A Few Words on Syrian Refugees and America

I find it hard not to think of the lines of that poem.

Of huddled masses.

Of the wretched.

Of the tempest-tossed.

It is pushing five years since Syria fell apart.

Back in May fourteen American senators sent a letter to the president calling on him to lead a significant resettlement of Syrian refugees to our shores. At this point the government has said we’re likely to admit up to eight thousand, although to date we have admitted no more than about fifteen hundred. The senators’ letter is asking for half of those the United Nations High Commissioner for Refuges has called on the West to resettle, some one hundred, and thirty thousand in all, and therefore for us to take in about sixty-five thousand people.

There are various objections, most notably that this could be a “backdoor” for Jihadists to infiltrate the country. This is a concern that cannot simply be dismissed. Anyone who thinks we don’t have serious enemies among the radical Islamist movements, people who want to do serious damage to our country cannot be taken as serious. And anyone who doesn’t acknowledge our significant part in the whole mess there, along with some genuine responsibility for what happens to these people caught up in the wake of horrors we in signficant part have unleashed, are no more serious.

Taking care of refugees is not going to be the final fix. That is going to be hard, costly, and bloody. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be acting for those refugees, and acting right now.

It seems to me owning our part in all this and some simple common decency requires us to do our best to screen the new refugees, but, yes, to take in that sixty-five thousand. And this needs to be on top of the annual seventy thousand number that the US has been taking in from various crises around the world for the last couple of years. Not instead of.

And, actually, we should be taking in a lot more.

As this goes on, a lot more.

But right now there is a crisis, and we need to be in and helping.

Right now.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Right now.

Right now.