Every year millions of people leave their home countries to seek safety elsewhere. Refugees escape persecution, subvert international borders and sometimes cross oceans to seek safety. They then face a gruelling asylum adjudication system which determines whether they will receive support.
Once refugees have made these perilous journeys and are offered international protection, against all odds, some claim that they are then required to go even further: they must be grateful for it.
On his popular Fox News show in 2019, American commentator Tucker Carlson criticised US congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a refugee from Somalia, on precisely these grounds. “If anyone should love America, it’s Ilhan Omar”, Carlson opined, the “country rescued her from a squalid Kenyan refugee camp and made her a national figure … But Ilhan Omar is not grateful. She hates us for it.”
