Trump’s freeze on immigrants and refugees

Excerpts of LA Times editorial:

President Trump … temporarily freezing immigration from seven Muslim nations and halting refugee resettlements from everywhere [provides] just the kind of symbolic act that gives weight to radical Islamists when they argue that the U.S. is an enemy of their faith.

Such efforts to restrict access to the U.S. by people fleeing war-torn parts of the world [is] misguided and inhumane. The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, reported in 2015 that in the 14 years after the 9/11 terror attacks, 784,000 refugees resettled in the U.S. Yet during that time only three resettled refugees were convicted on terror-related charges — two of them for plotting against an overseas target and the third for hatching “plans that were barely credible,” according to the report.

What’s more, a study by the New America Foundation shows that 80% of the terrorist attacks in this country since 9/11 have been carried out by American citizens (although some of those perpetrators were naturalized citizens).

The U.S. became a wealthy world power in large part through immigration. And its openness has provided a lifeline to the oppressed of the world. … Trump’s actions are not only inhumane, they are a betrayal of what the United States stands for.

This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid, International Cooperation by Grant Montgomery.