Laura [00:00:00] Hi President Biden! I’m Laura.
Anastasia [00:00:00] I’m Anastasia. I’m six years old.
Caroline [00:00:06] I’m Caroline and I’m four years old.
Laura, Anastasia, Caroline [00:00:09] And we love refugees!
Laura [00:00:13] We are calling to ask you to raise the refugee cap from sixty two thousand five hundred for this fiscal year and one hundred twenty five thousand after that, just as you have pledged that you would do. Loving refugees is important to us by the followers of Jesus and Americans citizens. Our arms and hearts are ready to welcome new refugees into our community, but we can’t do that until you raise the ceiling.
Laura, Anastasia, Caroline [00:00:39] Please keep your promise. Thank you.
Speaker 1 [00:00:46] Hello, President Biden, thank you so much for raising the refugee ceiling. I have been praying that you will have wisdom that God gives to be a welcoming, loving leader. And in doing this, raising the ceiling, you have shown us all that we can offer. Welcome. And I thank you so much.
Ali Noorani [00:01:21] This week, how a community of Christian women mobilized to advocate for refugees.
Tess Clarke [00:01:26] I think there was kind of a refreshed and energized spirit with Biden and maybe a little bit more hope that maybe he would listen. Maybe he would change his mind. Maybe he would do the thing he said he was going to do. I mean, he wrote the foreword to a book on the contributions of refugees, you know, so you’re going, hey, he knows that this is important.
Speaker 2 [00:01:45] I feel like opening the country to refugees is what Jesus would want us to do. This goes along with my faith because I think Jesus was a refugee. His parents had to flee to Egypt. This is something I feel like and loving people we need to do.
Ali Noorani [00:02:01] From the National Immigration Forum, I’m Ali Noorani and this is Only in America. Hey there. How are you? If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode about the refugee ceiling, you just do not want to miss it. Edafe’s experiences with the U.S. asylum system and how he is trying to help other asylees and refugees is informative, and it is inspiring. This week, we meet more of the broad range of voices that urged the Biden administration to increase the refugee resettlement ceiling to sixty two thousand five hundred, significantly higher than the historic low of fifteen thousand set by President Trump. In fact, one group of women, following the lead of Jenny Yang, mobilized into action as soon as President Biden announced that he was going to keep the refugee cap at fifteen thousand. This group of women launched a campaign to gather voicemail’s for the president from evangelical women, asking him to reconsider his decision. These voices underscore just how popular a policy refugee resettlement is. Americans across the political spectrum and from all walks of life spoke out about the program’s value to our country, to the world and to their faith.
Anne [00:03:20] Dear Mr. President, my name is Anne. I live in Flower Mound, Texas, and I am 57 years old. Refugees have been an important part of my life since the 1970s when my mother convinced our little Episcopal Church to adopt a family of refugees from Vietnam. Along with my husband and children, I have adopted a family of refugees from Liberia, in 2008. The woman in the family has since become a very dear friend. I’m asking you to please raise the refugee cap to sixty two thousand five hundred this year. It is important for America in this time of division. Refugees are among the most vulnerable people on earth, and most Americans want to see many of them succeed in the US. I believe there’s pent up demand to help these vulnerable people resettle, especially among people of faith. When Americans help refugees and get to know them personally, it breaks down all kinds of barriers, it may even help Americans get over the differences they have with each other to better understand the basic humanity that we all share. You know what is the right thing to do and it’s time to act. Thank you very much.
Lisa [00:04:27] Mr. Biden. My name is Lisa. I came to this country as a refugee in 1979 from the Soviet Union. Thank you to this country that welcomed me. I am thrilled to be here. And I’m also concerned for others who would not be probably alive now if they were not allowed to come to this country. Please raise the ceiling.
Ali Noorani [00:04:53] The voice mail campaign itself was spearheaded by We Welcome Refugees, a grassroots community of women committed to living out Christlike hospitality for all people. As we’re going to hear later in the episode, many members of the group identify as conservative Christians who have come to understand immigration and refugee policy as a biblical, pro-life issue. I spoke to We Welcome Refugees director Tess Clark about this powerful community, the response to the voice mail campaign, and her own personal journey to refugee advocacy.
