President Barack Obama has directed his administration to prepare to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees next year, up from 1,000 this past year – but that’s far fewer than the 100,000 Jewish refugee aid organization HIAS wants the U.S. government to resettle, The Jewish Week reports.
KQED Radio: Should the U.S. Be Doing More to Help Solve the Syrian Refugee Crisis? Sep 09, 2015 HIAS Vice President of Policy and Advocacy Melanie Nezer appeared on San Francisco NPR affiliate KQED's Forum program to discuss U.S. refugee policy. Note: Nezer first appears at 17:15 in the program. European Refugee CrisisRefugee ResettlementSyria
The Jerusalem Post reached out to Jewish aid organizations across the globe to find out what role they are playing to help refugees from Syria and the region and spoke with HIAS President and CEO Mark J. Hetfield.
"As the plight of Syrian refugees and their harrowing attempts to enter Europe dominate international media, calls have mounted for the United States to play a greater role in managing the crisis," Karina Piser writes in World Politics Review. “This isn’t how the refugee referral process should be happening,” says Melanie Nezer, vice president of policy and advocacy at HIAS.
HIAS President and CEO Mark J. Hetfield discussed the current European refugee crisis and what the US should be doing to help with NPR's Robert Siegel on All Things Considered, Friday September 4.
With more than four million Syrians displaced by the conflict, the capacity of neighboring countries is being tested. In July, food assistance for Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan was cut in half due to lack of funds, leaving a refugee family in Lebanon to subsist on the equivalent of $13.50 per person per month. And the situation may soon become even more dire.
Despite almost daily headlines detailing the dangers of crossing the Mediterranean by sea, refugees are still braving the waves in record numbers. Greece, a part of the European Union, is supposed to have an asylum system “harmonized” with the rest of Europe. In practice, though, Greece is about as well integrated with the rest of Europe on the asylum front as it is economically.
VICE's Meredith Hoffman took on domestic islamophobia in a July 13 story entitled Why Are Republicans So Scared of Syrian Refugees? HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield is quoted describing how the less-than-welcoming attitude to Syrian refugees is surprising given America's history of welcoming refugees.
Waiting Two Years for Resettlement Isn’t Really Rescue Jun 26, 2015 HIAS Vice President for Policy and Advocacy Melanie Nezer was quoted in a June 25 article in The Forward which reported on Jewish groups efforts to change US Government refugee resettlement policy, particularly to alleviate the current bottleneck in resettlement of Syrian refugees. “Waiting two years for resettlement isn’t […]
It is impossible to avoid the stories of massive human displacement from Burma, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, and Afghanistan, and hordes of boat migrants dying in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. There was a time when refugees were a front-page issue for the American Jewish community. That is no longer the case, and we must do better.
