Political Quotes

“Madam President, in the depths of World War II raging in Europe, a group of people decided to charter a ship and come to the United States. They were Jewish people from European countries. The ship was known as the USS St. Louis. It went to the port in Havana, Cuba, and was turned away. It tried to land in the United States and was turned away again. It eventually returned to Europe, a boatload of Jewish people. Hundreds of them died in the Holocaust. We reflected on that after World War II and decided it was not a period in American history that we should take pride in but a lesson to us of what happens when people are in desperate situations and ask for help. I believe it was in 1951 that we entered into the Geneva Convention, an agreement when it came to refugees who sought refuge at the shore. The United States, under Presidents of both political parties, wanted to establish once and for all that what happened to the USS St. Louis did not reflect the values of the United States of America. So in 1951, we established, with many nations around the world, a standard for what to do with refugees, people who sought refuge in your country because of fear of staying in their own country. The system worked well for us for many decades, but now we are facing a new challenge we have never seen before.…”