HIAS President Mark Hetfield appeared on PBS Newshour on Wednesday evening to discuss the consequences of President Trump’s decision to suspend the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).
“We’ve raised lots of funding to welcome refugees to the United States, and now none of them are coming: including refugees who themselves are fleeing religious persecution, like Iranian religious minorities,” Hetfield said. “They can’t come. People who risked their lives for U.S. veterans in Afghanistan, who worked for the U.S. embassy in Kabul: They can’t come. People whose families were separated by conflict or war: Those people will remain separated, indefinitely. Those kids are, essentially, being orphaned by this Trump administration policy.”
“While we welcome refugees because it’s the right thing to do, it just also happens to be to the benefit of the economy, to the benefit to the country. Refugees are a blessing. They’re not a burden.”
