Mila Kunis Lashes Out Against Donald Trump’s Anti-Refugee Rhetoric

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By Maia Efrem July 6, 2016

In a new interview with Glamour magazine, Jewish actress Mila Kunis didn’t mince words while lashing out against Donald Trump’s anti-Mexican and anti-Syrian refugee rhetoric.

Kunis, 32, came to the defense of Muslim refugees, having gone through a similar experience when her family immigrated from the USSR when she was only seven years old.

“The whole Syrian-refugee thing — we came here on a religious-refugee visa, and I’m not going to blow this country up. I’m clearly paying taxes. I’m not taking anything away,” Kunis said, adding, “So the fact that people look at what’s happening and are like, ‘Pfft, they’re going to blow sh-t up’? It saddens me how much fear we’ve instilled in ourselves.”

When it comes to the GOP candidate’s wall at the U.S./Mexican border, “The 70s Show” star said she didn’t even have to answer that question. “There’s no point. It’s a really great sound bite.”

Adding, “And it got him far. Nobody should be mad at him; we did it to ourselves.”

Over the years, Kunis has openly discussed the anti-Semitism that forced her parents — her mother a physics teacher and her father, a mechanical engineer — to leave everything behind and move to the United States with only $250, the most money they were allowed to bring with them.

“I blocked out second grade completely. I have no recollection of it,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2008.

“I always talk to my mom and my grandma about it. It was because I cried every day. I didn’t understand the culture. I didn’t understand the people. I didn’t understand the language. My first sentence of my essay to get into college was like, ‘Imagine being blind and deaf at age seven.’ And that’s kind of what it felt like moving to the States.”

Maia Efrem is the former research editor and assistant to the editor and was also responsible for the Forward’s annual Salary Survey. Previously she served as the editor of Blognik Beat, a blog written by students who emigrated from or have ties to the Former Soviet Union. Maia is a graduate of Hunter College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

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