[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 114 (Monday, June 22, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3124-S3125]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WORLD REFUGEE DAY
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, this past Saturday, June 20, we marked the
20th commemoration of World Refugee Day. Since 2000, World Refugee Day
annually shines a light on the struggles of displaced people all over
the globe and encourages us all to redouble our efforts to help them.
We are currently experiencing the most severe refugee crisis in
recorded history. There are almost 80 million forcibly displaced people
worldwide, of which more than 30 million are refugees and asylum-
seekers. Every 2 seconds, someone is forced to leave his or her home
because of conflict or persecution. That means that, since I began
speaking, roughly 20 individuals have become newly displaced.
These numbers are staggering and difficult to comprehend, but try to
imagine for a moment what it means to be a refugee: to watch your home
torn apart by conflict; to become the target of violence and
oppression; to fear so greatly for your life and the lives of your
loved ones that you choose to leave everything you know behind and take
a dangerous journey to a place where the language and the culture are
unfamiliar, where you have no support system, where you may struggle
every day to make ends meet.
This nightmare is the reality for almost 80 million human beings
around the world. The situation has only worsened since the outbreak of
the global COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of refugees are in low and
middle-income countries, where weak health systems are already
struggling to provide the basics of care. According to the
International Rescue Committee, just 34 conflict-affected and fragile
countries could see between 500 million and 1 billion COVID-19
infections, leading to between 1.7 million and 3.2 million deaths over
the course of the pandemic. Furthermore, refugees and displaced persons
tend to live in precarious conditions that make them even more
vulnerable to the coronavirus. They often live in crowded housing
situations with little access to basic hygiene services, the perfect
breeding ground for infectious diseases to spread. For instance, there
are about 850,000 Rohingya refugees living in congested camps in Cox's
Bazar in Bangladesh. As the coronavirus began to take hold there in
March, experts warned that the lack of sanitation and capacity for
social distancing in these refugee camps would create the ``perfect
storm'' for transmission of the disease.
Additionally, many refugees are employed in informal industries with
little to no options for sick leave, restricted access to public health
services, and have few, if any, resources to weather the financial
burden of quarantine measures. Many are forced to defy stay-at-home
orders to find ways to support their families, risking their health and
that of their loved ones to provide basic shelter and food.
Take, for example, the story of Orlando, a member of an indigenous
community in Venezuela who is among the 4.5 million Venezuelan migrants
and refugees who have fled the country's hunger, violence, and
insecurity since 2014. He now lives in Brazil with 18 other families
from his indigenous group. He and his family make their living as
artisans, but when lockdown orders prevented them from selling their
crafts, they could no longer afford rent. All 120 of the individuals
living in his house were expelled, sent to the street in the middle of
a pandemic. Meanwhile, many of Orlando's family members became sick
with the virus, and one sadly passed away, devastating the community.
Unfortunately, stories like this one are common among refugees.
The good news is that there are a number of incredible multilateral
and nongovernmental organizations working tirelessly to ensure that
displaced people are safe, healthy, supported, and treated with the
dignity they deserve. These organizations deserve our gratitude and,
more importantly, our assistance. In my home State of Maryland,
organizations such as the IRC, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee
Service, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society--now HIAS--and World Relief
are there to help refugees start a new life in the United States.
Especially now, as the COVID-19 pandemic stretches resources and
capacity of service providers around the world, it is critical that the
United States do its part to help address the refugee crisis.
That is why I joined all the other democratic members of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee in introducing legislation to provide an
additional $9 billion in funding for international efforts to fight the
COVID-19 pandemic and strengthen our refugee resettlement process to
accommodate those affected by the global health crisis. I also urged
Secretary of State Pompeo to contribute at least $500 million to the
U.N. campaign to protect displaced and disadvantaged persons around the
world from the coronavirus.
Historically, the United States has prided itself on offering safe
harbor to the world's refugees. This country, after all, was founded by
a group of people fleeing religious persecution. The plaque on the
Statute of Liberty, perhaps the most famous symbol of American freedom
and democracy,
[[Page S3125]]
reads, ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to
breathe free.'' But we have not always lived up to the values on that
inscription. When World War II displaced millions of Jews, many of them
sought asylum in the United States. Thousands were turned away and sent
back to their deaths in their home countries. The most infamous
incident was a ship called the St. Louis that carried almost 1,000
Jewish refugees to a port in Miami. After being denied entry and forced
to return to Europe, more than a quarter of those passengers perished
in the Holocaust.
It is important to acknowledge and learn from dark chapters in our
history like this one, so that we can do a better job of respecting and
protecting human life moving forwards. This is why I have been so
troubled by President Trump's anti-refugee policies. Whether by making
the lowest Presidential determination on refugee admissions in the
program's history or by locking up asylum-seekers at our southern
border, the Trump administration has turned our Nation's back on those
fleeing violence and oppression and stained the U.S. reputation as a
champion of human rights.
We cannot allow these policies to continue. First and foremost, they
are wrong. This sort of behavior violates the most basic tenets of our
democracy: equality, freedom, and justice. But beyond that, it actively
hurts our country to ignore the plight of refugees. When we shirk our
responsibility as a global leader in humanitarian assistance, we
exacerbate worldwide instability that will affect us, too. Moreover, by
closing our doors to refugees, we miss out on the valuable
contributions that they make to our society. Think of the contributions
to science, art, and politics that refugees like Albert Einstein,
Gloria Estefan, and Madeline Albright have made to the United States
and to humanity. As I speak, think of all the displaced people around
the world who are working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic to
help keep their adopted communities, including ours, safe.
To improve our country's treatment of refugees, I worked with
Senators Leahy, Booker, and Harris and Representative Zoe Lofgren to
introduce the Refugee Protection Act of 2019. This bill is a
comprehensive blueprint for reinvigorating U.S. refugee and asylum
systems. It bolsters the U.S. Refugee Admission Program and expands
protections for refugees, and restores due process and dignity for
asylum seekers. Broadly, it seeks to repair the U.S. role as a refuge
for the persecuted. I urge all of my colleagues to support this
crucial, lifesaving measure.
The most important thing to remember is that refugees are our fellow
human beings who have found themselves in the most difficult of
circumstances. They are brothers, daughters, fathers, grandmothers, and
friends. They have ideas, hopes, and aspirations and deserve the same
respect, security, dignity, and opportunity we wish for ourselves and
our families and friends. This World Refugee Day, let us recommit to
providing safe harbor to the vulnerable, no matter where they are from.
I always like to say that our values are our strength, so let us live
by our values and help build a brighter future for all the world's
peoples.
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