Asst. Secretary of State on Syrian refugees: If only you could meet them….
…..your heart would melt (she didn't exactly say that!).
This is from one more article on the growing conflict about how many Syrian Muslim refugees we should admit to the US. Frankly, there are so many of these stories, I’m having trouble keeping track! This one is from the Associated Press, here.
Anne C. Richard, Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration echoes a sentiment that permeates our refugee admission policy in the US. I’ve seen it used at the local level where the resettlement contractorsparade out some sympathetic refugees in an attempt to soften any opposition to resettlement.
Our federal policy (what is right for America!) should be made in a clear-eyed way, not clouded by gooey emotions or done under pressure from the United Nations!
We might all have sympathy for those who live in hellholes around the world, but that doesn't mean we have to invite them here in large numbers.
Honestly those promoters of more refugees for your towns and cities cannot give you any real reason as to why we need to do this without falling back on guilt-tripping emotionalism.
Here is what Richard told AP:
“These are people I think that if most Americans met them, their instinct would immediately be, ‘We have to help these people,'” Anne Richard, the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
[….]
“I think if we talk about just this faceless mob of people from conflict-ridden lands, it seems very scary,” the State Department’s Richard said. “But if you meet individuals and individual families, you start to understand the very, very human nature of what it means to be a refugee.”
Everyone with such maudlin impulses should use your own resources, adopt a third world child or family, or send your own money abroad to help them there and leave the rest of us out of it!
Egg on face?
Last October Richard told the world at a meeting in Berlin (a kind of pledging event) that the US was stepping up now to bring in Syrians in a big way and said we have 5,000 in the pipeline that the UN has picked for us. See our post. In December she said there were 9,000 in the UN’s pipeline to America.
If you missed it, see our hierarchy of who is in charge of refugee policy in the United States.