America’s so-called title as a “melting pot” and an “asylum” is one that could be retired, at least as long as Trump is in office.

Since Trump’s administration has entered into the White House, the capsize on refugees and immigrants into the country has dramatically declined. Once being at the size of 90,000 refugees entering in the country, has now depleted to less than 30,000 since 2018.  

The top countries of origin that account for most refugees today at the most conservative estimate includes Syria with 5.6 million, Afghanistan with 3 million, South Sudan with 2.3 million, Myanmar with 1.2 million, Democratic Republic of Congo with 833, 400 and Somalia with 809, 273 refugees.

The common feature among these countries is that they have Muslim-majority populations. 87% of Syria’s population is Muslim, 99% of Afghanistan’s population is Muslim and 97% of Sudan’s population is Muslim and while Muslims make up less than 4% of Myanmar’s population, they are still fleeing persecution and ethnic cleansing.

President Trump’s has placed a  discriminatory travel ban that has restricted Muslim-majority refugees from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia from coming to America.

Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy explained the contentious nature of this ban in a tweet: “We bomb your country, creating a humanitarian nightmare, then lock you inside. That’s a horror movie. Not a foreign policy.”

These countries are not only fraught with contentions because of significant U.S. intervention, but also in the roles it played in exploiting the resources of these countries to secure business interests. The war on terror, justified under the pseudonym of democracy was an imperative because of the trillions of dollars’ worth of resources in Afghanistan.

Despite human rights activists pushing for legislation and immigration reform to resolve these issues, the U.S. has still intervened to destabilize these regions if they haven’t directly been the funding source for rebel groups that inflict terror. And while the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is imposed by a top down structure and furthermore curtails the rights of refugees and others with like issues, I hope we can understand that we’re not only witnessing the worst refugee crisis, but that passivity with respect to our history intensifies a humanitarian crisis.

The President has not only created a discriminatory travel ban on Muslim-majority refugees but also has plans of depleting the Mexican-Immigrant population as well.

Trump’s plan for a border wall along the Mexican-American lines will also minimize the amount of immigrants we allow in that seek aid and refuge from our country. The issues and debates on immigration and refugee crises in the country have been at their height since Trump has been in office.

Shana Wills, a part-time faculty professor at DePaul University and Executive Director and Founder of Refugee Education and Adventure Challenge (REACH) shares her insight on the refugee crisis here not only in Chicago, but America.

Wills, being very experienced in both the refugee and immigration crises shares her fears on what can arise from Trump’s administration cutting back on refugee and immigrants entrances.

“The impact that Trump’s administration on even those that are here now, I think what concerns me is that we have gone through this before. We have done this exact same thing post 9/11. The numbers dropped from 90,000-100,000 per year to less than 25,000.”

Professor Wills worries that this ban is not going to get lifted early enough, “I worry how sophisticated our programs and services are, across the country and especially in Chicago.”

Wills is also an independent consultant for refugee and immigrant service providers in Chicago as well as served as the Director of Chicago Public School’s International Newcomer Center for recently arrived refugee and immigrant service providers. She shares that the conflict of not lifting the ban on refugees and immigrants will decrease funding for support and eventually lay off staff and close businesses, weakening that historical confidence and acceptance that Chicago, and other sanctuary cities possess.

Gisselle Cervantes, a sophomore studying International Studies here at DePaul University also has experience in working with refugee children that are going through the assimilation experience in Chicago. While volunteering at RefugeeOne here in Chicago, Cervantes shares her experiences with working with refugee children and the struggles she sees they endure.

While growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, Cervantes and her family felt pressure from the “whiteness”, there aren’t a lot of immigrants and refugees that assimilate to most of them.

She was raised with Spanish being her first language, and struggled herself to assimilate to American education and she fears that with the lack of resources that Chicago’s education system has, that many refugee and immigrant children will be conflicted of getting a quality education for they will have less english skills than American children.

Through her experience in the school systems herself as well as volunteering at RefugeeOne, she sees in refugee children and immigrants that same pressure to catch up with American children in english education.

In an article published by Kavitha Cardoza in Education Week, the hardships of teaching migrant children in American school systems are exposed. Cardoza herself spent several weeks talking to educators about working with migrant children, she reports that many have cried speaking of their experience.

Cardoza reported that the tears they say, come from a combination of worry, empathy, and frustration from the negative and hateful rhetoric around migrant families.

Tens of thousands of migrant children enter into public school systems around the United States as they await their fate for their families immigration proceedings. Although under federal law, public schools are required to enroll and educate children regardless of their immigration status, many children refuse  to talk in school for the fear of deportation.

Deportation is another conflict that rests in the immigration crisis of America.

