The issue of refugees has been prominently in the news in 2015 as millions of displaced people are currently seeking asylum away from home. Nonetheless, it was still somewhat surprising to see Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s take on the refugee issue when he tweeted about it Wednesday.
American refugees don’t show up on the shores of other countries bc America is the world’s greatest country. Agree? http://t.co/TuBFXyxy50
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 26, 2015
But what Rubio gets wrong is that American refugees actually do show up on the shores of other countries. Even if one were to set aside the case of someone like Edward Snowden, there are still just under 5,000 American refugees out there in the world according to statistics on the UNHCR website.
It’s unclear if the figures mean that just under 5,000 Americans fled the U.S. for some reason or if it is comprised of refugees from other countries (for example, Syria) who happen to hold American citizenship and do not live here. Either way, Rubio’s assertion that American refugees do not show up on other countries’ shores is blatantly false.
Various refugee agencies said that it is not unheard of for citizens of developed countries to look for refuge or asylum in other countries. But these figures in the U.S. are still quite high.
Similar figures listed by UNHCR say that the United Kingdom has 141 refugees, France has 92, Germany 126, Australia 25, Denmark 12, Iceland just the 1, and Liechtenstein 0. The U.S. clearly has much larger populations than all these countries but if the population of each nation is divided by the number of refugees the figures are still staggering. The U.S. has ten times as many refugees as France per capita and more than five times that of Canada and the United Kingdom.
Statistics aside, Rubio’s comments were also criticized on a populist level. “It seems both silly and insensitive at a time when the world is seeing the worst refugee crisis since WWII,” Brian Katulis, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, told ThinkProgress.