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 Foreign Ops Bill Now Includes Waivers for Innocent Victims of TerrorJan 29, 2008 Innocent terror victims who were forced to provide “material support” to terrorist organizations now have an easier path to asylum in the United States thanks to the recently passed 2008 Foreign Operation Appropriations Act (H.R. 2764). The original ban in the 2001 PATRIOT Act was created to protect the United States from persons seeking to endanger U.S. citizens; however, the language was so broad that it netted innocent victims of torture who sought refuge in the United States.
“These people were double victims. They were victims of the terrorists who forced them to pay. And then they were victims of this indiscriminate law. The new provisions acknowledge their particular situation,” said Angela Wu, International Director of Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
In an effort to narrow the language of the law so that only the guilty were banned, a coalition of human rights groups including the Becket Fund worked to make the “material support ban” more specific and to provide waivers to terrorism’s victims who had been denied refugee status. The new law establishes a tough national security policy that is more effective in identifying the true enemy while also protecting the innocent.
Terrorist organizations sometimes force asylum seekers to provide “material support” – for example, pay ransoms, provide services, and join their militias. Religious minorities including Assyrian Christians, Iraqi Chaldeans, Laotian Hmong, the Mandaeans (Iraq/Iran), the Montagnards (Vietnam) and the Yezidi (Iraq) have been targeted in the past. Under the 2001 PATRIOT Act, the United States barred these persecuted individuals from seeking refuge within U.S. borders because they had provided "material support" to terrorist organizations.
To read the text of the Foreign Operations Bill, click here.
To read the Becket Fund’s letter to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the issue, click here.
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