World Refugee Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, it has been said many times before, but it bears repeating today more than ever, on World Refugee Day--ours is a country built by immigrants. We have a proud tradition of welcoming foreigners to our shores.

The first European settlers in North America--those who founded our original Thirteen Colonies--were fleeing religious oppression and persecution. Over the following decades, America became, in the words of Thomas Paine, ``the asylum for the persecuted.'' We welcomed Irish Catholics fleeing starvation and British rule, Germans fleeing political turmoil, Eastern European Jews fleeing the pogroms, and countless others. Over the generations, America welcomed Europeans displaced by war, and later, millions of refugees seeking political asylum from Communism during the Cold War.

In 1980, we passed landmark legislation--the Refugee Act--which provided a permanent and systemized procedure for admitting refugees. This law established the concept of a Presidential determination on refuge admissions, by which the President can set the number of refugees that the United States may admit in a given year. For the past 40 years, both Democratic and Republican administrations demonstrated a commitment to robust resettlement. Prior to the Trump administration, the average annual refugee admissions cap was 95,000 refugees. Administration officials of both parties took seriously the Presidential determination and worked to maintain a resettlement rate on par with it.

At nearly every juncture in history since its founding, America has been called upon to be a leader in welcoming the persecuted. More often than not, we have answered that call and today, it sounds to us louder than ever. With more than 24 million refugees around the globe, America must step into our historic leadership role, not away from it.

Now is the time to increase the refugee admissions ceiling, not cut it. Now is the time to build up our resettlement infrastructure, not decimate it. Now is the time to open our door, not close it. But the Trump administration betrayed the foundational values of this Nation by slashing our annual refugee admissions ceiling to a dismal 30,000 refugees. This was an unprecedented low, both in number and humanity. That is why I introduced the GRACE Act. This bill prohibits any U.S. President from setting an admission ceiling below 95,000 refugees each year and requires administration officials to treat that figure as a goal.

We must not be silent. We must continue to meet the global crisis of displaced persons head on, and like our forefathers, we must extend a hand to those fleeing persecution around the word. Thank you.

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