They were having a World Refugee Day event in the shadow of the World Trade Center this week as news of the Brexit vote sent shock waves to the US refugee contractors.
It is pretty obvious that America’s immigration control movement got a huge boost from the British vote to leave the EU on Thursday. And as we said previously, if German Chancellor Merkel hadn’t opened the floodgates of Europe, this vote would likely have had a different outcome.
I believe that critical mass is being reached on the issue of immigration control and refugees. Mahmoud knows it too, in spite of his optimistic prediction at the end of this story.
From NJTV News:
Families, advocates and officials gathered to celebrate World Refugee Day in the long shadow cast by the UK’s Brexit vote to leave the European Union — a vote some call anti-immigrant.
“I was a bit shocked, you know, because you never thought that the EU was going to break. But I do think that this is going to have a ripple effect throughout Europe,” said Mahmoud Mahmoud, Church World Service director of the Jersey City office.
Donald Trump praised the vote while visiting his golf course in Scotland.
“I really do see a parallel between what’s happening in the United States and what’s happening here. People want to see borders. They don’t necessarily want people pouring into their country that they don’t know who they are and where they come from,” Trump said.
[….]
Whether Brexit’s ripple effect reaches here: “Donald Trump has his views, but at the end of the day, the majority of Americans have shown that they want to welcome individuals and we are a nation of immigrants,” Mahmoud said. [I’m not so sure, the polls were wrong on Brexit after all—-ed]
In a political atmosphere fraught with division, nonprofits in New Jersey keep hoping to add more refugee families.
More here.
Readers may recall that NJ Governor Chris Christie has stopped cooperating with the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, but he hasn’t done all he could do to slow the flow to NJ.