The ongoing political and legal controversy over President Donald Trump’s revised executive order banning visitors from six Muslim-majority countries is the latest flashpoint in what has become one of the great moral conundrums of our time: What to do about the refugees of the Syrian Civil War?
Since 2011, the Syrian Civil War has forced some five million Syrians out of the country. And as millions flee and risk their lives trying to find a stable land, surrounding countries, Europe, and the Americas have struggled to deal with the unprecedented inflow of people. Many have effectively closed their borders, with the new restrictions in some ways merely crystallizing a wider pattern — an iron immigration curtain now descending across much of the West. The United Nations calls the Syrian refugee crisis the “single largest … for almost a quarter of a century.”
At the same time, nationalism and inward-looking policy ideas have taken hold in many Western societies, from the rise of Marine Le Pen in France to Brexit and the election of Theresa May in the United Kingdom. And while the United States did admit substantially more Muslim refugees in the final year of the Obama administration, that trend is sure to end.
[For more of this story, written by Giulia Agiune & John Wihbey, go to https://psmag.com/the-syrian-m...ba78443f3#.cwqbm4hxd]
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