Coronavirus

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am really honored to follow Senator Durbin, a staunch and steadfast champion of refugees and immigration reform who, year after year, has shown the courage to stand up on this issue.

And to emphasize a point that he has made, there is an urgency to our acting. There is a sense that time is not on our side for the lives at stake here. The world has watched in horror as China has cracked down on the incipient democracy movement in Hong Kong. We have seen the yellow umbrellas. We have seen the marchers in the streets and the brutality and the cruelty of the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese authorities, using clubs and guns with the kind of thuggishness that has come to characterize the Chinese anti-democracy movement there and around the world. We have an opportunity to take a stand and speak out and do something in defense of the brave protesters who are risking their lives.

We have seen this kind of democracy movement before. We know it is in the great tradition of our country to stand with those protestors and those marchers who are saying to the Chinese Government: We will not let you break the agreement that you did in 1984 with the United Kingdom to preserve these freedoms and to make Hong Kong an outpost of democracy in the repressive regime of China. We will not let you chip away at our rights or extradite our people to China. That law was the spark that ignited these protests. We will not let you mock our demand for freedom and democracy.

The Hong Kong People's Freedom and Choice Act of 2020 was passed unanimously in the House of Representatives with overwhelming bipartisan support, and it would very simply give those protesters protective status in this country, the greatest Nation in the history of the world, saying to them: We will give you a safe harbor. We will give you a place where you can be protected.

And remember, what the Chinese are saying is: You can be indicted. You can be arrested. No matter where you are in the world, if you violated our law, we will bring you back.

And we would say to those protestors who are simply demanding fundamental freedoms that often we take for granted here: We will give you protective status. We will give you temporary protective status right away. We will make sure that you have that safe harbor.

Now, I know that my colleagues, Senators Rubio and Menendez, have a bill that is actually called the Hong Kong Safe Harbor Act. We had a hearing on it the other day in the Judiciary Committee. All of my colleagues expressed support for the individuals who came to us asking us to act on that measure.

The Hong Kong People's Freedom and Choice Act of 2020, in fact, would go beyond that measure, only to say that you don't have to be formally charged in China and you don't have to be in specific categories of protestor. You can be a journalist, and you can get temporary protective status. It would also say that you don't have to demonstrate individually a fear of persecution, but you do have to be screened. You do have to demonstrate that you are not going to be a national security threat.

My colleague Senator Durbin is absolutely right to make this point. Nobody wants Chinese spies in this country. There would be a background check and a screening just as there are for other refugees under this measure.

The other day, at this hearing, we heard from Samuel Chu and Nathan Lau and we heard from Joey Su. These activists are fighting for their freedom. We heard their stories, so powerful and moving. Their faces and voices should be heard and heeded in this body.

We are far removed here in this sedate setting from the clamor and the cruelty of those streets in Hong Kong, where men and women have stood bravely against the physical brutality and force of the Chinese regime. But we should send a message to the world: We are going to stand with those refugees who come here heeding the lady who stands in New York Harbor with a message of hope and freedom. The same lady who many of our forebears in this Chamber saw when they came to this country--like my dad, in 1935, at the age of 17, alone, seeking to escape persecution in Germany, speaking no English, knowing virtually no one, having not much more than the shirt on his back but believing-- believing--that America would offer him the safety of freedom as a refugee.

That is our tradition in this country. It goes beyond party, geography, race, or religion. It is what makes America truly great. We are a nation of immigrants and refugees, and my hope is, as I stand here, that we will have the same unanimity in this body as the House did, despite all the other divisions that persist at this point; that we will have the respect for the moral imperative to act now and make sure that we fulfill the message of America now that is more important than ever before in light of the repressive regimes, even in our own region, whether it is Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, where we can say to the world: We are going to stand by our principles, and we are going to do it now because of the urgency of this moment and the need of these refugees for temporary protective status.

Let us act now.

So, Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 8428, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I really regret this attack on a bill that was passed unanimously--Republicans, unanimously, and Democrats, unanimously--a bipartisan bill by the House of Representatives. If my colleagues are serious about moving a bill to the desk of the President, only this bill will do it because only this bill has been passed by the House of Representatives.

