Los Angeles–In reaction to a draft order from President Donald Trump suspending the U.S. Refugee Admission Program for four months and barring entry indefinitely to Muslim nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries, including refugees from Syria and elsewhere, Equality California Executive Director Rick Zbur issued the following statement:
“Airports and other points of entry to our country erupted in chaos this weekend as the effects of Donald Trump’s ill conceived and malicious executive order struck hundreds trying to enter the United States to contribute to our scientific community, to visit family and friends, or to start a new life in a safe and peaceful community. Detainees also have included LGBT people and others who are permanent U.S. residents or holders of valid student or work visas and were attempting to return to their homes and their families. Most tragically, refugees already possessing visas, fleeing upheaval and hatred in their own countries – including anti-LGBT violence — for what they expected would be safety in the U.S., can now be stopped on entry, detained by immigration officials and sent back to dangerous conditions in violation of U.S. law.
It is simply tragic that Trump chose a day when the world pauses to say ‘never again’ as it remembers the six million Jews and five million others – including LGBT people marked with a pink triangle — who were slaughtered in the Holocaust. In 1939, the United States famously turned away 900 Jewish refugees on board the M.S. St. Louis and sent them back to certain death in Germany. Over the course of the Second World War, our country could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives had it only let them in. Instead, like today, critics questioned the safety of admitting the refugees, saying their numbers could conceal Nazi spies or communist sympathizers. And like today, the tide of refugees included thousands of LGBT people whose lives were also threatened by or lost to a murderous regime. In both cases, racism and religious bias were and are thinly concealed.
Trump’s executive orders and the bias and fear mongering at their core are reminiscent of other episodes in our history in which our leaders and the American people have also said ‘never again’. These shameful episodes included the internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans, citizens whose families had been in the U.S. for generations, as well as the adoption of Chinese Exclusion Act, legislation that banned Chinese immigrants for more than 60 years.
A categorical denial of entry to all Muslims from certain countries violates not only the Constitution and other federal laws, but the basic concepts of fairness, decency and common goodness that are part of our DNA as Americans. It endangers the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people who simply want a better life. We applaud the imposition of a stay by a federal judge to block the new policies and support ongoing efforts opposing a return of our immigration policies to isolationism, racism and xenophobia.
There is no justification for Trump’s executive orders. There is no national crisis and his erratic Muslim ban is unacceptable. Unpredictable orders cannot become a new normal. History is witness to what happens when the unacceptable becomes normalized. At first the conscience is shocked, but then the machinery of implementing the orders begin to grind, people smother their morals and begin to comply. This cannot be. ‘Never again’ is meaningless if we fail to learn the lessons of history and if we again turn away those who come to us in desperate fear for their lives.”
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Equality California is the nation’s largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization dedicated to creating a fair and just society. Our mission is to achieve and maintain full and lasting equality, acceptance, and social justice for all people in our diverse LGBT communities, inside and outside of California. Our mission includes advancing the health and well-being of LGBT Californians through direct healthcare service advocacy and education. Through electoral, advocacy, education and mobilization programs, we strive to create a broad and diverse alliance of LGBT people, educators, government officials, communities of color and faith, labor, business, and social justice communities to achieve our goals. www.eqca.org
