We are dismayed and outraged that, amid a global refugee crisis, the Trump administration is turning its back on the world’s most vulnerable people and decreasing the United States’ refugee admissions rates to a record low.
Responding to the administration’s Sept. 17 announcement that it will limit refugee admissions to 30,000 people in 2019, T’ruah Executive Director Rabbi Jill Jacobs said, “This historically low refugee admissions goal is an unconscionable abandonment of our moral and legal responsibilities during a world refugee crisis. As Jews, we know too well the pain of fleeing from countries where we are no longer safe, and seeking refuge in new places. In the U.S. Jewish community, many of our own families are alive today because of the relatively open immigration policies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And we know the tragic results of the US closing its borders to Jews in 1924.”
The number announced by the administration is a 50 percent cut from the current year and would be the lowest amount of refugees allowed since the establishment of the United States’ refugee program in 1980.
Since entering office, President Donald J. Trump has launched an all-out assault on refugees and asylum seekers, slashing the refugee ceiling, which had averaged 96,229, to 45,000 in 2018, then admitting only 20,918 so far this year. This is in addition to implementing its draconian “zero tolerance” policy toward all immigrants and asylum seekers crossing the Mexico border, refusing to accept gang violence and domestic violence as reasons for granting asylum, imposing a Muslim ban and aggressively pursuing undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
We are proud to stand with HIAS, the Jewish community’s refugee agency, and other Jewish and interfaith organizations in calling for the Trump administration to restore the refugee admissions goal to at least 75,000. We urge Congress to decry the immoral admissions goal of 30,000, and to demand that the United States do our part to protect those fleeing violence and oppression.
T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights mobilizes a network of more than 2,000 rabbis and cantors from all streams of Judaism that, together with the Jewish community, act on the Jewish imperative to respect and advance the human rights of all people. Grounded in Torah and our Jewish historical experience and guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we call upon Jews to assert Jewish values by raising our voices and taking concrete steps to protect and expand human rights in North America, Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories.
To learn more or to speak with T’ruah Executive Director Rabbi Jill Jacobs, contact Julie Wiener at jwiener@truah.org
