This week I had the opportunity to visit Washington and lobby on behalf of refugees seeking sanctuary in the United States. I did so along with other members of the Board of Directors of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. During the trip, we met with officials from the National Security Council (the office that advises the President on policy matters), the Office of Homeland Security, the Department of State, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugees and Resettlement, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. The individuals with whom we met include some of the top ranking members of the government.
HIAS, at 121 years old, is the world’s oldest refugee assistance organization. It originally began as an agency focused on helping Jewish refugees fleeing persecution and hunger in Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century. Today it helps refugees from all over the world and from a variety of religious faiths – Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Bahai, and many more – find their way to America. After they arrive, HIAS assists in making their resettlement go smoothly.
What could be a more American value worth fighting for in the war in which our country finds itself? Whether one is talking about the original Puritan Christian settlers in the US who found religious freedom in the US in the 17th century or Jews fleeing the Russian Czar’s pogroms in the 19th century or Muslim Kosovar refugees seeking a safe haven in the US in recent years, the notion of the American “Golden Door” open to people seeking asylum is engrained in our nation’s psyche. For more than a century, the nation’s most visible symbol has been the Statue of Liberty, which has become synonymous with the refugee experience. And Emma Lazarus’ famous poem at the base of Lady Liberty welcoming the immigrant yearning to be free is still as relevant today as when it was written.
But the continuing American commitment to help the refugee is now, to be very frank, in serious doubt. Despite the Bush Administration’s statement that it remains committed to the international refugee settlement program our country has participated in through the United Nations for the last 50 years, the facts are disheartening. At the beginning of the government fiscal year that began last October, the Bush Administration committed to resettling 70,000 of the world’s refugees in this country. When the fiscal year ends next week, not even 30,000 will have made it to American shores.
And just this past week, President Bush’s refugee targets for the new fiscal year that begins next week were released. Again, 70,000 will be the target. Why not allow the 40,000 cases not processed as promised this year to be included in the numbers? HIAS’ board members asked this question of a number of the people with whom we met. Not only does the Administration have no interest in making good on accepting 70,000 cases this year, it actually admitted that the 70,000 number in its proposal to Congress is not going to be met. In reality, the Administration really expects to process just 50,000 refugees. This is less than half of the number of refugees we were settling in this country just a few years ago.
September 11th is the excuse being offered by our government for failing to meet its promises. And while there is no denying that security is a legitimate factor in processing refugee cases, we should not lose sight of the fact that no person who has entered through the refugee program has been arrested in connection with terrorism.
Right now, security checks for refugees are taking in excess of eight months. Checks on individuals seeking to enter the US through a non-immigrant or immigrant visa take just a fraction of that time. Refugees frequently languish in difficult conditions in UN-administered camps or in countries that are far from welcoming. One fact that I learned on this trip to Washington after discussing the issue of “security advisory opinions” with officials from the White House as well as the State Department and the INS is that the lengthy processing times are largely a function of the failure to devote sufficient resources to the process. Security has simply made the process of screening refugees more expensive and the Administration is basically admitting that it does not believe spending the money. While I understand that the economic situation in this country is tight, the amount of money necessary to process the refugees is really a very small amount in proportion to the overall US budget. And it is money that we have managed to find for the last fifty years.
Do we need to re-learn the lesson of the 1930s and 1940s? Most countries in the world did not have refugee programs and the world turned away those trying to flee Hitler’s death machine. While Hitler and the Nazis are primarily to blame for the horrors of that error, the rest of the world – including the US – bore blame as well when it turned away those who attempted to flee. When we signed on to the International Conventional on Refugees in 1951 we promised to never turn our backs on refugees again. Let us not break that promise.
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