To refugee or not to refugee...

Ok - I am going to post my OPINION on the current state of affairs regarding refugees. I sincerely believe and want to convey that my opinion on refugees does not take away from the love that I have for my country, my respect for all the women and men who serve our country in the present, those who will serve in the future and those who have served in the past. I was brought to this country by American Citizens who adopted me from a country that DID NOT want me...and do not be mistaken...domestic adoption in Korea is still very much looked down upon and orphans are still outcasts of society...43 years after my birth the country has progressed very little regarding orphans and adoption. I was naturalized because back then you did not become a citizen automatically...even after being adopted by a Military American family. I know what it is truly like to have been saved and brought to America. I have been blessed with the gifts of freedom that being an American Citizen has afforded me and as such I am able to post this.


History has shown us over and over again that oppressive states, countries, and governments have no respect for human rights or humanity on a whole. ISIS and the Muslim extremists are not a new revelation in the world - hate has been abundant in this world for centuries and as such discrimination has as well. And for as long as there has been hate there have been people who have suffered at the hands of those who hate them. For as long as there has been hate there have been people fleeing from that wrath. Whether you are looking at an entire country faced with genocide or you are the bullied kid beaten up on the playground-your natural inclination is to flee. If you don't flee then you turn to your next inclination which is to fight. So your country turns to war or you become the next kid to beat someone up. In these situations there is always fallout. There are always innocent people who become the casualties of war. What do you do with these people? What do you do with the people who are being persecuted and fleeing from their country. Do you turn to hate as well and discard the fact that they are human beings trying to survive? Do you become just as hateful and self centered as the fanatics that are chasing them from their country? Or do you call upon decency and understanding to not punish thousands for the sins of a few?


Now I know that last statement is a loaded statement. The argument is that terrorists are embedding themselves in and posing as refugees. There is no doubt, after Paris, that this is happening. Some have the ideal that the sins of a few will lead to more attacks and more innocent lives lost. Is that a wager that we should make...the potential for another hidden terrorist among thousands of innocents...the potential for that one hidden man to cause another attack that will kill more innocent people. The truth is that so many innocent lives have already been lost. We have lost more people during the war in the Middle East than were lost during 9/11 - is that a compromise that we wanted to make - HELL NO it's not, but that is the truth of war. There is no golden compromise - there are no guarantees and there are no correct answers. EVERYTHING has a risk. Going to war was a risk and people paid the ultimate price. Taking in refugees is a risk. Being a decent human being is a risk - but the reward outweighs the risk. Teaching people and being a decent human being is the example that we all should set. Thinking of others before ourselves and the golden rule, treat others as you would want to be treated, is how we should live.


People are talking about how so many Syrian refugees are Military Aged men. So what happens to them if they stay in Syria or the Middle East. How many of those men will then be turned, either out of fear, hate, or just to survive and become the terrorists that we want to get rid of. How many boys in Sudan, the Congo, Rwanda, and so many other countries became soldiers just to survive, after their countries were torn apart, and they had to watch their families be massacred with machetes? How many of those military aged men will fall victim to the abhorrent amount of extremist propaganda spewed out by ISIS? How many of these men have left the country to flee from that? How many of these men will we take in and...wait for it...not allow ISIS to turn them into western hating terrorists or how many will we save from beheading because of their Christian beliefs. I am not an expert on the Middle East. Many people I know are more versed in this subject and the military, but I would have to say that the recruiting effort of extremist groups like ISIS is pretty heavy and very manipulative. I don’t think they just knock on doors and hand out flyers. So why do we want to leave all these Military Aged men subject to their manipulation, propaganda, and coercion? Do we want to leave them and give ISIS even more ammunition to use to show how horrible we in the west are? How many people thought that joining Hitler was a good idea? How many young boys did he manipulate and coerce? How many people tried to flee during that time? What did Hitler do - he closed the borders because he wanted to be able to manipulate as many people as he could and kill anyone who disagreed.

