Marco Rubio Quotes

We live in the age of the refugee, the age of the exile.

There should be a global commitment to try and get rid of UNHCR refugee camps and long-term people in those camps.

Most of the people who are coming to Australia by boat have passed through several countries on the way, and if they simply wanted asylum they could have claimed that in any of the countries through which they'd passed.

Refugees are the human dimensions of a failed state.

Migrants all over the world are pushed and pulled across borders by hunger, terror and climate change. It happened to my own family.

I wish we didn't have to own up to a policy deliberately designed to inflict suffering on people who have already been traumatised in the countries from which they've fled.

Displacement is very tough on the people who are displaced and for the country that is hosting them.

I sincerely wish that every member of Congress could visit the displaced person's camp in Germany and Austria and see just what is happening to 500,000 human beings through no fault of their own.

Through both our admissions policies and, equally importantly, through our support for international protection and assistance, the United States leads the world in responding to refugee and related humanitarian crises.

Migrants don't come to the United States because, as Ambassador Aponte argued in her press conference, of 'lies' told by smugglers that, once here, you can't get deported. They come because their countries have been destroyed by U.S. policy.

The CIA's always-useful World Fact book says that a staggering 6.3 million Colombians have been internally displaced (IDP) since 1985, with 'about 300,000 new IDPs each year since 2000,' the year Bill Clinton enacted Plan Colombia. Added up, that's 2.4 million people during Clinton's eight-year presidency.

Can you really send back people to where they are fleeing from?

The global movement of displaced people, many of whom end up in detention without hope, is one of the most pressing issues of our times.

Our asylum laws were written to protect victims fleeing persecution in their home countries. By limiting the scope of these laws and refusing to acknowledge gang violence or domestic violence as a valid reason to seek asylum, we are turning away women and children in grave danger.

The influx of families and unaccompanied children at the border poses many risks, including grave public health threats.

The drafters of the [Refugee Convention ] had the Cold War in mind and mainly sought to protect a few thousand dissidents from the Communist bloc. They did not envision the mass displacements of people we are seeing today.

There two other areas that are personally deeply important to me, that I hope the Homeland show can attend to in some way - one, being the refugee crisis. These are the most vulnerable people among us in the world. There are over 60 million refugees displaced by war, over 21 million that go to a third country. The numbers are climbing, and there are no legal options for these people. These are the victims of the real world's crises that the Homeland world reflects on, and almost takes a Polaroid of these days, versus a fictional tale of it.

Ours is an age in which thousands are driven daily from their homelands by the unforgiving brutalities of war, terrorism, political oppression, starvation, disease, economic piracy, and the relentless suffocation of that singular breath which makes human beings individuals.

After World War II there were many Jews who remained in refugee camps...President Harry F. Truman called for the Harrison Commission to investigate the situation in the camps and it was a pretty gloomy report. There were very few Jews admitted into the United States.

I think on all the debate on immigration, and all of that, the class of person that should be given the benefit of the doubt is the genuine refugee that is just in real desperate strait. Some of them are in the United States illegally because of [human] trafficking. They were caught up in trafficking, and you can argue to what extent it's their fault, to what extent they didn't know what they were getting into.

I have witnessed firsthand the anguish of this humanitarian tragedy - in Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and other conflict and post-conflict zones. The destruction of lives and hopes, the emotional trauma, and the economic, social, and political marginalization of the displaced, the human insecurity, with real and potentially devastating consequences over generations, in ever-widening arenas of conflict. We can and must ensure the human rights of the displaced. That begins by making their voices heard.

...in the midst of migrants in search of a better life there are people in need of protection: refugees and asylum-seekers, women and children victims of trafficking...Many move simply to avoid dying of hunger. When leaving is not an option but a necessity, this is more than poverty.

Fleeing persecution is not a crime. And we do not seek to pander to a noisy, tiny minority who will never embrace modern multicultural Australia. But there are important truths we must face. There is a history and a reality that we cannot ignore. The challenge before us is real, the questions we grapple with as elemental as life and death.

We pray for the many brothers and sisters who seek refuge far from their native lands, who seek a home where they can live without fear: that they might always be respected in their dignity.

I think the international community should be ashamed that they haven't done more for the Yazidis.