[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9550]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           WORLD REFUGEE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, yesterday was World Refugee Day, a day 
set aside by the United Nations to reflect upon those in crisis and 
dedicate ourselves to helping those we can help.
  To mark this solemn occasion, today, the Judiciary Committee House 
Republicans will vote to slash refugee resettlement numbers, cut back 
aid to those fleeing violence and persecution for their religious or 
political beliefs, and make it harder for children fleeing violence, 
especially those from Central America, from receiving asylum from the 
richest, most powerful Nation in the world.
  Tell me, how does that make America great again, Mr. Speaker?
  According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, there are more 
than 65 million people--a record number today--who have been forcibly 
displaced from their homes. More than 21 million are refugees. Eighty-
six percent of the world's refugees are now finding refuge in the 
developing world, with only 14 percent finding refuge in developed 
countries like the U.S. or European nations.
  Worldwide, more than half of all refugees are children. So when anti-
immigrant leaders, websites, and TV networks paint those fleeing the 
Middle East, Africa, and Asia as hardened jihadists, or those fleeing 
Central America as gangbangers and drug dealers, remember, most of them 
are just kids--little kids. That is what we are talking about, fleeing 
their country for their lives.
  Mr. Speaker, America has, throughout our history, been a beacon of 
hope to refugees fleeing religious attacks, facing government 
intolerance and persecution, ethnic strife, or unsustainable poverty.
  Beginning in the 1840s, when the potato crop disappeared because of a 
blight in Ireland, the Irish people were left starving. Over 8 million 
people in Ireland, 3 to 4 million of them faced starvation. About 1 
million died mostly of starvation and disease.
  Another 2 million came where?
  To America.
  According to a recent article in The Irish Times: ``Panic had set in 
by the winter of 1846/47. People risked winter voyages across the 
Atlantic on unsanitary, unsafe `coffin ships.'''
  The article continues: ``People were placed in quarantine stations, 
or held onboard ships docked at ports.''
  ``Refugees experienced violent and racist reactions. Liverpool, 
Glasgow'' . . . ``Montreal, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia sought 
unsuccessfully to restrict entry'' of the Irish.
  A lot of this sounds familiar to me today when we discuss the Muslim 
ban that the courts have blocked and which motivated thousands of 
Americans to go to airports to demand that the United States honor its 
visas and honor its commitment to refugees, or as the House Judiciary 
Committee meets today, to punish children for fleeing for their lives.
  Roughly 32 million Americans trace their roots to Ireland. That is 
about 10 percent of the U.S. population. And let's be clear, the 
British rulers over Ireland were not sending what they consider their 
best people. They were poor, they were uneducated, and U.S. politicians 
at the time said that they were sending rapists, murderers, and drunks, 
even as some, they assumed, were good people.
  They were from a religion that threatened the United States. They 
were Catholics who were as foreign to American Protestants, in some 
regards, as Muslims are today.
  But who can imagine America without the Irish today?
  You look down the list of generals, Presidents, Members of Congress, 
and every aspect of American society today, and we can all say, to some 
degree, we are Irish.
  As House Republicans vote today to pass bills to keep out the 
wretched refuse of your teeming shores, as we pass laws to pull up the 
drawbridge and put a big ``Do Not Enter'' sign on the Statue of 
Liberty, I hope my Republican colleagues who can trace roots back to 
someone who came across the water and risked everything and bet their 
lives on the United States, I hope all of us will reflect on those 
ancestors as we deliberate laws and how we would have kept so many of 
them out.
  His Holiness Pope Francis, who we all remember just spoke steps away 
from where I am at right now, reminded us to always follow the Golden 
Rule in all our deliberations. Pope Francis said just this past Sunday 
that the nations of the world should continue to welcome refugees; and 
each of us, as individuals, can learn a lot by meeting with, speaking 
with, and breaking bread with refugees.
  His Holiness said: ``. . . personal meetings with refugees can 
dissolve fears and distorted ideologies and become paths for growth in 
humanity.''
  Mr. Speaker, I hope my Republican colleagues have been listening, as 
we have a Speaker who is both Catholic and Irish, but I fear they will 
not.

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