Fundamentally, you are still going to have the same, basic
policy outcome for the country. Stephen Miller. We are in the midst of the largest refugee crisis in the history of
the world. More than 65 million people have been forcibly displaced
from their homes. The brutal Syrian conflict--the epicenter of this
crisis--has killed hundreds of thousands, injured more than a million,
and displaced more than half of Syria's population. In some areas,
children in this country--in the 21st century--are starving to death. The conflict has forced more than 4.7 million refugees to flee Syria. Around 70 percent of all Syrian refugees are women and children. Half
of the Syrian refugee children are not in school. Millions in and
outside of Syria are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. We cannot forget the lessons of history. In 1939, the United States
refused to let the SS St. Louis dock in our country, sending over 900
Jewish refugees back to Europe, where many died in concentration camps. After that tragic moral failure in the United States--after we turned
our back on Jewish refugees who were fleeing Hitler--the United States
examined its conscience and came up with a new program. It came up with
a new approach, and it was bipartisan. Since World War II, the American
people have worked to set an example for the world by accepting
refugees. Listen to those who have been accepted and made a part of America--
almost 400,000 Eastern Europeans after World War II, close to 400,000
Vietnamese refugees fleeing the Vietnam war, approximately 650,000
Cuban refugees after Castro came to power. Let me note, parenthetically, that, of the four Hispanic U.S. Senators today, three can trace their roots to this Cuban migration to
the United States, and their families were refugees. They sit on the
floor of the Senate and represent some of our great States. Yet, with
this President, he is asking them and all of us to ignore this history. We have accepted more than 150,000 refugees from the former
Yugoslavia. Over 100,000 Soviet Jews, who were escaping the persecution
of their religion and looking for freedom, came to the United States. Many of these refugees were fleeing regimes that were hostile to our
country. Some argued that spies and other hostile elements could be
hidden among them. Think about the hundreds of thousands who came from Communist-
controlled Cuba into the United States.
Keywords matched
refugee refugees