Setting the record straight on the Violence Against Women Act

During the recent House floor debate on the Republican Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle questioned my motives for opposing the legislation as grounded in politics. I think it’s time to set the record straight.

The truth is that I refuse to support legislation that would protect only some victims of domestic violence and would make women less safe than they are under current law. This is not about politics, it’s about good policy.

When I helped draft the Violence Against Women Act nearly twenty years ago it was grounded on the bipartisan belief that we should protect all women from sexual and domestic violence, particularly vulnerable minority and immigrant women. Now, behind the veil of reauthorizing certain grant programs, this bill would roll back the very protections that Republicans once championed. Specifically, the bill eliminates provisions that protect immigrant victims of serious crimes, such as trafficking, who want to help law enforcement put dangerous criminals behind bars and it weakens critical and longstanding provisions that allow the battered immigrant spouses of US citizens to escape those abusive relationships and obtain the permanent immigration status to which they are already entitled. These provisions were enacted in past VAWA bills with near-unanimous congressional support.

My colleagues have included these divisive provisions without any evidence to back up their claims. They have alleged fraud and government waste, but we have had no congressional hearings on the matter, we have received no written testimony to support these claims, and we have seen no studies or reports that suggest any such problem. On the contrary, police chiefs, captains, detectives, and front line officers have stated that the bill’s elimination of longstanding protections for immigrant victims of domestic violence will undermine their work to successfully apprehend criminals. Religious organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals have noted that the Republican bill will make non-citizen women less safe and could result in thousands of women remaining enslaved. Further yet, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which serves more than 1.3 million domestic violence victims in more than 2,000 shelter programs nationwide, has said unequivocally that these changes to existing law will endanger women’s lives.

The truth is that this could have been a bipartisan bill, just as it has been in two prior reauthorizations. For nearly a year, we conferred with our Republican and Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate. This bipartisan group worked with survivors, advocates, and law enforcement officers from across the country and identified what programs were working and what could be improved. However, the Republican House Leadership decided to introduce a measure that ignored nearly all of these negotiations and turned their back on hundreds of organizations. Despite efforts to assuage concerns with last minute changes to the bill, the Majority could not conceal the real harm that their legislation will cause. That is why 23 Republicans broke ranks to vote against the bill and over 300 organizations stood firm in their opposition.

I have spent my time in Congress dedicated to the Reverend Martin Luther King’s teachings that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. This commitment to justice for all persons has been at the center of my leadership on the Violence Against Women Act. It is going to take more than my colleagues shouting politics in a crowded house chamber to shake me from this commitment.

Rep. Conyers (D-Mich.) is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

---