Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda came out against President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, calling it “deeply un-American.”
“I keep seeing ‘Immigrants, We Get The Job Done’ on placards at every march, at every protest. I can’t tell you what that does to me as a writer to see a line [I wrote]. And what it means for the conversation, in this moment in history,” Miranda told The Huffington Post on Thursday.
The Oscar-nominated singer-songwriter also said Trump’s order is “against the fundamental freedom of religion in our constitution.”
President Trump signed an executive order last week which suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days. The order prohibits the arrival of Syrian refugees into the United States and halted entry of citizens from failed state, terror-prone countries including Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
Miranda, who campaigned heavily for Hillary Clinton, also pledged his support for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a taxpayer-funded agency Trump has promised to defund.
“The importance of the NEA ― I can not tell you how many studies and findings find that arts lift up every other score in education,” Miranda said. “When you learn music, you use both hemispheres of your brain. It helps you with the math and it helps you with the arts. It’s so important that the arts have attention in our education. It certainly saved my life. I don’t know where I would be without the amazing arts education I got at a public school. I certainly wouldn’t be talking to you. So, we’re going to have to fight to protect it.”
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