Congress should immediately direct that U.S. refugee policy be reoriented to rescue these victims threatened by looming—indeed, developing—genocide, as it did with the notorious Lautenberg Amendment, which captured the U.S. refugee intake to favor Soviet Jews. But President Trump doesn’t have to wait—there is precedent for immediate Executive Action.
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In 1990 the U.S. Congress adopted legislation creating the Lautenberg program, named after U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, to resettle Soviet Jews in the United States.
The Lautenberg program was then expanded in 2003 to pave the way for persecuted Iranian Christians to be resettled in the U.S.