try to block Muslims from coming into America, he would have started with Indonesia rather than Iraq and Syria and the war-torn countries.
So I will assert it is not a Muslim ban, except that the words
``Muslim ban'' are in the talking points of the Democrats, and they will repeat it over and over and over again, as if somehow they could amend the executive order to have the words ``Muslim ban'' in there so they can have their grievance to the executive order.
I saw this unfold on Friday, when the President issued his executive order. It was a big day, I admit. He has had a lot of executive orders, and they have been raining down pretty fast on this country, and I am glad of that.
We should objectively deal with the directive that is there. It is a temporary travel ban that focuses on the seven countries that President Barack Obama identified as the most dangerous countries, I call them terrorist-spawning countries. It is a prudent thing on the part of the President to temporarily suspend travel from those countries. I would have added a few more countries in the suspension of the travel to the United States.
It is his intention, and I think it is clearly stated within his executive order to evaluate the security circumstances coming from each of these countries and determine how we can have a better policy, especially to do extreme vetting on the travel people that are coming from not only these seven countries, but other countries that do send terrorists to us. And I won't start down that list, but we know it is extensive.
I will say some of the countries that are not on this list are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries that would be listed as Arab countries, but including Indonesia, which is the largest population of Muslims, but the lowest concentration of terrorist production per Islamic society that I know of in the world.
So I think this reflects the danger and the risk to Americans and a prudent approach to this. It is not only the ban on travel that is not a Muslim ban, not a Muslim ban--if I had to say that enough times to negate the times that that has been asserted here on the floor, I suppose I could; but we are going to hear it in the news every day because that seems to be what pays off politically.
The argument that it was a religious test; this executive order is not a religious test. It doesn't reference religion. In fact, when I have asked questions of the officials of the Obama administration, I have said to them: Why is it that Christians don't seem to be allowed into the United States as refugees under the Obama administration?
We saw one group that was 1,500-some-strong that had one Christian in there. So I traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, and sat down with the lead on UNHCR, the United Nations Council on Refugees. And there, I believe her name is Kelly Clements, I asked: Do you determine when you are vetting refugees, what their religious is?
She says: Yes, we do.
And she said they had 115,000 refugees that they had run through their process that they had vetted.
And of those 115,000, I said, how many of them are Christians?
And she said: 15,000.
So the rest of them, roughly the 100,000, she said almost all of them would be Muslim.
But they fill out a form. They attest to their religion. They are in the database. We can identify Christians. They are the ones that are persecuted. They are the ones that are being targeted because of their religion. The Assyrian Christians, the Chaldean Christians, and then not Christians, but the Yazidis, they are the three groups that are targeted the most. We should establish an international safe zone for them in their neighborhood.
When the word comes out that these countries have accepted a list of refugees, such as Lebanon or Jordan, there are also countries that haven't accepted any significant number, like Saudi Arabia.
Why shouldn't the neighbors accept refugees, Mr. Speaker?
They are the ones that have the most security at stake. They are the ones that are most invested in trying to establish stability in that part of the world.
Don't we want people who have lived, say, in the Nineveh Plains region since antiquity to be close to home so that when security circumstances and economic circumstances settle down, they can come back to their homes where they have lived since antiquity?
Of course we do.
We see data from last year that says $64,000 is about the typical cost of resettling one refugee in the United States; $64,000. But that same amount of money will take care of a dozen people over in their neighborhood rather than one person here in America.
Why shouldn't we get a 12-to-1 return on the taxpayers' investment and help people in the region where they live so that they can go back to their homeland again and grow their families and grow their population and their industry and re-establish their roots rather than let ISIS push the Christians out of the Middle East and push the versions of Islam out that they hate the most?
If we take people out of there and resettle them in large numbers, we are giving them the region that they would like to have ethnically cleansed of the people they disagree with. So we are helping out their war effort by pulling people out of the way and bringing them here.
They need to stay close to home. Especially the young men need to take up arms and defend their own country.
