The former British foreign secretary and president of the International Rescue Committee calls the US policy ‘a real and present danger to global stability’

David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary now heading one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid and refugee resettlement organizations, has denounced President Trump’s refugee ban as a threat to the global standing of all western countries.

Miliband, president of the New York-headquartered International Rescue Committee, is at the center of the billowing dispute over Trump’s immigration order that has caused havoc at airports, prompted protests and court challenges, and provoked unprecedented internal opposition within the US government.

In an interview with the Guardian, he slammed Trump’s contentious action for imperiling the basis on which western countries were regarded favorably around the world.

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“This is a test for the western world not just for America. It’s a test of whether or not we hold fast to the values of non-discrimination and to universal values of freedom from persecution, so the stakes are very high,” he said.



Miliband said that “the allure, the glow, the magnetism” of the west was being cast in doubt. Such influence depended, he said, on the principle that people were able to “hold their political views, practice their religion, lead their lives in ways that are not dominated by capricious discrimination”.

He added: “That allure remains strong. But when you meet families that are being torn apart by this ban, that causes doubt about what our countries stand for, and that is one of the most dangerous aspects of this.”

Trump’s executive order, signed last Friday, is focused in all but name at Muslims attempting to enter the US. It blocked all entry for 90 days for citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The order also singled out refugees for harsh treatment, those deemed by the UN to have a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of race, religion, political views or other factors. Trump banned entry of all refugees for the next four months, with Syria made subject to an indefinite refugee ban.

In total, some 60,000 refugees who have already been granted security clearance to come to the US, are now in limbo as a result of the ban.

The order has caused aftershocks across the Middle East and Europe, itself in the throes of its own refugee crisis. In the UK, the prime minister, Theresa May, has come under fierce criticism for cozying up to Trump, including holding his hand at the White House and inviting him to a state visit to the UK, while showing reluctance to criticize his immigration stance.

Trump and May gave a joint press conference at the White House last Friday at which they heralded the renewed “special relationship” between the US and UK. Moments after May left Washington, the US president unleashed his executive order.

Miliband noted the confluence of events. He said it was a “pity” that the UK prime minister “wasn’t able to express the British position at the press conference with Donald Trump standing next to her”.

He said: “The special relationship brings a special responsibility. Americans will notice clarity and conviction, and it’s very important that it’s expressed by America’s closest allies.”

He added that he hoped the shock and outrage that had erupted across the US over Trump’s immigration order would act as a wake-up call for Europe. “This should remind Europeans that what we now call European values of solidarity, compassion and internationalism were hard fought for. It should certainly be a reason for people in Britain to realize that Brexit is no excuse to abandon what we regard as civilized values.”

The IRC’s work is likely to be affected on many levels by Trump’s immigration ban. Founded in 1933 by Albert Einstein, himself a refugee to the US, the organization spans the full arc of the current crisis, from working on the ground in the countries covered by the order, including Iraq and Syria, as well as being one of the largest refugee resettlement groups in the US.

The profile of the average refugee entering the US sharply contrasts with the ominous image of terrorist Trojan horses conjured up by Trump. Half of all refugees entering the country each year are children under the age of 14, and women make up a large portion of the remainder.

US travel ban - a brief guide The executive order signed by Donald Trump suspends the entire US refugee admissions system, already one of the most rigorous in the world, for 120 days. It also suspends the Syrian refugee program indefinitely, and bans entry to the US to people from seven majority-Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – for 90 days. The order has prompted a series of legal challenges, while thousands of Americans have protested outside airports and courthouses in solidarity with Muslims and migrants.

A paradox of Trump’s pledge to introduce “extreme vetting” is that refugees are already subjected to more extreme vetting by the US than any other group. They have to jump through numerous hoops in the course of an intense review that can last up to three years, including biometric testing, face-to-face interviews and background checks by the FBI, CIA and other intelligence and security agencies.

By specifically targeting Muslims, Trump was playing with fire, Miliband said: “This policy is a propaganda gift to extremists around the world who want to tell Muslim communities that America doesn’t want them and doesn’t want to help them. That is a real and present danger to global stability.”

In his travels through the US in recent months, Miliband said he had met a number of individuals who underlined the positive contributions made by refugees. He recalled the baklava baker from Damascus whose house was bombed in 2012 and who recently relocated to America, and the Iranian Christian who fled religious persecution.

Such encounters had taught him “the wisdom of the terrible quote from Stalin that a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic. I think there’s a grave danger in the refugee crisis that the scale of the numbers desensitizes people. The first thing is to remember the human scale: what we are trying to do is make the world better one life at the time”.

Miliband noted that working as he does in the IRC’s Manhattan offices he often glimpses the Statue of Liberty in the distance, causing him to reflect on the famous poem on its base: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

“We’ve always known that America had its political divisions, but there has never been a notion of two Americas when it comes to the idea of providing a haven to refugees,” he said. “It’s a shocking thought that America could divide on the very idea of its foundation.”