“Hip hip, hypocrisy! Hip hip, hypocrisy!” My teenage son pumped his fist in the air. I can’t remember the chain of conversation that ultimately produced this sardonic version of “hip hip, hooray!”, but the phrase has quickly become a way to get each other to smile or self-reflect, and it often leads to a bout of shared laughter. But recently, this chant has also allowed me to reflect on the fraught crossroads of my homeland and my emerging life’s work; specifically, the troubling hypocrisy of the United States’ recent actions on two interconnected global issues—forced migration and war.

I grew up in small-town Virginia, in a family that nurtured an honorable form of gratitude-based patriotism. As a doctoral student who studies refugee issues and forced migration, I have long been proud of the United States’ global leadership in refugee resettlement (while also believing that we should do more to support refugees). From the 1980s to early 2000s, the US routinelyresettled more refugees annually than all other nations combined. While this began to shift following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, there were only four years between 2002 and 2022 in which the US did not resettle the most refugees of any country in the world, coming in second to Canada in each of those four years. In 2023, our nation welcomed more than double the number of refugees resettled the previous year, and in 2024, we resettled over 100,000 refugees for the first time in 30 years. But unfortunately, US resettlement took an abrupt turn in 2025.

In an executive order issued on January 20th, 2025—the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term—the Trump presidency announced the suspension of the US refugee resettlement program. Another executive order followed on February 7, identifying South African Afrikaners as a group worthy of resettlement despite unverified claims of race-based persecution and misalignment with the globally recognized definition of refugeehood. Since October 2025, approximately 4,500 Afrikaners and three refugees from Afghanistan have been admitted under the US refugee resettlement program.

At the same time, our country’s leaders have waged war in the Middle East, creating “a new cycle of displacement” that continues to worsen. Whether or not you agree with the rationale behind this war, our country’s actions are increasing forced displacement on a global scale. Recent estimates project that this war has already forced up to 3.2 million Iranians and 1.3 million Lebanese citizens to flee their homes, and this number will almost certainly increase as the conflict continues. Furthermore, areas of the Middle East affected by the current war already host 24.3 million forcibly displaced people. As a scholar-in-training who cares deeply about both forced migrants and the United States, the hypocrisy of cutting off refugee resettlement domestically while acting in ways that force people to flee their homes abroad is excruciating.

The United States is........

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