Speech #CREC-2017-02-09-pt1-PgS1048_t1

We have been working on some of this. Some of that has now broken into the press tonight in a CNN report that I am about to describe in a moment, but first, let me lay out the scene. There have been about 8.5 million names added to Venezuela's immigration system since it was last independently audited in the year 2003. OK. So 8.5 million people were added to their immigration system, the new names that have come about. Of the 8.5 million names that were added, 221,000 of those--over 221,000 of those are foreign nationals, and at least 173 of those 221,000 foreign nationals are from the following countries: Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan. So 173 people from these countries were provided government passports and national IDs between the year 2008 and 2012, which leads me to this: In November of 2015, a Venezuelan attache by the name of Misael Lopez Soto, who was assigned to the country's Embassy in Baghdad, became a whistleblower, and he began to reveal the identities of several of these 173 names. Understand that this is important because there has been a 168- percent jump in U.S. asylum applications from Venezuela since October of 2015, now the third highest nation of origin for asylum applicants to the United States. The overwhelming majority of them are legitimate people fleeing all this craziness that is happening. But I lay the groundwork to understand the connection between Venezuela and the United States.