Trump’s new refugee limits are heartless
The Modesto area has long been welcoming to newcomers. We have active, contributing residents who have come from Mexico, Iran, the Azores, Honduras, India, Afghanistan, China, Fiji, Vietnam – you name it. Our churches, our schools and their new neighbors have, for the most part, made them feel welcome.
Some of them, often the most grateful, were refugees. They arrived with nothing to their names, feeling blessed simply to be in a place where bombs weren’t exploding. Where their children could dream instead of being terrorized by living nightmares. Stanislaus County has two of California’s 26 refugee relocation centers – the same as Oakland, twice as many as San Francisco. It’s something we should be proud of.
We help refugees, and we’re better for it. So it should concern us that President Trump has decided to further reduce the number of refugees allowed into our nation by a third. At 45,000, we already were at the lowest number in our history. He’s putting the number at 30,000. Literally, people will die due to this action. Newspapers across the nation decried his heartless decision.
Bloomberg View – Even by this administration’s standards, the policy just announced is impressive in its heartlessness, cynicism and dishonesty. ... The U.S. is closing its doors as the global ranks of the dispossessed reach historic highs. The U.N. estimates that 25.4 million people have been displaced from their home countries due to war and persecution. Of that, 1.4 million are thought to need urgent resettlement in other countries next year, a 17 percent increase over 2018. ... The U.S.’s commitment to aiding and resettling refugees is something to celebrate, not repudiate. The administration should be ashamed – and Congress should be too, if it consents to let this happen.
Charlotte (N.C.) Observer – Allowing vetted refugees into the country is not just some feel-good altruistic move. It’s strategically helpful to the United States in a number of ways. It rewards and encourages locals to help U.S. personnel in combat zones. It also builds goodwill between the U.S. and those countries closest to the war zones that are carrying the biggest burden from housing refugees. ... Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement of the record-low ceiling is yet another moment when the Trump administration forces America to ask itself what its true and lasting values are. Do we want to continue to be a caring and compassionate nation while remaining secure? Or must we turn inward and insular and abandon the role of world leader we have played for 200 years?
Kansas City Star – We’re once again drastically cutting the number of refugees who can resettle in the U.S. while we concentrate on asylum cases. We’re concentrating on them, all right – turning some of those fleeing persecution away at the border and jailing others, for the perfectly legal act of claiming asylum. ... The policies (Pompeo is) so willing to defend may be good politics, but they put lives at risk.
New York Daily News – Perhaps we should be grateful that, having thrown away age-old ideals that this country is the protector of the persecuted, defender of the oppressed, champion of the despised, the nativists in the Trump administration set the ceiling for refugee admissions at 30,000, and not zero. The cap of 45,000 was already the lowest since the program began in 1980; the actual total admitted was less than 34,000. The prior year, responding to roiling wars and turmoil worldwide, President Obama set the max at 110,000, and almost 97,000 gained entry. To President Trump and his advisers, strangers are threats; admitting them is weakness. Don’t tell them about the legacy of Albert Einstein, Sergey Brin, Madeleine Albright and Hannah Arendt. Just pull up the ramp. ... Refugee status is the true lifeline. One being yanked back before our eyes.