Refugees Who Assisted the U.S. Military Denied Entry to America

What you are about to read is wrong on every level. It is a travesty.  Many sacrificed everything to warn us of imminent attacks, IED/VBIED locations, and other valuable intel.

Trump has reduced the flow of refugees into the country to a trickle, and even Iraqis and Afghans who risked their lives for American service members have been cut off.

The Trump administration had reserved 4,000 slots for Iraqi refugees who had helped American troops, contractors or news media or who are members of a persecuted minority group in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. It ultimately admitted only 161 Iraqis — or 4 percent — to the United States, the lowest percentage of the four categories of refugees the administration authorized for resettlement last year.

....immigration lawyers also cited the lasting effects of Trump’s initial refugee bans and expanded vetting of those fleeing persecution.

Support our troops, right?

 Veterans and active-duty service members fear that the exclusion of those who assisted the military from resettlement is the real threat to national security because such cooperation will be harder to come by in future conflicts. More than 9,800 Iraqis were welcomed to the United States in 2016, according to State Department data. By the 2019 fiscal year, that was down to 465.

“If the message is sent that those who stepped up to help American service members were left behind, forgotten, and to die, then it’s going to significantly reduce the likelihood of people stepping forward in the future in other countries to help U.S. service members with their missions,” said Allen Vaught, a former captain in the Army who served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004.

Treating immigrants as the problem IS THE PROBLEM.

The number of refugees admitted depends on the administration and world events, but the ceiling for the current fiscal year, 15,000, is the lowest in the program’s four decade-long history. During the Obama administration, the cap was at least 70,000 a year.

The announcement came as Mr. Trump fell back on the kind of anti-immigration messaging that has been a staple of his campaigns, tarring refugees as threats to public safety and the economy, despite multiple studies debunking such generalizations. He also used the issue to attack his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has proposed raising refugee admissions to 125,000.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/18/us/politics/trump-refugees-iraq-afghanistan.html