Tess Clarke [00:05:23] I started working in the refugee community about 13 years ago. My husband and I had lived in China. We moved home. We really missed being part of an international community. We heard there were all these refugees resettled in this five square mile area in Dallas, Texas, where I live, called Vickery Meadow. And so we went over there one night and had dinner outside and we started to meet. I mean, it was like I had stepped into another culture. It was really incredible to be there. And so we just decided to move into the neighborhood and be neighbors. We never planned to start a nonprofit, but that’s what ended up happening as we just began to meet people and understand more about kind of the deficit in the needs that were being met and in the community was we thought, man, can we come in and help fill in some of these gaps? And then it’s really grown from there to where it is now, which I would say is just a really amazing group of grassroots advocates. And for us, the goal was to collect anecdotal evidence and share this with the White House that women, and a lot of conservative women, previously were watching and were waiting for him to keep his promise. I think for those of us who maybe went out on a limb and voted for Biden, maybe lost some social caliber in our spheres, in our communities and lost some relationships over it. I mean, there are people who literally took a risk here relationally and did this. We’re going: “I need you to be a man of your word. I need to know that the thing I took the risk for was worth it in the end.” And so that was what the campaign was set up for. We wanted to give people the opportunity to share that with the president, to let him know where they were and why they voted for him and what they were looking to him to do, which was to begin to rebuild this broken system and to restore humanity and dignity to the United States. And this was one move we felt like he can make in that direction, which was opening our doors to refugees again. So, that was really the hope of the campaign, and I think we really kind of knocked it out of the park when you listen to the voicemails, because that’s what women called in and said. We didn’t ask them to say those things. That’s just that’s what they felt.
Levon [00:07:38] Hi, this is Levon calling from Minnesota. We have a dear friend who is stuck in Turkey with her refugee husband and their baby. Her husband was vetted and waiting for his next step to get to the US. That was over four years ago. They’re losing hope. President Biden, you promised to raise the refugee ceiling to sixty two thousand five hundred, and that’s one of the main reasons I chose to vote for you. Please keep your promise and please get refugees moving to get to their final destination: The United States of America.
Speaker 3 [00:08:11] Hello, President Biden. You were the first Democratic president I have ever voted for. And I thank you for your campaign promises. I am from Missouri, which might surprise you to know that, as a Missourian, I support immigration. And despite the fact that our senators and my representative uses horrid language to talk about refugees, I support the refugee resettlement number of sixty two thousand five hundred people, and I ask you, please, please do what you have promised President Biden. I thank you that you seem to care so much for humanity, and I ask you to please raise that and sign that declaration. Thank you.
Tess Clarke [00:09:04] I was really nervous listening to them as well. And I think that was something that was surprising to me because I felt like, you know, I’ve talked to women. I’ve been in this space. I’m engaging them daily. But to listen to those messages, I was really overwhelmed with emotion. I was actually listening to them, and I had my kids listen. And I was crying, you know, going, oh, my gosh, to hear people’s kind of hearts on display in this way and what they were looking to Biden to do. It was just a really kind of beautiful moment for me to hear people express things with so much emotion.
Marissa [00:09:39] Hello, President Biden. My name is Marissa. I live in Arizona and I’m a Christian and a daughter to Filipino immigrant parents and a wife to a Dutch Canadian husband. And over the past few years, I’ve witnessed the devastating effects that the previous administration’s policies had made to refugee and immigrant communities that I personally care about with the creation of cruel and inhumane roadblocks, fueled by xenophobia. My Christian faith compels me to care and speak up for the most vulnerable and to love and welcome the stranger. The triple trauma that refugees have endured breaks my heart, but their resilience is astounding and incredibly inspiring. I love my refugee friends and my faith has grown tremendously because of them. And their stories are now my stories. So I plead that you keep your promise to raise the ceiling for refugees to sixty two thousand five hundred for the benefit of the vulnerable foreigner, for the benefit of their families, for the benefit of their communities, and for the benefit of all of us. All of our stories and all of our lives pour into one another, and this is what makes the United States of America so distinct from any other country, and this is what makes us so great.
Erin [00:10:54] Hi, this is Erin. I’m calling from Carey in North Carolina. These are people just like us here in America that need safety and we have it to give to them. We need your help here. And it’s really a big deal. So thank you.
