Donald Trump Jr’s distasteful analogy of the United States’ “Syrian refugee problem” has been branded the very definition of irony after he sent the tweet using an iPhone - a device created by the son of a Syrian immigrant.
The 38-year-old has been widely-criticised after he likened refugees from the war-torn country to potentially poisoned Skittles.
But New York Times reporter Binyamin Appelbaum points out that Trump Jr’s tweet was sent from a device made by Apple, the multi-billion pound company founded by Steve Jobs.
Jobs’s father grew up in Homs, Syria. In December, infamous street artist Banksy left a painting of Jobs at the Calais ‘Jungle’ migrant camp.
Trump Jr’s tweet highlighting “our Syrian refugee problem” also contained the phrase “make America great again”, the slogan of his father’s presidential campaign.
Skittles released a statement saying the analogy was not “appropriate” and clarified that refugees are actually people.
A spokesman from Skittles said: “Skittles are candy. Refugees are people. We don’t feel it’s an appropriate analogy.
“We will respectfully refrain from further commentary as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing.”
A report published last week by the Cato Institute, a Conservative-leaning think tank, found that “the chance of an American being murdered in a terrorist attack caused by a refugee is 1 in 3.64 billion per year.”
According to the State Department, of the approximately 785,000 refugees who have settled in the US since the September 11 attacks, fewer than 20 have been arrested on terrorist charges.
Following last year’s terrorist attacks in Paris, Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” which he later adjusted to immigrants from “terrorist nations.”
Last month, the United States welcomed its 10,000th Syrian refugee, meeting its goal for the year. According to the United Nations, there are more than 4.8 million Syrian refugees worldwide.
The irony of Trump Jr tweeting the graphic from an iPhone, which was invented by Steve Jobs, the son of a Syrian immigrant, has been pointed out.
Asylum seekers must make their case before a federal immigration officer, but the backlogged system can only handle a small proportion of cases each year.
In 2014, the most recent year of available data, federal immigration officials received 41,920 applications for asylum, but granted only 8,775.