Mr. Speaker. later today the House will take up the bill. H.R. 2122. which is an emergency bill to provide assistance to the Kurdish refugees who are in the camps in Iraq and in Turkey and in Iran. This bill provides for some $400 million in assistance to these refugees through the United Nations and through other multinational disaster relief agencies. We hope. of course. after seeing the plight of these people that has been so clearly demonstrated on TV. that once their plight has been eased and once their situation is stabilized that most. if not all. will be repatriated. which is to say returned to their hometowns to take up the lives that they had before the war began. But for many of these people. return home will not be possible for a number of reasons. Accordingly. at my request as chairman of the Subcommittee on International Law. Immigration. and Refugees. I have asked the General Accounting Office to send a team to the camps to assess the needs not just for assistance that the refugees need now but to gather information concerning whether or not the United States has a responsibility to resettle some or all of these people. The obvious likelihood is not all can or should be resettled but perhaps some would have to have a place to go other than their hometowns. I will report to the House and to the country as this investigation proceeds.
Keywords matched
Refugees Immigration refugees