Political Quotes

“Mr. President, tomorrow, June 20, is World Refugee Day. The United Nations General Assembly in 2000 declared June 20 to be World Refugee Day so we can have public awareness and support for refugees, asylum seekers, and displaced people. The numbers are now out as to the number of displaced people in the year 2017, and that number is kind of shocking. It is record-setting for recent times--65.6 million people are displaced from their homes today. Over 22 million are refugees, over 40 million are displaced in their own country--internally displaced individuals, and almost 3 million are asylum seekers. These numbers rival the number of displaced people we saw after World War II. Fifty-five percent of the refugees come from three countries: Syria, Afghanistan, and South Sudan. We have seen recent additions to the number of displaced people. In Burma, the Rohingya Muslims were forced out of their homes, and 650,000 had to flee. In the Central African Republic, we saw, again by reason of conflict, a lot of people being displaced. In our own hemisphere in Venezuela, there are 1.5 million people displaced from that conflict, and of course we all are familiar with the problems in Central America and El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras--countries which have been plagued by violence, from which a lot of families have tried to escape in order to save their children. In Syria, there are 12 million displaced people.…”