10 Jewish Groups Defend Plan To Admit Refugees
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Ten Jewish groups are among 81 joined in a letter to every member of Congress urging them not to roll back plans to accept Syrian refugees into the United States.
“To turn our back on refugees would be to betray our nation’s core values,” said the letter sent Tuesday, as Congress began considering measures which would put a stop to the Obama administration’s plans to bring in 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year. “It would send a demoralizing and dangerous message to the world that the United States makes judgments about people based on the country they come from and their religion.”
Among the Jewish groups signing are: the Union for Reform Judaism, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.
Calls, especially from Republicans, to stop the refugee plan have proliferated since the massive terrorist attack in Paris last Friday. There is evidence that one of the attackers may have slipped in with the refugees flooding Europe. A majority of state governors, most of them Republicans, have said their states will not take in the refugees, although states have little say in where refugees are settled.
Defenders of Obama’s plan say that the 10,000 refugees the United States is taking in is a tiny fraction of the millions of refugees created by the war, as well as the close to 300,000 refugees Europe is absorbing. Additionally, they say, while Europe, flooded with boatloads of asylum seekers, is taking in refugees on an ad-hoc basis, refugees applying for U.S. asylum must undergo months of vetting.
“We call on members of Congress to oppose any effort to limit the acceptance of Syrian refugees, just as we urge public officials and figures across the U.S. to reject divisive and inflammatory statements that do not reflect our history as a nation founded by descendants of those who fled persecution in search of freedom,” said a statement by the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center.
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