I went over to the Middle East and I walked in that river of epic migration, that river of humanity that is flowing into Europe and has been flowing into Europe for 2 years, nearly solid. As I walked in that river of humanity, I asked them a lot of questions and I was able to communicate with them; sometimes an interpreter, sometimes hand signals, sometimes a word here or there of English or something else.
Here is what I asked them: Where are you going?
This was in Serbia. In my mind, as I watched them board the trains in Serbia--1,000 at a time and day and night, I might add--I would say: Where are you going?
Germany.
Do you have family there?
No.
Do you have friends there?
No.
Do you have a job there?
No.
What will you do?
I don't know.
How will you live?
Germany will take care of me.
That is the answer that I got over and over again. Eighty-one percent of that human river were, let's say, military-age males.
They left their family? They leave their family in Syria and Iraq to go into Europe? What responsible father does that when he should be home defending his country and defending his family?
They are not going because they are war refugees, for the most part. That wave is over. They are going primarily because they are economic refugees. They are economic refugees because we hang the carrot out in front of them and we say: Come to the United States. We will bring you over here and we will make sure that we take care of all of your needs. You don't have to worry about anything.
{time} 1800
We are competing with countries like Germany, Austria, Sweden, and the Netherlands because they offer a standard of living. The law in Germany is that there is a baseline standard of living that every human being receives, work or not.
Angela Merkel says: Come to Germany, and we will take care of you.
I recall a 10-minute-and-49-second videotape of her in a townhall meeting speaking to a blonde German lady who stood up and said: Why are you doing this? They are killing us. They are raping us. They are taking German jobs. Why do you do this?
Chancellor Merkel's answer was: We cannot be ruled by fear, and your voice is a voice of fear.
So she just devalued or denigrated the voice of the grief-stricken German woman.
She said: We cannot stop them. We must take care of them. The violence that they are perpetrating against Germans is not going to be as great as that which we have perpetrated against others in our most recent history.
That is the statement, Mr. Speaker. The constitution in Germany says they have to accept refugees. We put that in there post-World War II. Because they had created so many, we required that they take them. In their law that they have written there is a baseline standard of living. The other part was Nazi guilt. So Chancellor Merkel opened that all up because of those roughly four reasons that I have given you, and 1.6 or so million poured into Germany.
The last two New Year's Eves have seen rape after rape after rape--
many of them not even investigated--right there next to the dome of the Cologne Cathedral. It is an annual event now: New Year's Eve in Cologne, migrant men come and rape German women there. That is the last 2 years, and you hardly find that in the news unless you know where to look. I do look, and I talk to people over there.
This is not a Muslim ban. This is not a religious test. You can read the executive order and determine that. The difference is my constituents will check to see if I am telling them the truth. Others' constituents apparently don't hold them accountable. It has no reference to whatever color people are, whatever race they are, whatever ethnicity, or whatever the national origin--I guess in a way because it says if you are coming from these nations. I will agree, we have Iraqis who have helped us and saved American lives, and we have Afghans who have helped us and saved American lives. But, on balance, this has been blown completely out of proportion.
Here is another statement that was made about the refugees. This is a quote from the gentleman who spoke here, ``an executive order banning Muslims.'' Again, it is an executive order, and it bans travel from seven Muslim countries--primarily Muslim countries--but it bans Christians as well as Muslims coming from those countries. As for the Christians, I think we should have been allowed in because they are the ones who were targeted.
By the way, Egypt is not on this list, but the Christians were targeted there. They blew up the church where the Coptic Pope presides. I visited him there. They killed 50 or so Christians, and they have blown up churches all over the place. That is, by the way, Muslims attacking Christians, just for the record.
When the gentlewoman spoke here of the 3-year-old who washed up on the beach, that is the one that troubles me a lot. I saw that image. I watched that picture, and it went right into my heart like it did most everybody else in this country. That has been several weeks ago that America was mobilized by that little boy lying face down on the shores of the Mediterranean after the boat had capsized and many of them had drowned, including his father.
