This week, the International Organization for Migration reported that more than 100,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Greece and Italy this year. And it's only February. Here’s what you need to know.
The Holocaust survivors in the Righteous Conversations Project are very aware of the experience of the refugee and those who seek asylum and rescue from murderous regimes. For them, this is more than a problem that is unfolding on the other side of the planet. It is a story with kinship to their own. Recently, Los Angeles area high school students and Holocaust survivors teamed up to make a series of video public service announcements.
A barber. A tailor. A carpenter. Elementary and pre-school kids. Just a few of the Syrian refugees HIAS President Mark Hetfield met on a recent visit to Toledo, Ohio.
Before September 2, refugees were one more important issue on a long list of social ills, but after that day, there was a great outpouring of Jewish interest and communal support for refugees. Congregations, individuals, schools, organizations -- everyone wanted to know how they could help, and especially how they could support the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their communities.
WASHINGTON—Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, the global Jewish nonprofit that protects refugees, released the following statement in response to the attacks in Paris and Beirut last week.
António Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told the audience at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that this is a manageable problem for Europe, but “there is one condition for a problem to be manageable -- it must be managed.”
What happens to the refugees the U.S. accepts for resettlement here? A recent State Department briefing on the United States Refugee Admissions Program provides some valuable insight for those newly curious about the world of refugee resettlement.
“Increasing the total number of refugees from 70,000 to 85,000 for next year and to 100,000 for the year after is a nice symbolic gesture,” Mark Hetfield, the president of HIAS, said Sunday in a statement. “It is a baby step in the right direction. But it is not leadership.”
“The United States admits a million legal immigrants a year. Most are students, or come on tourist visas. Anyone who wishes us harm would not do it through the resettlement process,” Melanie Nezer tells Jewish Week.
"Jewish American groups, saying they can’t be bystanders as the worst refugee crisis since World War II unfolds, are joining Arab-American leaders in a critique of existing policies, which have sharply limited the numbers of refugees settled in the United States," The Washington Post reports.