SENATE BILL: September 2017 Foreign Relations Review (Passed)

[Anna Komnene]

As I understand it, the Come Out of the Shadows Act designates countries that account for 5% or more of unauthorized migration as priority recipients for aid from 2017-2021. It was hard to find currents stats for this, but the the research I did says those countries are Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. So I guess they would need to be designated "most priority." on the economic side of things.

[Anna Komnene]

I agree with Senator Wallace on Saudi Arabia, and I agree with Senator Spiral on Egypt, Thailand, and the Philippines.

On the subject of reservations, I wonder if it's really necessary to have full sanctions on Iran in our world, given that President dfwlibertylover visited them and we passed a joint resolution that officially apologized to them (and others) for past military coups. I feel like imposing sanctions on the would not be in the spirit of our recent policies toward them - and if we are going to antagonize Saudi Arabia, it would be a good idea to keep building a better relationship with Iran.

[Anna Komnene]

Nay

I'm skeptical of most sanctions on principle because I don't think they usually do any good unless their targeted for a really specific reason and usually hurt ordinary people more than the governments we're trying to change. So I don't support blanket sanctions just because a country is authoritarian.

[Anna Komnene]

I'm not sure of the order of things, but I'd like to propose an amendment too to address the concerns I mentioned about complying w/ the come out of the shadows act and also the Iran relationship.

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[Anna Komnene]

Abstain

[Anna Komnene]

I'll put forward the House amendment so we can try to start getting our bills aligned.

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Status: Adopted

I suggest everyone take a look through to make sure there isn't anything else we want to amend or debate too. It's been a while since we've talked about this one.

[Anna Komnene]

Should this be something that we advance towards a final vote by now? I'm largely pleased with the bill as it stands and debate hasn't gone on in a while.

I'd like to but I've pretty much been waiting for the House for the past few weeks. There's MAJOR feet dragging over there. It's not clear whether they are going to pass the bill in the same form, and I'm worried that if we pass different bills, there could be issues that I don't want to deal with. This is why I don't like the idea of having the same bill in both houses at the same time.

[Anna Komnene]

Now that it looks like the House will adopt our amendments and we've adopted their's I'm going to post the updated review in a series of posts. And hopefully we can get this monstrosity done some time very soon.

I do have one question: As it relates to the amendment we adopted from the House, I created an addendum in the bill for it... but does it mean I should be revising all 'unrecognized' countries with that moniker in this bill? And if so, could someone please give me a list of what those countries are so I can do that?

Edit: Nevermind... I figured it out on my own!

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[Anna Komnene]

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[Anna Komnene]

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People's Regional Senate
Pending
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[Anna Komnene]

Alrighty. I've got a new amendment to introduce since the House adopted it with the following rationale.

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Also, I would like to propose an amendment fully restricting military aid to Russia. American companies should not be supplying an aggressive regime hell-bent on disturbing the international order.

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[Anna Komnene]

Disagree. The change is only on the military side of things and its moving from partial to full. I don't see why we should be supplying a state with weaponry that insists on doing its own thing regardless of what anyone in Atlasia says anyway.  Especially when many of those actions are contrary to Atlasian interests such as waging aggressively illegal campaigns in Ukraine and Georgia.

[Anna Komnene]

I guess we aren't going to get any more discussion on this, so I'll bring the amendment to a vote. Senators please vote AYE, NAY, or ABSTAIN.

[Anna Komnene]

Aye

[Anna Komnene]

With 3 votes in favor, 1 against, and 2 not voting, the amendment is adopted.

The Senate and the House have the same version of the FRR now.

[Anna Komnene]

I'll start a final vote on this tomorrow unless anyone has anything to add.

[Anna Komnene]

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[Anna Komnene]

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[Anna Komnene]

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People's Regional Senate
Pending
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[Anna Komnene]

The above text is the final version of the 2017 Foreign Relations Review. Senators please vote AYE, NAY, or ABSTAIN.

[Anna Komnene]

Aye aye sir

[Anna Komnene]

This has enough votes to pass. Senators have 24 hours to change their votes.

[Anna Komnene]

With four votes in favor, none against, and 2 not voting, the 2017 Foreign Relations Review passes the Atlasian Senate. ( !! )

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[Anna Komnene]

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[Anna Komnene]

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People's Regional Senate
Passed 4-0-2 in the Atlasian Senate assembled

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