A Syrian Refugee Responds to Donald Trump
Of all Donald Trump's executive orders this week, the most repellant — the most grotesquely un-American — has been his ban on the entry of all refugees into the United States. The order is set to last for 120 days, except for Syrian refugees, who are barred from entering the country indefinitely; immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries has also been suspended for 90 days. As Oxfam president Raymond Offenheiser has noted, "The refugees impacted by today’s decision are among the world’s most vulnerable people — women, children, and men — who are simply trying to find a safe place to live after fleeing unfathomable violence and loss."
While in Michigan recently, reporting on how voters in my home county responded to Trump's economic message, I drove out to a suburban apartment complex to meet up with Nedal, a 30-year-old Syrian Muslim who’d come to Michigan in June 2015 as a refugee — the very month, it happens, that Trump launched his presidential campaign. (Nedal asked me not to use his last name, for fear of the safety of family members who remain in Syria.)
Detroit and its suburbs is home to a large and historic Middle Eastern population, both Christian and Muslim — Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis — as well as sizable group of Muslims from Bangladesh and Bosnia, and Michigan has accepted the second-highest number of Syrian refugees in the United States, after California. "Here in Michigan, you've seen first-hand the problems caused by the refugee program," Trump told his supporters at a campaign rally at Freedom Hill, a park in Sterling Heights, Michigan, not far from where I grew up. The claim was false, for there had been no problems, and in fact Michigan had been losing population for much of the past decade and needed new residents. (The state lost a congressional seat in 2000 and will likely lose a second in 2020.) No matter: Trump darkly warned of "large numbers of poorly vetted refugees coming into your state without your knowledge, support or approval."
Nedal grew up in Daraa, the southern city where the first Arab Spring-inspired protests against the dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad erupted. "The people watched Egypt, and we have hope, you know?" Nedal, who participated in the protests, told me, speaking in broken English.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/a-syrian-refugee-responds-to-donald-trump-w463568?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=013017_10
