Trump ignores U.S. values, strict refugee vetting

President Trump’s executive order suspending the State Department’s Refugee Assistance Program slashed the total number of refugees the U.S. would resettle by more than half in one fell swoop. With one signature, finding refuge in our “shining city upon a hill” suddenly became a dim prospect for the world’s most vulnerable individuals.

The executive order shocked many around the world. As Americans studying refugee and forced migration issues in the United Kingdom, we wake each morning to a deluge of U.S. policy developments, which undermine the values of freedom, equality, and liberty that underpin our national fabric. We struggle to come to terms with how rapidly the American political landscape has changed in our absence. One thing is clear: Trump’s approach is harmful, ineffectual, and reckless.

In addition to unjustly and arbitrarily casting entire nationalities as security threats, the executive order senselessly portrays refugees as potential terrorists. According to the Cato Institute, the chances of being murdered by a refugee in a terrorist attack was 1 in 3.64 billion a year from 1975 to 2015.

It also ignores the reality that, in order to be resettled to the United States, refugees must undergo what is widely recognized as the most stringent screening process in the world. When a refugee is referred to the U.S. for resettlement, she has already been identified by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees as a vulnerable individual — a category which includes survivors of torture, those with medical needs, and women and children at risk.

She then faces a second intensive screening, which prior to this order involved nine different government agencies, and took 18 to 24 months to complete for Syrian applicants. Adding more measures to an already exhaustive vetting process serves little purpose but to waste resources and hold individuals who have already proven their vulnerability in a state of legal limbo.

This injustice is compounded by the order that the U.S. resettlement quota be reduced from 110,000 to 50,000 this year, when global forced displacement is at an all-time high. The United States has historically been the world’s largest country of resettlement, providing the majority of placements for resettled refugees worldwide. However, these refugees still comprised only 1 percent of the total refugee population in 2016.

In a world where conflicts are not only proliferating, but also becoming more protracted, resettlement serves as one of the only durable, dignified solutions to refugees’ plight. Currently, 10 countries, which combined make up just 2.5 percent of the world’s GDP, host 86 percent of the world’s population of refugees. Many of the refugees live in precarious conditions without access to livelihoods, legal status, or future prospects. Resettlement is thus a precious resource that the United States should not deprive to the world’s neediest.

Fighting this unjust policy will be a long and difficult legislative and judicial battle, requiring sustained public scrutiny and activism. As Judge Learned Hand, who served as a federal judge during World War II, said: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.” In other words, activism rests with ordinary people who will have to fight for the values they hold dear.

This requires courage and resilience — traits that refugees themselves exemplify. Throughout history, refugees have resisted political and religious persecution by taking matters into their own hands and escaping violence. They have risked their lives in search of protection, while maintaining hope for a better future. Their unyielding quest for liberty and freedom is a testament to human resilience.

Like the refugees we fight to protect, we too can resist injustice. And even from abroad, we can, and we will, raise our voices to ensure that the United States holds firm to its commitment to accept those “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” who have always formed the foundation of our nation.

Gina Starfield, the daughter of South African immigrants, was born and raised in Newton. Mia Tong is the daughter of a father from Massachusetts and a mother from Japan. Jade Huynh is the daughter of South Vietnamese refugees who were resettled to the United States in the late 1970s. All are currently reading for an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration at the University of Oxford.