The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

US and UK must not close doors to refugees, says former British minister

David Miliband, now head of the International Rescue Committee, fears ‘drive to the extreme’ and warns that actions could have ‘ripple effect’ in Europe

Former British foreign secretary David Miliband has urged the US and UK governments to resist closing their doors to Syrian refugees in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and California, warning that to do so would have a serious “ripple effect” across Europe and the Middle East.

Miliband, who now heads the International Rescue Committee aid agency, told the Guardian that the increasingly hostile tone of the debate on the Syrian exodus in the two western countries posed a major threat to global governance. He called on the US to honour its role as the world leader in refugee resettlement, and accused the British government of making “a very minimal contribution” to the crisis.

“If America shuts itself off, especially to Muslims, that sends a huge message to the Muslim world and also to Europe. There’s a ripple effect – if the west shuts down that has very serious implications,” he said in an interview in New York.

“If this country starts having a question about whether origin is more important than character, that’s a very significant development.”

Miliband, who was UK foreign secretary from 2007 to 2010, summed up the recent outbursts from Republican presidential candidates over Syrian refugees as a “drive to the extreme”. He said he found Donald Trump’s call for US borders to be closed to all foreign Muslims, and Chris Christie’s remark that he would turn away Syrian orphans under five “pretty shocking”.

“There’s a lot of fear – fear of the other, and anxiety of the unknown. But the truth is that sanctuary for refugees and American safety go hand in hand – this is an American success story.”

He noted that the US had an honorable tradition of accepting refugees, providing safety and a good education, and helping to nurture success stories like Google founder Sergey Brin, who left Russia with his parents during the cold war, and Madeleine Albright, who went on to become secretary of state after arriving in the US as a girl of 11 when her family fled communism in Czechoslovakia.

His appeal comes as the United States is still reeling from the reality of Isis-inspired homegrown terrorists after the San Bernardino terrorist attack in which 14 died.

Miliband’s intervention also comes as the number of displaced people reaching Europe largely from Syria passed the million mark in 2015 – the greatest exodus to the region since the second world war – with Germany bearing most of the burden. Miliband said that with 17 million people still inside Syria, the crisis could only continue.

Offers of help from the US and UK governments were inadequate, he said. The British government has said it will take 4,000 Syrians a year – equivalent to the number that arrived in the Greek island of Lesbos in a single day.

Were that number to be stepped up to 25,000 a year, that would still amount to only 40 refugees per parliamentary constituency – for instance Miliband’s old seat of South Shields. “Is anyone going to argue that South Shields couldn’t cope with 40 people from Syria? That argument’s not sustainable,” he said.

“Britain is a country that has provided a haven for people across generations and benefited from refugees playing all sorts of roles in national life. When the UK keeps the door only slightly ajar, that sends a message that it’s OK to shut the door totally to those who would go further.”

He added that the British prime minister, David Cameron, deserved praise for setting a global example with his commitment to international aid spending. Yet he could improve his negotiations over the future of Britain in Europe – “which aren’t going that well” – by being more forthcoming on increasing the UK’s commitment to take in more refugees. “A founding principle of the European Union is that if you have a problem, I’ll help you,” he said.

In the case of the United States, only 2,200 Syrians have been resettled since the start of the civil war in 2011. The Obama administration has pledged to take 10,000 a year.

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But Miliband has taken UN figures for the number of deserving Syrian refugees and calculated that the US should be taking at least 100,000 a year. That figure would still be fewer than America’s annual intake of Vietnamese people during the Vietnam war – and vastly fewer than the more than 2 million Syrian refugees in Turkey alone.

“That’s something the country could take pride in, and it would set a good example for the rest of the world.”

Miliband said that the most basic points about refugees were getting lost. In particular, people were not informed about the thoroughness of the security vetting process for all incoming individuals, which takes up to two years including biometric tests and multiple interviews involving up to 15 government agencies.

“It is harder to get into the US than any other refugee route other than swimming the Atlantic,” Miliband said.

As the homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson, stated in November, the burden of proof as to whether an applicant for resettlement poses a security risk to the country falls on the individual and not on the US government. After the UN identifies a candidate for resettlement, each person still has to prove he or she is entitled to it.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which was founded by Albert Einstein in 1933, resettles about 10,000 refugees in the US every year – 13% of the total number of entries. Unusually for an aid group, it works at both ends of humanitarian crises around the world, both on the ground in countries like Syria, Nigeria and Greece, and in resettlement countries.

The organization recently felt the backlash from Republican governors vowing to reject Syrian refugees in the wake of the Paris attacks. A Syrian family that was being resettled by IRC, having come under three-pronged attacks from President Assad’s government forces, Islamic State and Russian aerial bombing, made it all the way to New York’s JFK airport only to be told that they had been rebuffed by the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.

“We had to stop them here [in New York] because there was this court case taken out against us, and meeting them, this woman says to me through an interpreter, ‘We’re the victims of terrorism, how can anyone think I’m a terrorist?’… These are people who have been through hell.”

“I never thought I’d see the day when an organization I led was being taken to court by the governor of Texas for implementing federal law,” Miliband said. “I think we know what’s going on; there’s a lot of fear that is based upon the old adage that the lie gets halfway round the world before the truth gets its boots on.”

 

 

THE GUARDIAN