Joanna Ewida, a daughter of two immigrant parents, shares a story in the video below about the role of deportation in her community.

Ewida shares that she believes  although we live a country that says it is welcoming to outsiders, there isn’t enough going on to support that claim, “I see a harboring of hate and bigotry that I haven’t seen before in America. When immigrants come to America we have this image of something that is ideal and beautiful and inclusive. And then you come to America and you realize you’re just a slave to a capitalistic society.”  

Many politicians and activists would agree with Ewida, stating that America is at a prime with hate and bigotry, setting such an extremely low capsize on the refugee intake as well as literally building a multi-billion dollar border wall representing the rejection of incoming immigrants.

Separating families at borders, caging children, rejecting asylum-needing- persecuted individuals are all actions that deplete the “Melting Pot” and “Sanctuary” name of America.

Policies need to be changed. Bans need to be lifted. And capsizes need to be expanded in order for America to reclaim its welcoming status.

According to World Vision, the top countries of origin that account for most refugees today are: Afghanistan- 2.5 million refugees, South Sudan- 2.3 million refugees, Myanmar- 1.2 million refugees, Democratic Republic of Congo- 833,400 refugees, and Somalia- 809, 273 refugees. The countries of origin are fraught with contention not only because most refugees are from there, but also because 87% of Syria’s population is Muslim, 99% of Afghanistan’s population is Muslim and 97% of Sudan’s population is Muslim. This is precisely the reason that President Trump’s travel ban was deemed discriminatory as it restricted Muslim-majority countries. Another area of contention is the extension of U.S. imperialism and securing business practices under the pseudonym of democracy in these countries is often overlooked. For example, the war on terror involved significant foothold in Afghanistan, which also inevitably had trillions of dollars’ worth of resources. The countries experiencing Western intervention are not only those with Muslim-majority populations, but also those handicapped through illegitimate legislation. For example, “In FY 2018, the president further reduced the refugee admission cap to 45,000, the lowest since the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980. For 2019, the administration cut the number of admissions even more to 30,000. However, the cap represents the maximum number of refugees that may be resettled in a year and the Trump administration is unlikely to resettle anywhere close to 30,000 people in FY 2019,” according to Zuzana Cepla, a policy and advocacy associate for the National Immigration Forum. 

As explained by Joanna, a daughter of immigrants residing in Chicago, President’s Trump’s immigration policy is fraught with bigotry because it defies what America says it stands for, which is freedom and equality. 

“It is not easy to escape mentally from a concrete situation, to refuse its ideology while continuing to live with its actual relationships” –Albert Memmi. 

Memmi, author of “The Colonizer and the Colonized,” explores colonial relationships and hierarchies in his literary work. He was a native of Tunisia, a country in north Africa that had gained its independence from France in 1956. Memmi’s work gains its legitimacy from his own experience under colonial rule.

Concrete situations are tangible forms of oppression, while the ideologies of institutional and cultural hierarchies contain residue and perpetrate various forms of oppression. While concrete violence manifested itself through King Leopold’s genocide of roughly 10 million Africans, the United Nation’s Security Council’s divide and conquer was arranged through the Berlin Conference, an institutionalized representation of colonialist control.

The UN Security Council is made up of the five permanent powers: China, France, Russia, UK and the U.S. The United Nations’ General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, exerting a top-down structure, which is one of the many self-defeating features of the document.

While colonial rule was concrete, an institutionalized and more concerted effort to maintain colonial ideology continued. The General Assembly lacked functional representation, illuminated by Africa’s climate of recycled problems: famine, debilitated government and the relationships between warlords and child soldiers as well as sex slaves. 

“Of all the many horrors of Boko Haram’s rampage across West Africa- the attacks on mosques, churches and schools; the mass killings of civilians; the entire villages left in ashes after militants tear through- one of the most baffling has been its ability to turn captured women and girls into killers,” according to the New York Times. 

The social potencies of violent climates hardly explain the historical roots of violence, which is colonial violence and oppression. Boko Haram is one of many warlords in Africa, an issue that camouflages the role of institutional violence as well as explicating the decaying humanitarian approach. 

Africa is plagued by violence and solutions formed by the UN are pseudonyms for further problems. The approach is not only eccentric from its stand-alone, objective approach to conflict, but also because its motivated by a need for distinction: us vs. them.

Solutions are inseparable from pseudo-objectivity because concrete situations have been liquidated through institutional functionalities. The preservation of common hierarchy has prevailed through the branches of the UN and refinement of colonial history- perceived as a stand-alone event in the larger scheme of things. 

Understanding developing countries’ portrayal of violence as unprecedented demotes foreign presence, pointing away from the inherited roots of colonization while it is still at work and in acceleration. Only this time, the effort is concerted and more subtle rather than barbaric.