Speaker 4 [00:11:16] We have been- our family has been overseas for nearly a decade. We are a military family. We have had first hand experience volunteering with refugees who are stuck in limbo. And we have seen firsthand how the suffering is prolonged for people that have to wait longer for a new country. We’ve also witnessed just how rigorous the vetting system is, and we believe that the system has worked for decades. And it’s something, as Americans, that we have been most proud of is our legacy of welcoming refugees, especially considering how long we’ve been at war. It is unethical for us to have our refugee ceiling that is so low when we have been actively involved in so many of the countries that now have refugees. It’s the very least we can do as Americans to raise our refugee ceiling. There are plenty of good American people that are ready and eager to welcome people that need it the most, people that need a new country, people that have so much to offer us, so much dignity, so much talent and grit and perseverance, and what really makes our country even better, having them be a part of it.
Tess Clarke [00:12:53] Women give me hope moving forward. These incredible justice warrior women who have picked this up as a mantle in their life, who are having conversations at their dinner tables with their children, who are truly shaping and shifting culture around these issues. The conversations that were happening at my table growing up about immigrants were not the same conversations that are happening now. And that gives me hope that we are raising up the next generation of children who are going to choose welcome, who are going to see people through a human lens, like my kids do and don’t feel like anyone is more deserving than anyone else for the opportunity to flourish.
Speaker 5 [00:13:37] There are some cliches that are meaningful and some of them aren’t. But I do find that when you have more than you need, you build a bigger table. And I feel that my faith as a Christian demands that we build a bigger table. I also think our heritage as Americans, and it’s only looking to the Statue of Liberty, and what she stands for also demands that we build a bigger table. And I would humbly and respectfully ask that you and your administration devote more time and more effort to fixing this.
Tess Clarke [00:14:24] Advocacy can work, right? In the last four years, there were lots of things we were trying to make movement on, as you know, Ali; you’re in this space, too, and it wasn’t happening, right? The things we were asking for, and we always went in to them going “probably won’t happen,” and I will say, after President Biden announced the fifteen thousand cap, getting him to raise it to 62-5, I was very discouraged in that pursuit. We put the petition out, we put the voice meline out. I did not think he would announce that number. I was like, “if we can just get any higher. Can we just not use a Trump era number?” It was almost like offensive that the number itself because it was a Trump era number for me. And so for him to to come out and say sixty two thousand five hundred, to do the thing that we were all asking him to do, and really the thing he said he would do in the beginning. For him to keep his word just felt surreal, if I can use that word, because I- I was shocked. Honestly, maybe I’ve got some trauma from the advocacy work I was doing, but it was shocking and very exciting. And in the buzz in our community is thank you, President Biden, for keeping your promise.
Jamie [00:15:40] Hi, my name is Jamie. I’m calling to leave a message for President Biden to say thank you for making good on your promise to raise the refugee ceiling. I am a host home, and I have welcomed people into my home from Somalia, Eritrea, Myanmar, Iraq, and countless other places. I’m excited to get to welcome more people into my home, more people into my community, and I am so grateful. I don’t know when I have entertained angels and when I have just been blessed by the goodness of amazing people from around the world coming into my home. But I praise God for this small step of making things right, and I- bye.
Melissa [00:16:27] This is Melissa, and I am a resident of Oklahoma. And I just wanted to say thank you so much for raising the refugee cap. And I agree with you that it’s important, and it reflects our American values. We have people and organizations ready and willing here to help assist refugees. Once again, I just want to say thanks.
Ali Noorani [00:16:57] Tess Clark is the director of We Welcome Refugees. You can learn more about Tess and We Welcome Refugees at our website: ImmigrationForum.org/Podcast. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe to Only in America, wherever you are listening to this episode. Only in America is produced and edited by Katie Lutz, Joanna Taylor, and Becka Wall. Our artwork and graphics are designed by Karla Leyja. I’m Ali Noorani; I will talk to you next week.
Underwriting [00:17:24] Support for the National Immigration Forum comes from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement and strengthening international peace and security, and from Humanity United. When humanity is united, we can bring a powerful force for human dignity.