Trump flirts with a new age of American timidity - WaPo Editorial Board
By Editorial Board September 17 at 7:19 PM
PRESIDENT TRUMP wants to keep Confederate monuments where they are, but he may be preparing the ideological justification for removing a far more important symbol of enduring American values: the Statue of Liberty. Having already cut refugee resettlement by more than half, compared with the Obama administration, officials close to Mr. Trump are pushing for a further draconian reduction, to levels not seen since the Cold War. If Mr. Trump backs such a proposal, the message to those fleeing persecution and violence would be to shelter in place — any place, as long as it’s not the United States.
So much for welcoming the tired, huddled masses.
A report in the New York Times describes an initiative driven by White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller that would whack annual refugee admittances below the current cap fixed by Mr.?Trump of 50,000, already the lowest number since at least 1980 and less than half the 110,000?that President Barack Obama set in his last year in office.
Mr. Miller is said to have urged a ceiling of 15,000?annual admittances, fewer than the number of new refugees fleeing persecution and violence each day — about 28,000, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. That hints at the administration’s indifference to the world’s refugees, who now number about 17 million (not counting Palestinians). Half of them are children.
The stated rationales for further refugee cuts — concerns over terrorists sneaking in, and the costs involved — are not defensible. In fact, both the Obama and Trump administrations have tightened vetting for refugees, who are now the subject of exhaustive background checks despite the fact that very few terrorist attacks, in the United States or Europe, have been carried out by refugees. As for the cost, most is borne by private resettlement agencies.
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