World Refugee Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I want to take the opportunity to join communities across the country and around the globe to commemorate the 19th observance of World Refugee Day.

Let me start with two sobering statistics from the UN agency charged with protecting refugees. The first is that 25 people were forced to flee their homes every minute of last year. The second is that more than 70 million people have now been forcibly displaced by conflict and persecution, the highest number the UN refugee agency has ever seen. So suffice it to say that the global need is real.

Which is why it is so heartbreaking to see Donald Trump's repeated efforts to try and slam America's doors shut to the world's most vulnerable.

It is particularly outrageous that the Trump folks aren't even on track to admit their own historically low cap of 30,000 refugees this year.

Let's be clear: Turning away refugees isn't some cornerstone of conservatism. Ronald Reagan admitted tens of thousands of refugees, so did George W. Bush.

In another era, that would have included my family, who fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s, seeking sanctuary in this country. I would have never had the honor of representing my State of Oregon here in this body had America sent my parents away.

Now, Edith and Peter Wyden aren't exactly household names, but here are a few that should be: Madeleine Albright, Albert Einstein, Gloria Estefan, Mila Kunis, and Elie Wiesel.

America is so much the richer for their contributions to diplomacy, physics, music, film and television, literature, and more.

So there is a practical reason for accepting refugees: Doing so makes America better.

There is also a moral reason for accepting refugees. Faith traditions speak of it as a duty to repair the world or to welcome the stranger. In Oregon, we just call it the right thing to do.

America is better than the administration's cruel and callous policies. I remain committed to challenging Donald Trump's exclusionary, anti-refugee policies on all fronts, and I challenge my colleagues to do the same.

Folks are looking to the Senate for strong, principled leaders. They want more than rhetoric; they want results.

So I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to honor this World Refugee Day by rolling up their sleeves and working to revive America's historic, bipartisan commitment to the plight of refugees around the world.

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