These are
consumer issues, and these issues could not be more important to all
Americans. We can all agree that robust competition is essential to our
free-market economy and critical to ensuring that consumers pay the
best prices for what they need. I want to switch gears and conclude today by speaking about the
President's Executive order regarding refugees, especially those from
Muslim countries, which has caused so much chaos across our country
over the past several weeks. While I know Senator Sessions was not involved in writing the
Executive order, it is very important that going forward, obviously,
the Attorney General and the Department of Justice's Office of Legal
Counsel have a responsibility to review Presidential Executive orders
and assure they are legal and done right. I sent a letter, with Senators Durbin, Whitehouse, Franken, Coons,
and Blumenthal, and we asked Senator Sessions what he would have done
if the President's Executive order came across his desk. As a former
prosecutor, I have long advocated for thorough vetting and supported
strong national security measures. I believe that the No. 1 priority should be making people safe. While
working to strengthen biometrics and other security measures is a good
goal, this is not the way our government should work--that an order
should be put out there without properly vetting it and figuring out
the effect it would have on a four-year-old girl who is in a refugee
camp in Uganda. That happened. In my State, there was a mom who had two children, a Somali mother in
a refugee camp. She got permission to come over to our State and to our
country as a refugee. But she was pregnant, and when she had that baby,
that baby did not have permission to come with her. So she had a
Sophie's choice: Does she leave the baby in the refugee camp with
friends and go to America with her two other daughters, or do all of
them stay in the refugee camp in Uganda? She made a decision that she
would go with her two older girls, that that would be the safest thing
for them. For 4 years, she worked to get the child that was left behind in the
refugee camp to America to be reunited with her sisters. The baby, who
is now 4 years old, was to get on a plane on the Monday after the
President's Executive order was issued. The 4-year-old could not get on
that plane.
Keywords matched
refugee refugees