America is a country filled with immigrants from all over the world, yet the anti-immigration rhetoric is at an all-time high (high, like Trump's proposed wall...ahem). If mistrust and aversion to immigrants sounds hypocritical, it's because it 100 percent is—something George Clooney pointed out while visiting a group of Syrian refugees in Berlin.
"I'm of Irish decent," Clooney said during a meeting organized by International Rescue Committee. "And in America, a hundred years ago, we were refugees. My family. Irish were treated terribly in America for a period of time, and not accepted. America learned to accept all of these ideas. It's what our country is, is a country of immigrants. And we have not recently done a very good job of remembering who we are."
George's wife, barrister Amal Clooney, also spoke about her family's history. "My own family's from Lebanon, and they also ran away from a war and were lucky enough to be accepted by a European country in 1982 when the violence there was really bad," she said. "Many years later, everyone is doing well. My father has returned to Beirut. I hope that as you say, you will be able to go back to a safe and free area."
George ends the above video by pointing out that refugees aren't just numbers in a newspaper—they're real people trying to escape real violence: "We always look around at the end of these tragedies and say, 'If we knew, we would have done something.' The reality is, of course, we know."
When a man who spent six years starring on ER is making more sense than many of our political leaders, you know there's a problem. George for president?
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