But it came out a couple of days ago that that family had been living in Turkey for 3 years, and that the father of that little boy's sister had been sending money to them so that they could slip into Europe because the father needed a new set of teeth. They were motivated so the father could get dental work perhaps most likely in Germany. It wasn't because they were running from the war. They had stabilized themselves in Turkey for 3 years. They were going to Germany for the dental work of the father. That is a matter now of public record that has been exposed by Kerry Picket who did the research back on this and corroborated by a number of other news outlets as well.
So it isn't always what we see. It isn't always what it seems. The people who speak into the megaphone in the airports aren't always telling us the truth. We find out sometimes it is anything but the truth.
What is the truth is that there has been a tragic war in the Middle East, and it continues. The civilian population has been decimated in Syria, and there are refugees going in all directions. A lot of it is because we have created and we have allowed for a power vacuum--a power vacuum in Syria. That brought Putin into that power vacuum, and he was able to assert himself and, so far, at least, protect al-Assad. In doing so, we see the operations of the invasion that has come out of Baghdad and gone up towards Mosul and taken the east side of the river in Mosul. The west side is still held by ISIS.
I think that is a shortsighted strategy to have Shia militia, Iranian-supported Shia militia going in to take Mosul when Mosul is populated by Kurds in the suburbs and Sunni Muslims in the inner city. How are the Shias going to govern a city that doesn't, in any substantial way, include their population? So I am troubled by shortsighted decisions that don't seem to take into account the tribal connections that we know have been so much a part of the sectarian strife that has been a part of Iraq, Syria, and also Iran in the Middle East.
I want people to be self-determining. I want people to be able to determine their own government and rule their own countries. This is going to take a prudent knowledge of those tribes, and it is going to take input from them. We need to build alliances in the Middle East with the moderate Muslim countries that will join with us in bringing out stable governments that respect the autonomy of the populations that live within the various regions. That is the best solution that can come about, and it doesn't put a lot of American boots on the ground.
So I hope we can step back, Mr. Speaker, and take a deep breath and recognize it is not a Muslim ban, and it is not a religious test. But I want this statement to go into the Record with clarity, and that is that the President of the United States not only has the constitutional authority to bring about this suspension of travel from these seven countries because of security reasons, he is specifically authorized to do so by the United States Code, by Federal Law. So he is operating within the law; he is operating within the Constitution; and he is operating within the realms of prudence, at least on a temporary basis.
I am hopeful that the input that we have is an input that will help bring about the dialogue in this country. The debate we have here on the floor hopefully causes people to think about this, go back and read the executive order, look for the word Muslim or Muslim ban, look for any kind of religious test. There is none. But I think we ought to know.
I mentioned and didn't go deeply enough into this that when the executive branch of government, the USCIS in particular, and ICE included, when I asked them: When you have these applicants for refugees that you say you are vetting, then do you know what religion they are?
They say: No.
Do we ask them? No. We don't ask, but the information is there in the database at UNHCR, at the United Nations. They had vetted 15,000 Christians, and one got through in a list of 1,500. I think that was probably a mistake. I think there was a religious test for refugees under Obama, and I think it was a preference for Muslims, and it was discriminating against Christians.
I hope that we can have a stable policy that brings people relief, but I think the prudent one is give them a place to live in the Middle East, protect them, and create an international safe zone so that they can live in peace where they have lived since antiquity.
Mr. Speaker, I have addressed the topic of what I heard as I sat on the floor tonight. I really came to the floor here to speak in favor of Judge Neil Gorsuch.
Mr. RASKIN. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland and welcome him to the United States Congress.
Mr. RASKIN. I thank you for your thoughtful comments tonight, and I think you made some good points. I think you effectively made the point that this is not, strictly speaking, a Muslim ban. It is not a ban on all Muslims entering the country. In the popular vernacular, the public has taken up basically what was the current President's language that he used during the campaign. So people are using it for kind of a shorthand.
But I want to ask you about the ban. It is not the case that there is no religious reference in the executive order because it does say that the religious minorities from those countries are given preference, and that would be the Christians in those countries.
