Angelina Jolie has composed a passionate op-ed criticising Donald Trump’s refugee ban, days after the President’s executive order temporarily prevented Syrian refugees and citizens of predominantly Islamic countries from entering the United States.
The actress, who is a special envoy for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, published her piece in The New York Times, titled ‘Refugee Policy Should Be Based on Facts, Not Fear.’
Angelina begins her essay by highlighting the US’s proud tradition of ‘giving shelter to the most vulnerable people, adding that Americans have shed blood to defend the idea that human rights transcend culture, geography, ethnicity and religion.’ For this reason, she implies, a refugee ban is profoundly un-American, and ‘the decision to suspend the resettlement of refugees to the United States […] has been met with shock by our friends around the world precisely because of this record.
Recognising that the need to secure America’s borders is ‘justifiable,’ she goes on to argue that the American response should be ‘measured and should be based on facts, not fear.’
As a parent to six children, all born in foreign countries and all ‘proud American citizens,’ the actress writes that she understands concerns over security – but she also ‘wants to know that refugee children who qualify for asylum will always have the chance to plead their case to a compassionate America,’ and reminds us that America already has some of the most stringent borders checks in the world.
As part of her UN role, the actress has spent time in Syria, visiting refugees and ISIS attack survivors, and well knows that the refugees put forward for resettlement abroad are those most in need of our help: ‘survivors of torture, and women and children at risk or who might not survive without urgent, specialised medical assistance.’
‘We must never allow our values to become the collateral damage of a search for greater security,’ she concludes. ‘Shutting our door to refugees or discriminating among them is not our way, and does not make us safer. Acting out of fear is not our way. Targeting the weakest does not show strength.’
You can read Angelina’s op-ed in full at The New York Times.
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