1,216 Rabbis Sign Letter to Lobby Congress to Welcome “refugees”

Obama has raised the U.S. cap on refugee admissions to 85,000 this fiscal year (2016) from 70,000 in fiscal 2015, to accommodate the planned increase in Syrian refugees and to help deal with the influx of hundreds of thousands of “migrants” into Europe from other countries in the Middle East, Central Asia (Afghanistan) and Africa — all Muslim countries.

It should be noted that Arabic Gulf State countries like Saudi Arabia have closed their doors to those fellow-Muslim “refugees” and “migrants”.

A recent Bloomberg Politics poll found that a majority of Americans (53%) don’t want to accept any Syrian refugees at all; 11% more would accept only Christian refugees from Syria. 27 governors, most of them Republicans, have said they’ll oppose Syrian refugees being resettled in their states. On November 19, the House of Representatives passed a bill blocking the admission of Syrian and Iraqi refugees unless they pass strict background checks. The FBI has admitted we simply don’t have the data base for adequate vetting of the “refugees”. (Obama has already vowed he will veto that bill.)

Notwithstanding the American people’s and state governors’ opposition to refugee resettlement, U.S. religious leaders are lobbing Congress to welcome “refugees”.

5 days ago, on December 2, 2015, a group of American Evangelical leaders who call themselves the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT), used our Lord Jesus Christ for their political (and financial) ends. In a letter to Congress, EIT declared their opposition to limiting the number of Syrian “refugees” being resettled in the United States, on the grounds of “compassion” and that “Jesus was a refugee”. (See my post “Despicable: Evangelical leaders use ‘Jesus was a refugee’ to lobby Congress“.)

By financial ends, I’m alluding to the fact that religious charities — Evangelical, Catholic, other Christian denominations, and Jewish — get paid handsomely by U.S. taxpayers to minister to refugees and illegal immigrants. See:

Collusion of Church & State in Invasion of Illegals: $182M to house ‘unaccompanied children’ for just 4 months
State governors refuse Syrian refugees, 98% Muslim, who get staggeringly generous services from taxpayers

So much for the vaunted principle of “separation of church and state”.

To the Evangelical leaders’ letter we can now add a letter signed by more than 1,200 U.S. rabbis, which was delivered to Congress also on December 2, in order to lobby Congress “in support of welcoming refugees”. Below is the letter in its entirety:

We, Rabbis from across the country, call on our elected officials to exercise moral leadership for the protection of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

Since its founding, the United States has offered refuge and protection to the world’s most vulnerable. Time and time again, those refugees were Jews. Whether they were fleeing pogroms in Tzarist Russia, the horrors of the Holocaust or persecution in Soviet Russia or Iran, our relatives and friends found safety on these shores.

We are therefore alarmed to see so many politicians declaring their opposition to welcoming refugees.

Last month’s heartbreaking attacks in Paris and Beirut are being cited as reasons to deny entry to people who are themselves victims of terror. And in those comments, we, as Jewish leaders, see one of the darker moments of our history repeating itself.

In 1939, the United States refused to let the S.S. St. Louis dock in our country, sending over 900 Jewish refugees back to Europe, where many died in concentration camps. That moment was a stain on the history of our country – a tragic decision made in a political climate of deep fear, suspicion and antisemitism. The Washington Post released public opinion polling from the early 1940’s, showing that the majority of U.S. citizens did not want to welcome Jewish refugees to this country in those years.

In 1939, our country could not tell the difference between an actual enemy and the victims of an enemy. In 2015, let us not make the same mistake.

We therefore urge our elected officials to support refugee resettlement and to oppose any measures that would actually or effectively halt resettlement or prohibit or restrict funding for any groups of refugees.

As Rabbis, we take seriously the biblical mandate to “welcome the stranger.” We call on our elected officials to uphold the great legacy of a country that welcomes refugees.

As of December 4, 2015, the letter has been signed by 1,216 rabbis. Click here for their names.

H/t FOTM‘s truckjunkie