Speaking at the ongoing Agudah Israel Leadership Mission to Washington, D.C., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he is working on resolving issues that have recently cropped up with Americans seeking to fly home for Pesach.
As reported earlier by YWN, many couples who gave birth to children in Eretz Yisroel over the past several months have found it exceedingly difficult to get passports for their newborns.
Many couples who arrived at the US Embassy on David Flusser Street in Yerushalayim on Monday morning were denied entry, with embassy workers telling them that anyone without previously documented US citizenship cannot receive an emergency passport. These new rules precluded the newborns from being awarded passports, despite the obvious illogicity of it all.
The situation at the embassy escalated and workers began getting feisty with the young couples, threatening to call security if the applicants didn’t move away.
Similar scenes were reported at the Tel Aviv Embassy Branch Office as well.
“Nothing is more important than family, and I know that you have children who are married… and they want to come home for Pesach…. they want to come back to their Mishpacha for Pesach…. So we’re working on getting that done,” Schumer told Agudah officials.
Agudah Israel has spent quite some time on this issue, and has been in touch with Chaim V’Chessed as well as Amudim who are both working on this issue. Agudah has been in touch with numerous Senators and other U.S. Government officials to try and solve this crisis.
Attached is a letter which was sent as a formality to Senator Schumer, to which he has already pledged to work on immediately (see video above).
Amudim and Chaim V’Chessed are also working intensely to resolve this issue. The organizations have jointly launched a webpage to gather information from families affected by this situation. If you have been prevented from receiving travel documents to travel to the US, please submit your information on this page.
This will allow Amudim and Chaim V’Chessed to present actual data to the relevant agencies, in the hopes that a solution can be found quickly.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
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13 Responses
Thank you Senator
This is Hashems way of telling folks they should be Oleh Regel.
Schumer is a known liar and cannot be trusted.
I received an email from Chaim V’Chessed that they will be doing a CRBA and 1st passport event.
This is being done in full cooperation with the embassy and hopefully can become a regular event which would ease much of the stress on the embassy schedule.
also, @aml I don’t know if you understood a word of this article, but this is regarding an issue where American ex-pats couldn’t get the paperwork to visit family. This has nothing to do with easing the ability to visit Israel.
Happy that something is being done to rectify this obvious illegal and absurd situation, but “illogicity” is not a word! Just saying…
Should we really be thanking Schumer for anything. He’s not been a supporter of Israel when it counts.
we need to show much hakaras hatov to our selfless dedicated askanim who fight for the klal day in and day out and who we need to be mevater to when they tell us who to vote for as they know best as they follow daas Torah.
This is a problem that started with the current democratic administration. They are anti isreal anti religion anti Jewish.
And we keep putting them in office
Snd yes same thing occurred under Obama
@fakenews, because you didn’t understand the comment from aml doesn’t mean that he didn’t understand the article…
kollel faker this has been going on under trump too, sorry
#americaninisrael
cherrybim: Welcome back! It’s been ages…
Thank you ujm.
I reluctantly stopped reading YWN long ago when my comments were not getting through.
And when Trump lost the election, I, a news addict, made a serious commitment to avoid all news media and all news discussions, even with family and friends. I stuck to this and am proof that it can be done. I think that I am a better person and Yid for it.
But I know that Schumer has lied to Rabbonim and other Jewish leaders while looking them in the eye. We continue to be naïve as a result of our hoping that this time will be different.
cherrybim: Thank you.