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Embrace Compassion, Not Xenophopbia

W

orld history has given Jewish
Americans, and all Americans,
plenty of reason for anxiety
about the Trump administration’s current
immigration policies.
As a scholar of inter-
national refugee studies,
I have researched how
the use of dehumanizing
language — by politi-
cians, political parties
and the media — paves
the way for denying
compassion and then
Kathie Friedman- protection to people
Kasaba
fleeing violence.
The Trump admin-
istration’s practice of
criminally prosecuting
every adult who crosses the southern
border to the U.S. without prior authoriza-
tion, even if they are fleeing life-threat-
ening persecution, is built on just such a
foundation of dehumanization.
President Trump’s recently upheld ban
on travel from mostly Muslim countries
is similarly based on nearly two decades
of the demonization of a religion, going
so far as to deny war refugees from Syria
sanctuary from extreme ethno-religious
violence.
Though the United States is often repre-
sented as a safe haven for the world’s most
vulnerable and persecuted populations,
there are eras when this promise rings
hollow.

A HISTORY OF XENOPHOBIC
IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS

American immigration policy in the early
20th century was constructed in accor-

dance with the ideology of racial nativ-
ism, defined by historian John Higham as
“the intersection of racial attitudes with
nationalistic ones — in other words, the
extension to European nationalities of
that sense of absolute difference which
already divided white Americans from
people of other colors.”
The United States Immigration
Commission, formed by Congress in 1907,
concluded that immigrants from Eastern
and Southern Europe — including Russia,
Hungary, Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece —
posed a serious threat to America because
of their genetically inherited inability to
assimilate into American society.
President Theodore Roosevelt laid the
groundwork for the Commission’s conclu-
sions by characterizing immigrants from
Eastern and Southern Europe as all “peo-
ple of bad character.” Sen. Henry Cabot
Lodge compared them to “the great influx
of barbarians into Europe after the fall of
the Roman Empire.” Madison Grant, close
friend to Roosevelt and author of The
Passing of the Great Race, one of the most
famous books of scientific racism, argued
for halting the immigration of non-Nordic
populations, which he characterized as
“criminal,” “diseased” and “worthless race
types.”
Despite the flight of Eastern European
Jews from the violence of pogroms and
religious persecution, the Commission’s
findings supported a drastic reduction of
the quota for individuals from those world
regions. This rigid quota system and the
xenophobia behind it were responsible for
America’s refusal in 1939 to admit 20,000
mostly Jewish children from Germany and
Austria fleeing the Nazi regime, along with

nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees who had trav-
eled close to American shores by boat the
same year.
The National Origins Act of 1924
— intact throughout the lead up to,
during and immediately following the
Holocaust — was replaced only when the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965,
a consequence of the U.S. Civil Rights
movement, established a system based on
an immigrant’s skills or family relation-
ship with a U.S. citizen or legal permanent
resident.
The United States’ humanity and com-
passion in protecting vulnerable refugees
are again being tested. Donald Trump
put the world on notice when, at the start
of his campaign, he used criminalizing
and dehumanizing language to describe
people crossing the southern border of
the United States, whom he characterized
as rapists and drug dealers.
More recently, he used similarly dehu-
manizing language to describe “people
coming into the country” from the south-
ern border, saying: “These aren’t people;
they are animals.” The Democrats, he
charged, want “illegal immigrants, no
matter how bad they may be, to pour into
and infest our country, like MS-13.” Again,
the accusation of subhuman criminality
against immigrants by a sitting president,
similar to the politically motivated rheto-
ric of Theodore Roosevelt’s administra-
tion.

CURRENT CHALLENGES TO
ACCEPTED REFUGEE LAW

Let’s be clear about who exactly is being
targeted with this language. What we are
currently witnessing is primarily the flight

from violence of Honduran, Guatemalan
and Salvadoran families through Mexico
and across the border into the United
States. Most families, victimized or threat-
ened by gangs, are asking for asylum.
According to the United Nations
Refugee Convention, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the
U.S. Refugee Act of 1980, it is not illegal to
cross a border without prior authorization
to ask for asylum, that is, for protection
on the grounds of persecution for rea-
sons of race, religion, nationality, political
opinion or membership in a particular
social group. That right has been one of
the most cherished principles of both the
international and the U.S. refugee system
that was created following the Holocaust,
and it owes its existence in part to inter-
national guilt over failing to protect
people from the violence of fascism and
the Holocaust.
Moreover, U.S. and international refugee
law prohibits forcibly returning people
to countries where their lives are in dan-
ger. It is a moral obligation to protect
people in harm’s way. This obligation and
the refugee system are both violated by
criminally prosecuting asylum seekers
who seek protection, including victims of
domestic or gang violence.
A travel ban recently upheld by the
Supreme Court also had its beginnings
with the dehumanization and criminaliza-
tion of people, including Syrian refugees
fleeing for their lives from Russian bar-
rel bombs and the Syrian government’s
chemical attacks. Decades of politicians
and pundits smearing all Muslim co-
religionists as national security threats
unable to assimilate into American cul-

continued on page 8

Contributing Writers:
Ruthan Brodsky, Rochel Burstyn, Suzanne
Chessler, Annabel Cohen, Don Cohen, Shari
S. Cohen, Shelli Liebman Dorfman, Adam
Finkel, Stacy Gittleman, Stacy Goldberg, Judy
Greenwald, Ronelle Grier, Esther Allweiss
Ingber, Allison Jacobs, Barbara Lewis, Jennifer
Lovy, Rabbi Jason Miller, Alan Muskovitz,
David Sachs, Karen Schwartz, Robin Schwartz,
Steve Stein, Joyce Wiswell

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