A refugee is a person who is immigrating to another country because of political or social turmoil within his or her own country.
In 1975, Senator Joe Biden was outspokenly opposed to a plan by President Gerald Ford, after the fall of Saigon in 1975, to authorize funds to 175,000 Vietnamese refugees. During a meeting on April 14, 1975, between Biden's Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the president, Biden said:
“ | I feel put upon in being presented an all-or-nothing number. I will vote for any amount for getting the Americans out. I don’t want it mixed with getting the Vietnamese out. | ” |
Ford retorted that that “our tradition is to welcome the oppressed.” Biden responded again a week later:
“ | I do not believe the United States has an obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals.
The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese. |
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Biden repeated his position while speaking at the funeral of the Democratic South Dakota Sen. George McGovern in 2012.