"Nativist Hysteria" Against Syrian Refugees Echoes U.S. Rejection of Jewish Refugees in 1930s

The firestorm of controversy that erupted over whether the United States should continue to accept Syrian refugees after the deadly attacks in Paris includes a bill by House Republican lawmakers to restrict Iraqi and Syrian refugees from resettling here. At least 31 U.S. states have said they will not accept the refugees, and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said, "We can’t have them. They are going back." Others are drawing historical parallels with a different refugee crisis the country faced in the 1930s, when Jewish refugees sought refuge here. Case Western Reserve University history professor Peter Schulman recently tweeted a Fortune Magazine poll question from 1939 that asked, "Should the U.S. government permit 10,000 mostly Jewish refugee children to come in from Germany?" The results showed 61 percent of respondents at the time said no. Among those seeking refuge and denied entry were Anne Frank and her family. "The nativist response then has very clear echos now," says Ishaan Tharoor, foreign affairs reporter for The Washington Post, whose recent article is headlined, "Yes, the comparison between Jewish and Syrian refugees matters." We also speak with Ilya Lozovsky, an editor at Foreign Policy and author of the article, "I’m a Russian-born American Jew. My people’s rejection of Syrian refugees breaks my heart." He says he decided to speak out because "[e]ven if Donald Trump never becomes president, this type of discourse has become legitimized."

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