Jan, thank you for writing about this. When we read the headlines, it's easy for us to forget what viscerally is at stake for refugees. What it takes for people to uproot themselves, abandon their homes, leave behind loved ones who are not in a position to flee. So often, we just think about the inconvenience to US, how it might threaten OUR comfort, OUR way of life. But what about them? What would we do in their position? Would we hope that other countries welcome and helpp us? For me, this quandry is a deepely personal one. As I may have mentioned in my previous comments here, my mother's family was in that position. If my grandmother had't fled the USSR-imposed dictatorship in East Germany, I (or some version of me) would have been born behind the Iron Curtain during the height of the Cold War, just a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I likely would have not been permitted to leave that country until I was 29. And that would have been the easy part.
Jan, thank you for writing about this. When we read the headlines, it's easy for us to forget what viscerally is at stake for refugees. What it takes for people to uproot themselves, abandon their homes, leave behind loved ones who are not in a position to flee. So often, we just think about the inconvenience to US, how it might threaten OUR comfort, OUR way of life. But what about them? What would we do in their position? Would we hope that other countries welcome and helpp us? For me, this quandry is a deepely personal one. As I may have mentioned in my previous comments here, my mother's family was in that position. If my grandmother had't fled the USSR-imposed dictatorship in East Germany, I (or some version of me) would have been born behind the Iron Curtain during the height of the Cold War, just a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I likely would have not been permitted to leave that country until I was 29. And that would have been the easy part.