Lawmakers in the United States who are currently in the throes of debate over the landmark immigration bill yesterday approved the provision relating to the giving of 5,000 US visas to refugees from Tibet to allow them to enter the country across the course of the next five years.
Senator Dianne Feinstein cited increasing and terrible oppression against Tibetans by Chinese authorities and offered the issue as an amendment to the massive legislation that is intended to fix the immigration system of the United States, which is widely perceived as being broken. Feinstein says that the measure, which has received approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee, will ease conditions for displaced Tibetan refugees currently living in Nepal and India, the former of which has Tibetan settlements that are now more than half a century old.
“In Nepal, the government has been essentially following Chinese mandates to make it very difficult for the Tibetan refugee community,” the veteran Democrat revealed. The immigration bill will eventually offer a 13-year pathway to US citizenship for the great majority of the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are currently living illegally in the United States, though the likelihood of it being able to get through both the Senate as well as the House of Representatives remains unclear.
Feinstein also pointed out that since 2009 over 110 Tibetans have self immolated, with the great majority dying as a result of their injuries, in demonstration of their opposition to Chinese oppression.