It was the wife and young daughters of a Syrian refugee in Connecticut who were Mark Hetfield’s main focus Saturday. Hetfield, a 2016 Forward 50 honoree for his work as president and chief executive of HIAS — formerly called the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society — runs the only Jewish organization recognized by the U.S. government…
In her recent piece, “Our Great Moral Failure in Syria,” Forward Editor-in-Chief Jane Eisner calls attention to the American Jewish community for “inexcusably turning our backs on those in need” in Syria. Like Eisner, we are all grappling with the unconscionable amount of death, suffering and displacement we’ve witnessed in Syria over the past few…
Would your Jewish grandparents pass Donald Trump’s “extreme vetting” for potential immigrants to America? Would their country of origin fall under those “most dangerous and volatile regions of the world” from which immigration to the United States should be barred? Would they pass the bar of “those who share our values?” For at least one…
Uncertainty will continue to hound millions of immigrant families after the Supreme Court failed Thursday to reach a decision on the legality of President Barack Obama’s executive orders on immigration, pro-immigrant Jewish groups say. Texas, along with 25 other states, challenged Obama’s 2014 immigration policy deferring deportation for certain undocumented immigrants, saying it violated the…
Kudos to the calling on the United States government to welcome refugees from Syria. An impressive feat, even in the digital age, to gather such a large number of supporters on a hotly debated political topic in such a short period of time. Even so, the petition represents a fundamental misread of American Jewish history,…
With 12 million Syrians forced from their homes in the past four years, the refugee crisis has hit levels not seen since World War II. For Jewish charities in the field, September 3 was a turning point. That was the day multiple media outlets published photographs of a 3-year-old Syrian boy named Aylan Kurdi, showing…
Two U.S. Jewish organizations said the Obama administration’s offer to absorb at least 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year was inadequate. “Increasing the total number of refugees from 70,000 to 85,000 for next year and to 100,000 for the year after is a nice symbolic gesture,” Mark Hetfield, the president of HIAS, a Jewish…
Of the four million Syrians who have fled their war-torn country in recent years, at least 135,000 of them require immediate resettlement. But America has absorbed fewer than 1,000. For Jewish activists pushing the government to shift gears, that feeble number and the accompanying bottleneck in resettlement of Syrian refugees are troubling reminders of their…
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