There is an urgency to this cause for the sake of these refugees who haven't been permitted to leave their country, haven't been sent by China, haven't simply come into this country as potential espionage agents. They have come here because they fought for freedom in their country. So to say that we have discovered that we need to stand up to China, sorry about that, but it is just preposterous.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I yield to the Senator from Illinois.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. The Senator from Illinois is absolutely right, and I was just going to, as a matter of fact, make that point because I think it is central to the objection that has been raised.

In fact, the people in danger here are already here. They are in danger if they are sent back, as they would be without that temporary protected status. So that point, I think, refutes, essentially, the argument that has just been made by our colleague from Texas.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. To answer the Senator from Illinois very directly, it is totally antithetical to the principles of democracy in the United States of America. It is totally abhorrent to the values of our constitutional Nation, and it is, frankly, absurd.

Here we are, according to my colleague from Texas, standing up and being tough on China, and we are doing what? We are sending back their opponents so they can imprison them and kill them? That is the notion of being tough on China--to enable them to imprison and kill their political opponents?

I ask my colleague from Texas to rethink the practical implications of this measure and to consider why the House of Representatives unanimously passed this. It doesn't lower the standards for political refugees coming to this country. It doesn't eliminate any security checks. It takes people, many of them living here already--not spies, by any means--and sends them back to the meat grinder of the repressive Chinese Communist Party. It may sound like good rhetoric to oppose this bill, but my colleague from Texas heard the testimony of these freedom fighters and why they need temporary protected status and why they support a safe harbor.

So I continue to insist that this bill, like the Rubio-Menendez bill, protects essential American values, and I ask him to reconsider his objection.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President.
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. There is simply no way it can pass both Houses of Congress in the next few days before the end of this Congress.

The only way we can do something for the freedom fighters and democracy advocates in Communist China is to pass this measure that he has objected to, which has unanimously passed the House of Representatives. Only H.R. 8428 offers that opportunity, and frankly, only this measure that he has objected to does anything for the dissidents or the democracy advocates or the freedom fighters directly.

He is talking about movies; we are talking about human lives. He can draw all the kinds of hypothetical connections between the so-called movie moguls in Hollywood and China, but I think his SCRIPT Act actually works against the goal that he is advocating.

Censorship in China is a legitimate concern, no question about it, and I would welcome the opportunity to work with him on a bill that does something about it. But actually his bill not only takes away the support for the movies that may be made; it takes away support for documentaries about the repressive regime in China, and it takes away classification and other security screening that are necessary for those kinds of movies to be shown in this country. I think that kind of obstacle may be inadvertent on his part. But I welcome the chance to work with him on a bipartisan bill, a truly bipartisan bill that, in fact, in the next Congress could reach the President's desk. This one that he is offering, the SCRIPT Act, goes nowhere.

But I just want to bring us back to the reality that really is at issue here. Just last Wednesday afternoon of this week, two of the activists among the six pro-democracy fighters living abroad, charged under China's new national security law, were before our committee. I am wondering what they are thinking when they hear my colleague from Texas pounding the table about being tough on China but objecting to a bill that guarantees them protection. As I say, I am talking about their lives and tens of thousands of others. I am not talking about movies. I am not talking about Hollywood moguls.

Let's stand up for the lives of those Chinese Hong Kong freedom fighters now in this country seeking protection through a bill passed unanimously by the House of Representatives--the only bill that will go to the President's desk if we approve it.

Thank you.
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, the only ones happy with the outcome of today's debate are the Chinese Government. I regret this outcome because there probably was a time when we would have cooperated in a bipartisan way on both of these matters.

It may not have been unanimous. There may have been a few contrary votes in the House, but clearly it came here with bipartisan support, and I regret that the outcome today is not bipartisan agreement to protect those freedom fighters who came before the Judiciary Committee and who have risked their lives.

This issue is not going away. We will be back because, fortunately, the activists from Hong Kong will persist in their fight, and we ought to do everything we can to make sure they have a safe haven in this country and that they are protected here.

So my closing plea to my colleague from Texas is that maybe there remains time, even in this setting, but, if not, we need to take a stand as a nation against Chinese censorship, against repression by the Chinese, and come together and work together. I thank the chairman.

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