Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

10 Jewish Groups Defend Plan To Admit Refugees

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.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.