Dear Mr. President: About the Immigration Crisis

This is a guest article by Frances Fuller. Frances spent thirty years in the violent Middle East and for twenty-four of those years was the director of a Christian publishing program with offices in Lebanon. She is the author of In Borrowed Houses: A True Story of Love and Faith Amidst War In Lebanon, the 2014 winner of “The Author’s Show: 50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading” contest. She blogs at www.inborrowedhouseslebanon.com. 

On a day when I could not watch television without weeping, a day when Pope Francis had issued a challenge and Angela Merkel had opened the doors of Germany, I addressed this letter to the President of the United and States:

What’s the plan, Mr. President?  What is the USA going to do about that tidal wave of people looking for a place to be?

We owe the refugees a home, because we did a lot to create the chaos from which they are fleeing.  We know it. And now that our hearts are broken by images of dead children and weeping fathers and women lying down on railroad tracks in hopes of stopping a train, we have to do something kind and constructive or we will die of guilt and shame. 

We have empty bedrooms and full pantries, but we can’t offer them to refugees unless they can get here and unless our immigration department will give them visas.  So send airplanes to get them.  Open the doors. Step up and speak up, like Pope Francis and Angela Merkel.

We are sick of war, Mr. President.  Give us a plan for building the world.  Then get in front and see us follow.

I wrote for them, the people of the Middle East who have lost everything.

Having lived in the Middle East for thirty years and in the process enduring several wars, I identify with the people. Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Egyptians and Palestinians, Yemenis and Moroccans are real human beings to me: friends, co-workers, neighbors.  I have eaten with them and prayed with them and argued with them.  They have rescued me when I was in trouble. They are real people. And I know something about what they have endured and why Syrians and Iraqis are running away. I know what it means to flee. My husband and children and I were once refugees in the strange city of Tehran, wondering if we would see our possessions again. I have left my home in Lebanon hurriedly with a small suitcase and slept in the basement of the building where we worked.  I know what it is to accept that one may not survive the night. Exiled to Cyprus, I prepared breakfast for anybody who showed up, while my husband met the boat from Lebanon and brought home friends and strangers. We took reluctant but grateful emigrants with visas to the airport where they wept over the finality of leaving home. I know these refugees. They are real people, hurting people with names and stories.

On television we see them running. Time is not on their side. Someone will catch them. Trains will leave. Borders will close. Quotas will be filled. They will run out of money, shoes, diapers, and food, run out of strength, health, options, hope. With nothing left in their hands, they will be captured behind a fence or a wall or a heartless policy. People with education and skills and dreams will accept a tent and live off charity in a place where their children have no citizenship and can’t go to school. There they will harbor anger and fear and resentment; some of them will inevitably become new enemies of those who bombed and robbed them and also those who refused them. Knowing all this, they are in a hurry, and I am in a hurry.

I wrote to the president for these desperate people.  And also for some Middle Easterners who still have their home and country, especially the good people of Jordan and Lebanon who did not shut their doors or their hearts against refugees, even against their enemies, and have given until they have nothing left. I was living in Lebanon when 30,000 Syrian troops occupied the streets, controlling our every movement, stealing, imposing taxes and looting the economy of Lebanon.  Driven away finally by a massive revolt of the Lebanese people in 2005, they came back eight years later, frightened, hungry and homeless, and the Lebanese took them in. Both of these countries have enemies on their borders as well as the stress of refugees within.  And both have reasons to be wary of alien populations. Their example has left us with no excuses.

Finally I wrote to the president for us Americans, another people who are in grave peril.  We are in danger of keeping our blessings and losing our souls. As individuals, of all faiths and none, we have bought into the world Eisenhower warned us of: the military-industrial establishment.  We have put our faith in armies and bombs, imitated our enemies and become like them. Equating war with patriotism, we have let our country become the bully of the world. We have believed the lie that we are special, exceptional, chosen by God. And, in spite of it all, we are afraid.  Afraid of losing our wealth and privilege. Afraid of sharing the good life.

We are guilty and in need of forgiveness.  We use “shock and awe” to scare people and don’t even notice that this is the terrorism we think we hate. Ignoring the lessons of history, we depose rulers we don’t like without thinking about the consequences for innocent citizens of the despot’s country.  One hundred years ago England, reputed to be a Christian nation, attacked the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli, and on that day the expulsion of the Christian Armenians began.  Forgetting to learn from that, we invaded Iraq and let the Christians and other minorities pay the price.   When we see the refugees running, we know that we are part of the reason they are frightened and seeking a home.

I wrote to the president because time is running out for us too. We are on the verge of becoming what we do not want to be.  The American people are good and generous and spiritual people.  We want to build the world not destroy or even dominate it. We don’t want to wake up and discover that the face of the Statue of Liberty is red with shame and the God we say we trust does not want to claim us, because we have not loved our neighbor.

Right now people all over this country are working together, opening their purses and finding ways to do something.  They saw a little child washed up on a beach and suddenly they understood what I understand, that these are real and beautiful people.

But we need our government.  We are here, the children of Irish potato farmers fleeing poverty, of Lebanese fleeing war, of Jews fleeing death camps, Chinese fleeing Communism, Iranians fleeing extremism, whoever and whatever, we are here because of a government policy that let us come.  The country had a plan not long ago.

I am asking Obama for a plan, a policy, a humane program to save the Middle East refugees and the soul of America.