One thing I think that does need to be corrected is thousands of Christians were admitted from the Muslim world under the Obama administration, and there was no discrimination. In fact, I think there were almost as many Christians admitted as Muslims.
But here is my real question for you. The 9/11 hijackers--which was the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed on our shores, thousands of Americans were killed, the country plunged into chaos--came from three countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. All three of those countries where Trump Industries does business were exempted from the ban on the seven countries. Why? What is the policy justification for not including that?
None of the countries that are included in the ban produced any of the terrorist attacks that we saw in Orlando, in San Bernardino County, or any of the other ones. So how were those chosen and the source countries for the 9/11 attack exempted?
Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, in addressing both of those topics, the gentleman's data that says that more Christians than Muslims have been brought in as refugees, I have heard that as an Obama administration information that has come out. That doesn't match up with the data that I have seen when I traveled to places like Geneva and looked at that or looked at the data that came out before that release. The data up to that release indicated entirely the opposite which I have identified. And the data that came out in the last weeks of the Obama administration asserted that they had a significant number of Christians who were part of that.
I appreciate the gentleman's point that the executive order references religious minorities, and I appreciate that it does, because I think they are the ones that are targeted. But the gentleman's point about the origin of the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 is an accurate point, and the largest number of them came from Saudi Arabia.
I would just assert that because Donald Trump has done business in three of those countries, I would be surprised if he didn't do business in a place like Dubai where they have developed a wonderland out of the desert, and his business in each of those countries. How many other countries has he done business in? I don't think we can correlate that. But what we can correlate is that these seven countries are the countries identified by the Obama administration.
So, maintaining my time, we can have conjecture on this back and forth. But the facts are that it is the Obama administration that identified these seven countries, and it is the Trump administration that brought them forward with the travel ban on them. I believe it is a coincidence that these other countries are places among many countries that Donald Trump has done business in.
I know that I only have about 7 minutes remaining to take up Judge Gorsuch, but I would yield to the gentleman briefly, simply out of the comity that we discussed earlier today.
Mr. RASKIN. Again, that is very gracious of you, and I appreciate the spirit with which you engage in this dialogue. I think it is something we really do need to get to the bottom of. To my knowledge, Trump Industries is not doing business in the poor Muslim countries that were targeted like Somalia, Libya, and so on, but perhaps I can be corrected.
In any event, the fact that he has done business in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt, and United Arab Emirates--in the wealthier Muslim countries--it may be logical as a matter of business practice, but I don't think that can become the basis for American foreign policy. I think that is the reason why this policy has created such outrage in America and around the world because it doesn't seem to have any national security logic to it. It is not about terrorism unless you can convince me that those seven countries actually generated terrorism.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, it is conjecture that any of the Trump businesses had anything to do with this decision. It is pure conjecture. If the argument is that Donald Trump didn't do business in Somalia, I wouldn't blame him one bit. If anybody watched ``Black Hawk Down'' then they would know a good reason. It is essentially a terrorist state in Somalia.
So I will thank the gentleman for his comments, and I am going to turn then to Judge Neil Gorsuch and see if I can make that point yet this evening, and it is this: We had this vacancy in the Supreme Court. It is a vacancy that is brought about by the tragic death of Justice Antonin Scalia, a man whom many of us have admired for a long time and enjoyed his friendship, his company, his sense of humor, his gregariousness, and also especially his dissenting opinions that were written for the law school students whom he always understood would have to read the dissent when they studied the cases. He wanted to write them in such a way that they would read them, hopefully enjoy them, and remember them. He has been a speaker before the Conservative Opportunity Society which I have chaired for some time, and he has done it a number of times. We really enjoyed his company. We had very engaging debates and discussions.
There is a huge hole in the United States Supreme Court created by the loss of Justice Scalia. I am grateful that we have taken serious time in filling that hole and seeing a nominee come forward that has the chance to grow into the shoes of Justice Scalia.
