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Last summer, I got a call
from a woman named Ellie.
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And she had heard about the family
separations at the southern border
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and wanted to know
what she could do to help.
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She told me the story
of her grandfather and his father.
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When they were kids in Poland,
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their father,
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fearing for his son's safety,
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gave them a little bit of money
and told them to walk west,
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to just keep walking west across Europe.
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And they did.
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They walked all the way
west across Europe,
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and they got on a boat
and they got to America.
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Ellie said that when she heard
the stories of the teens
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walking up across Mexico,
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all she could think about
was her grandfather and his brother.
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She said that for her, the stories
were exactly the same.
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Those brothers were
the Hassenfeld Brothers --
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the "Has" "bros" --
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the Hasbro toy company,
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which, of course, brought us
Mr. Potato Head.
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But that is not actually why
I'm telling you this story.
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I'm telling you this story
because it made me think
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about whether I would have the faith,
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the courage,
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to send my teens,
and I have three of them,
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on a journey like that.
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Knowing that they wouldn't
be safe where we were,
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would I be able to watch them go?
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I started my career decades ago
at the southern US border,
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working with Central American
asylum seekers.
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And in the last 16 years,
I've been at HIAS,
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the Jewish organization that fights
for refugee rights around the world,
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as a lawyer and an advocate.
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And one thing I've learned
is that, sometimes,
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the things that we're told
make us safer and stronger
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actually don't.
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And, in fact, some of these policies
have the opposite of the intended results
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and in the meantime, cause tremendous
and unnecessary suffering.
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So why are people showing up
at our southern border?
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Most of the immigrants and refugees
that are coming to our southern border
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are fleeing three countries:
Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
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These countries are consistently ranked
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among the most violent
countries in the world.
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It's very difficult to be safe
in these countries,
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let alone build a future
for yourself and your family.
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And violence against
women and girls is pervasive.
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People have been fleeing Central America
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for generations.
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Generations of refugees
have been coming to our shores,
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fleeing the civil wars of the 1980s,
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in which the United States
was deeply involved.
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This is nothing new.
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What's new is that recently,
there's been a spike in families,
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children and families,
showing up at checkpoints
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and presenting themselves to seek asylum.
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Now, this has been in the news lately,
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so I want you to remember a few things
as you see those images.
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One, this is not a historically high level
of interceptions at the southern border,
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and, in fact, people are presenting
themselves at checkpoints.
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Two, people are showing up
with the clothes on their backs;
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some of them are literally in flip-flops.
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And three, we're the most
powerful country in the world.
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It's not a time to panic.
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It's easy from the safety
of the destination country
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to think in terms of absolutes:
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Is it legal or is it illegal?
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But the people who are wrestling
with these questions
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and making these decisions
about their families
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are thinking about
very different questions:
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How do I keep my daughter safe?
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How do I protect my son?
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And if you want absolutes,
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it's absolutely legal to seek asylum.
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It is a fundamental right in our own laws
and in international law.
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And, in fact --
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(Applause)
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it stems from the 1951 Refugee Convention,
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which was the world's response
to the Holocaust
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and a way for countries to say never again
would we return people to countries
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where they would harmed or killed.
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There are several ways
refugees come to this country.
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One is through the US Refugee
Admissions Program.
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Through that program, the US identifies
and selects refugees abroad
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and brings them to the United States.
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Last year, the US resettled fewer refugees
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than at any time since
the program began in 1980.
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And this year, it'll probably be less.
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And this is at a time when we have
more refugees in the world
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than at any other time
in recorded history,
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even since World War II.
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Another way that refugees
come to this country is by seeking asylum.
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Asylum seekers are people
who present themselves at a border
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and say that they'll be persecuted
if they're sent back home.
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An asylum seeker is simply somebody
who's going through the process
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in the United States
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to prove that they meet
the refugee definition.
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And it's never been
more difficult to seek asylum.
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Border guards are telling people
when they show up at our borders
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that our country's full,
that they simply can't apply.
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This is unprecedented and illegal.
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Under a new program,
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with the kind of Orwellian title
"Migrant Protection Protocols,"
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refugees are told
they have to wait in Mexico
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while their cases make their way
through the courts in the United States,
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and this can take months or years.
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Meanwhile, they're not safe,
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and they have no access to lawyers.
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Our country, our government,
has detained over 3,000 children,
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separating them from their parents' arms,
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as a deterrent from seeking asylum.
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Many were toddlers,
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and at least one was
a six-year-old blind girl.
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And this is still going on.
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We spend billions to detain people
in what are virtually prisons
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who have committed no crime.
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And family separation has become
the hallmark of our immigration system.
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That's a far cry from a shining city
on a hill or a beacon of hope
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or all of the other ways we like to talk
about ourselves and our values.
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Migration has always been with us
and it always will be.
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The reasons why people flee --
persecution, war, violence,
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climate change
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and the ability now to see on your phone
what life is like in other places --
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those pressures are only growing.
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But there are ways that we can have
policies that reflect our values
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and actually make sense,
given the reality in the world.
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The first thing we need to do
is dial back the toxic rhetoric
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that has been the basis of our national
debate on this issue for too long.
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(Applause)
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I am not an immigrant or a refugee myself,
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but I take these attacks personally,
because my grandparents were.
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My great-grandmother Rose
didn't see her kids for seven years,
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as she tried to bring them
from Poland to New York.
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She left my grandfather
when he was seven
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and didn't see him again
until he was 14.
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On the other side of my family,
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my grandmother Elisa
left Poland in the 1930s
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and left for what was then
the British mandate of Palestine,
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and she never saw
her family and friends again.
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Global cooperation as a response
to global migration and displacement
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would go a long way towards making
migration something that isn't a crisis
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but something that just is,
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and that we deal with
as a global community.
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Humanitarian aid is also critical.
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The amount of support we provide
to countries in Central America
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that are sending refugees and migrants
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is a tiny fraction of the amount
we spend on enforcement and detention.
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And we can absolutely
have an asylum system that works.
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For a tiny fraction of the cost of a wall,
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we could hire more judges,
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make sure asylum seekers have lawyers
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and commit to a humane asylum system.
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(Applause)
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And we could resettle more refugees.
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To give you a sense of the decline
in the refugee program:
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three years ago, the US resettled
15,000 Syrian refugees
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in response to the largest
refugee crisis on earth.
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A year later, that number was 3,000.
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And last year, that number was 62 people.
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Sixty-two people.
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Despite the harsh rhetoric
and efforts to block immigration,
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keep refugees out of the country,
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support for refugees and immigrants
in this country, according to polls,
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has never been higher.
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Organizations like HIAS, where I work,
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and other humanitarian
and faith-based organizations
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make it easy for you to take a stand
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when there's a law that's worth opposing
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or a law that's worth supporting
or a policy that needs oversight.
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If you have a phone,
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you can do something,
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and if you want to do more, you can.
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I will tell you that if you see
one of these detention centers
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along the border
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with children in them -- their jails --
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you will never be the same.
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What I loved so much
about my call with Ellie
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was that she knew in her core
that the stories of her grandparents
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were no different than today's stories,
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and she wanted to do something about it.
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If I leave you with one thing,
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beyond the backstory
for Mr. Potato Head,
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which is, of course,
a good story to leave with,
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it's that a country shows strength
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through compassion and pragmatism,
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not through force and through fear.
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(Applause)
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These stories of the Hassenfelds
and my relatives and your relatives
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are still happening today;
they're all the same.
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A country is strong
when it says to the refugee,
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not, "Go away," but,
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"It's OK, we've got you, you're safe."
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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Thanks.
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(Applause)