This is just insane. I don't know whether this is simply antiterrorist hysteria taken to its illogical extreme, or just a flimsy excuse to keep refugees out. It's staggeringly callous and mean-spirited either way.In Sierra Leone there is a woman who was kept captive in her house for four days by guerrillas. The rebels raped her and her daughter and cut them with machetes. Under America's program to resettle refugees, she would be eligible to come to safety in the United States. But her application for refuge has been put on indefinite hold — because American law says that she provided "material support" to terrorists by giving them shelter.
This law is keeping out of the United States several thousand recognized refugees America had agreed in principle to shelter. By any reasonable definition, they are victims, not terrorists.
A Liberian woman was kidnapped by a guerrilla group and forced to be a sexual slave for several weeks. She also had to cook and do laundry. These services are now considered "material support" to terrorists....
(snip)
The law makes no exception for duress. It also treats any group of two or more people fighting a government as terrorists no matter how justified the cause, or how long ago the struggle. So the United States has turned away about 10,000 Chin refugees, for supporting an armed group fighting against the Myanmar dictatorship, which has barred them from practicing their religion. The United States has acknowledged that the law would also bar Iraqis who helped American marines find Jessica Lynch.
Why can't we have a government of human beings???
1 comment:
I don't know whether this is simply antiterrorist hysteria taken to its illogical extreme, or just a flimsy excuse to keep refugees out. It's staggeringly callous and mean-spirited either way.
these are not mutually exclusive. sounds like a republican perfect storm to me.
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