Rep. Lamar Smith’s characterization of the Lautenberg Amendment fails to explain the rationale behind this legislation, which enables religious minorities to escape religious persecution.
Without the Lautenberg Amendment, the ability of the U.S. to protect persecuted religious minorities would be greatly diminished. Under U.S. law, a refugee must prove a “well-founded fear of persecution” on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion. The Lautenberg Amendment was adopted in 1989 to help Jews and other persecuted religious minorities flee the USSR, and was later expanded to cover religious minorities from Iran.
Congress enacted the Lautenberg Amendment because U.S. refugee adjudicators were inconsistent in their determinations about whether cases of discrimination on the basis of religion, state restrictions on religious practices, and hostile acts against religious groups or individuals by non-state actors rose to the level of persecution. The amendment provides guidance to refugee adjudicators to ensure more consistent decisions for members of specified historically persecuted religious minorities.
With no embassy in Tehran, the United States has long relied on the kindness of the Austrian government to host U.S. refugee processing for Iranians seeking religious freedom. In 2003, before the Lautenberg Amendment was expanded to include Iranian religious minorities, the Austrian government essentially closed down this escape route because too many Iranians were stranded in Vienna when the United States rejected their cases. The Austrian government allowed the U.S. to restart processing only after the Lautenberg Amendment was extended to these groups. Without the Lautenberg Amendment, Iranian Christians, Jews, and other religious minorities will not likely be able to safely access the U.S. Refugee Program.
— Tina Ramirez is director of government relations at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.