If anything good at all has come from President Trump’s immigration ban, it’s that celebrities have really stepped up when it comes to using their positions of power to speak out. Many used the SAG awards to express their outrage last weekend, and today, the New York Times published an op-ed about the ban written by none other than Angelina Jolie.
In the powerful essay, Jolie explains why refugee policy should be based on facts, and not prejudice or fear. As she writes in her opening paragraph, “Far from being terrorists, they [refugees] are often the victims of terrorism themselves.”
While Jolie notes that it’s important to secure the U.S. border and protect ourselves from terrorism, she also uses research to back up the fact that refugees are clearly not the problem when it comes to fighting terrorism.
“Refugees are in fact subject to the highest level of screening of any category of traveler to the United States,” she says. “This includes months of interviews, and security checks carried out by the F.B.I., the National Counterterrorism Center, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.”
Not only that, but she points out that the executive order could fuel the exact problems the U.S. is trying to fix abroad – not to mention that it undermines the message of acceptance and tolerance this country has been built upon.
“If we create a tier of second-class refugees, implying Muslims are less worthy of protection, we fuel extremism abroad, and at home we undermine the ideal of diversity cherished by Democrats and Republicans alike,” she writes.
Considering Jolie is a special envoy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and a mother of six children who were all born outside the U.S, it’s no wonder she’d feel strongly about the ban – hopefully, we’ll continue to see she and the rest of Hollywood use their platform to speak out.
Read her full essay at the New York Times.