Obama: U.S. should be ‘beacon of hope’
President visits refugee center in Kuala Lumpur
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The young woman was never identified, even though the president of the United States was about to make her the public face of an international crisis.
At 8 years old she fled Myanmar and, separated from her family, became a victim of trafficking before the United Nations helped her resettle in Malaysia. Now, she advocates for others facing a similar plight, a role she played symbolically Saturday as President Barack Obama introduced her and six others who would soon resettle in the U.S. as “the face of people all around the world who look to the United States as a beacon of hope.”
“American leadership is us caring about people who have been forgotten, or who have been discriminated against, or who’ve been tortured, or who’ve been subject to unspeakable violence or who’ve been separated from families at very young ages,” Obama said. “That’s when we’re the shining light on the hill. Not when we respond on the basis of fear.”
Obama’s remarks, an implicit rebuke of the debate in the U.S. over whether to allow Syrian refugees to settle in the U.S., came during his visit to a center that assists refugees who have fled to Malaysia.
The stop during his 10-day, three-nation tour seemed a safer way for Obama to acknowledge the global crisis over a flow of migrants from war-torn countries than if he had made a similar visit earlier in his trip, which began in Turkey, at the doorstep of the Syrian crisis.
White House officials said scheduling and logistics concerns, not political ones, dictated the schedule and that bring- ing refugees to the heavily secured resort city in Turkey where Obama attended the Group of 20 summit would have appeared manufactured.
Obama used the refugee center visit to again assail what he has called a “spasm” of anti-refugee rhetoric in the U.S., which included House-passed legislation to raise new barriers to admitting refugees from Syria.
“When people have a chance to hear the individual stories here, you will see the degree to which they represent the opposite of terrorism, the opposite of the despicable violence that we saw” in Paris, Obama said. “We should lift them up.”