{time} 1815
As I went to the White House a couple of nights ago to be there to witness the ceremony of the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch, we were all briefed on a lot of things that had to do with his bio. I am just quickly going to touch on some of the high points in Judge Gorsuch's bio.
His undergraduate school was Columbia University, with honors, Phi Beta Kappa; Harvard Law School, cum laude; a Truman Scholar, where he received his juris doctorate; then went to Oxford as a Marshall Scholar and received another doctoral degree, a Ph.D. in philosophy. Then he became a clerk for Justice White, and then, later on, for Justice Kennedy.
If he is confirmed, it will be, we think, the first time that there has been a clerk that became a Justice on the Supreme Court serving with the Justice whom he clerked for. So that is a unique component of Judge Gorsuch.
He is a man of the West. He has a strong work ethic and common sense. He is an outdoorsman. He loves to fly-fish, and he raises animals in his barn at home.
His background, he was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but worked blue-collar jobs and worked his way up. We know that he accelerated his education very well.
For his 10 years on the bench, he clerked for the judge on the D.C. Circuit, and then from there, clerking for the Supreme Court Justices, whom I mentioned, White and Kennedy.
He was then appointed by George W. Bush on May 10, 2006, after a decade in private practice where he became a partner in a large law firm. They must have liked him there. They took him in as an associate, and he became a partner for a decade.
Then in his heart was that he wanted to be a judge, and he wanted to protect the Constitution and the rule of law. After a year at the Department of Justice, George W. Bush appointed him to the D.C. Circuit. There, he was confirmed by the United States Senate, without dissent, by a voice vote on July 20, 2006. He served for more than a decade as a district court judge. His record is stellar.
When I asked questions about Judge Gorsuch, I learned a number of things. One of them was that, of the 21 candidates that were listed by, first, President-elect Trump and, now, President Trump--he would draw from that list and nominate, and then seek confirmation and appoint from that list--each candidate was asked the question as they were interviewed: Who would you name for this position if it isn't going to be you?
A tough question.
So, it is like saying, I would interpret that as: Who do I think is second best? That is the only reason I would be there is if I thought I was the best choice. I would think that is what all of them must have thought as they were interviewed.
There were 21 candidates. You take one out of that number, because that is Judge Gorsuch himself. We don't know how he answered this question. When the other 20 were asked, if it is not to be you, who shall it be, everyone said Judge Neil Gorsuch.
There can't be a stronger endorsement than that. It shows a respect from all of his competing peers. I believe that they believe he will do the best and the clearest job of preserving, protecting, and defending our Constitution and read the letter of the Constitution and interpret it, as Judge Scalia did, to mean what it says and to be understood to mean what it says and was understood at the time of ratification of the body of the Constitution or the various amendments, whichever the case may be. That is the strongest and most profound.
When I asked the question what is his level of respect for stare decisis, the people who know him and studied him say he has more respect for the text of the Constitution than the decisions that have been made along the way. I think that he will recognize those decisions.
I asked that question, would he look into them to determine if that rationale has helped his rationale but always anchor it back to the Constitution and the original understanding. This is secondhand of the people that know him, but the best answer I can get from that is yes.
The next one is the Chevron doctrine. He has written about the Chevron doctrine. It is pretty clear that he thinks that the Chevron doctrine is unjustly created by the courts and that you shouldn't give administrators of undue legislative authority the benefit of the doubt.
So those things sound really good to me. I am looking forward to the confirmation hearings. Hopefully, an expeditious confirmation of Judge Gorsuch. I am very, very happy with the selection that President Trump has made, and I really appreciate what I saw there that night as I watched Judge Gorsuch.
In the middle of his speech, he turned and looked at his wife, Marie Louise, and there was that significant eye contact that told me that they are a bonded couple that are a team together. The friends of the family tell me she is more conservative than he is.
So I look forward to his confirmation. I think the President of the United States has made a terrific choice. Let's get the judicial branch of government up and running again, along with the executive branch, and let's keep up pace here in the House. We have got some work to do, too.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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