IRAP’s Deputy Policy Director, Betsy Fisher, is cited today in George Packer’s comment for The New Yorker on America’s betrayal of Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Packer’s powerful piece provokes serious reflection on the nature of the current backlash against refugees from the Middle East.
“There’s no such thing as no risk,” writes Packer. “Parisians could stop going out to cafés, Germans could turn back every single Syrian at the border, Americans could stop admitting anyone as a refugee, and there would still be risks. It’s absurd, and infantilizing, to demand that our officials promise to keep us absolutely safe. We don’t live that way, nor should we. Instead, we have to find the balance between safety and a decent life in a free society during an age of terror. Like every compromise, it will leave us unsatisfied. But the alternative is unfreedom and injustice.”
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