John Oliver broke down the current hysteria over Muslim refugees entering the US from Syria on Sunday’s installment of “Last Week Tonight.”
As Oliver pointed out, this is hardly the first time Americans have resorted to nationalistic fear-mongering to turn popular opinion against refugees fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries.
“Every generation has had its own ugly reaction to refugees, whether they are the Irish, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, or the Haitians, and those fears have ben broadly unfounded,” the late night host said. “In fact, there was only one time in American history when the fear of refugees wiping everyone out did actually come true, and we’ll all be sitting around a table celebrating it on Thursday.”
Hysteria and facts don’t quite go hand in hand, however. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen 31 governors say that they’ll refuse to accept Syrian refugees though they have no legal authority to do so, and Republican presidential candidates argue that there is hardly any vetting for refugees, despite much evidence to the contrary.
Oliver ran through the extensive, 18-24 month process refugees are subjected to, which involves interviews, document review and health screenings.
The mind-bogglingly intense screenings prove that “We’re just letting anyone in.”
“We are the United State of America, not Arizona State,” Oliver joked.
Watch below:
I’d like to see a SNL skit where the native Americans debate whether the “colonizers” should even be let in. Let’s tell it like it is… they were land grabbers.
If Obama had just played this at his news conference at least he would have shown that there is vetting rather than being dismissive. I get his frustration but when dealing with children you gotta get to their level.
If they had even an inkling of what was coming, they’d have chopped down the Pilgrims and the Jamestown settlers on the beach.
That should be article headline, not the Thanksgiving/refugee notice but watch the above clip, he more thoroughly and more succinctly than any media source in the past week explains what a refugee has to go through to get into the United States. If only FoxNews would air such an informative segment, much of this idiotic refugee “debate” would be moot and we as a country could move on to more important issues.
The “religious tyranny” the good Pilgrim Fathers were fleeing was Holland, the most religiously-tolerant society in 17th Century Europe, where they had gotten into trouble for being intolerant religious bigots. The only “religious freedom” they wanted was the freedom to persecute anyone not them. It was also why they had gotten kicked out of England.
They were basically like the Southern Baptist scum today who want their “religious freedom” to be persecuting bigots respected.
60 years after their arrival, had my Quaker ancestors bumped into North America 100 miles north of where they did, the “religious liberators” would have put hot pokers through the tongues of my male ancestors so they couldn’t “speak heresy,” and would have put the women on trial as witches.
We’d have been much better off if the damn Puritans had been lost at sea aboard their leaky boat.