These decisions on refugees weren’t popular. Jimmy Carter made them anyway

These steps President Jimmy Carter took while in office are still shaping the United States more than four decades later. But they didn’t help him at the polls.

Steps that Jimmy Carter took during his presidency are still shaping the United States, decades after he left office. But they didn’t help him at the polls. Because of Carter’s actions, hundreds of thousands of people fleeing persecution had a chance to come to the United States when he was commander-in-chief. And millions more resettled in the US after he left office. “He was well aware of the political cost,” says Carter biographer Kai Bird, author of “The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.” When it came to taking on tough issues, Bird says, Carter didn’t shy away from doing what he thought was right. And that’s where Carter found himself in the summer of 1979, making a decision that went against what polls said that most Americans wanted. The scenes from the other side of the world were devastating. Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing government oppression in Southeast Asia were taking to the sea, and many were drowning as they tried to escape.