How many people in the United States today have immigrants in their families? How many people's descendants fled from oppression somewhere and came to this country? How many of those people turned into criminals, murderers? Many of them did...how many of them became an asset to this country...many more than were a deterrent. My mom's family came directly from Palermo, Sicily with many other Italian immigrants - how many of them turned to crime and became mobsters or were already mobsters when they came over? I would say there was a pretty large population of criminals. How many people came over from Ireland to escape famine and discrimination from the English - only to kill people in the United States. The murder rate per 100,000 was the same in the 1920's-1930's as it is right now. It dropped for quite a few decades and then came soaring back up in the 2000's. I realize that terrorism is on a different level than domestic crime...but the gist is that there is always risk when taking people in. Statistically the good outweighs the bad. This country has become what it is today on the back of immigrants and refugees.  

In the past our country has also taken it upon themselves to lock up immigrants and turn away refugees. The Japanese during WWII - most had nothing to do with the war, but all we saw was the hate for the Japanese and so we interned 120,000 of them and 65% of them were American Citizens. After WWII the US was asked to take in Jewish refugees and you know what - the majority of the country didn't want to. We turned away a ship full of Jewish refugees that arrived in Florida after WWII. We will come over there and fight against your enemy, liberate the concentration camps, but then we will turn you away...sound familiar. Our country is no stranger to turning people away and making villains out of the ones who are already here in times of crisis. We should have learned from our past.

I don't agree that we should turn away any refugee that is truly being persecuted in their country. We are not just supposed to be fighting terrorism. We are supposed to be helping liberate a population of people in the Middle East. We were supposed to be helping them re-establish government and give them a chance at a less persecuted life. How are we helping by turning them away. We went in there to help and is it right to just give up on the people. Are we only there to bomb and attack the enemy with no regard for the civilians. I don't believe that we are and I don't believe that the men and women serving feel that way. I think that the vile acts committed by terrorists just take over people's judgement and we let go of the humanity that we should be looking too. An eye for an eye only leaves both sides blinded. It is not right to lump all the refugees together under the category of the despots who have committed these heinous acts. Just as it wasn't right for Hitler to exterminate millions of people, or for the genocide in Rwanda to take place, or the way that we interned the Japanese, or the way we enslaved a race of people for centuries. There is nothing that is right about punishing innocents for the crimes of others or as in many of the examples listed...just because they are different than you.


And why if we want to help other countries are we only taking a stand in the Middle East...we all know why - MONEY!! We allow millions of other people to suffer in other countries that have no monetary effect on us. We have allowed North Korea to obliterate their own population from within with the most extreme case of isolation and totalitarianism and do nothing, because that is not a country that will give us any monetary gain. We allow wars in Africa to rage on and complete genocide to befall countries because they have nothing for us. It disgusts me to think of the people that we ignore. And the ones we choose to fight we then then disregard the casualties from those fights. And when I say disregard I incorporate our soldiers as well. The men and women who return home broken and damaged...from all of our wars. In WWI & WWII you just had shell shock and were written off, in Vietnam you were spit on when you came home, and now PTSD is claiming the lives of our veterans left and right...and yet we still turn to hate and abandonment as the answer. It is not the answer. We should not turn our backs on our soldiers or these refugees...


There is not much more room in our world for hate...it is seeping out everywhere...domestically and internationally. Racism, sexism, bigotry, religious persecution, political warfare, xenophobia, and just an overall disregard for humanity. The ridiculous back and forth between conservatives and liberals is just as much a platform for hate as well. We don't all want to take your f'ing sides. And just because someone doesn't agree with you or has different beliefs doesn't make them less of a person. I have heard it from both sides - just a constant barrage of insults and disregard for humanity. Both sides are just as guilty and can be just as ugly as the other. Don't tell me that you want to help someone and then turn your back on someone because they have a different political affiliation as you. I know the end of this post has turned into an everyone should just love one another rant. I am not naive and have no illusions about the state of the world or humanity as a whole. I just know that I am a loving Christian - I am not a fundamentalist and I believe that being a decent human being is what is expected of me and it is what makes me feel good. It gives me hope for my children and it allows me to sleep at night.


Judging an entire group of people based on the actions of extremist militants that have no regard for human life is only going to lead to more suffering. Society has cast out others for far to long based on their color, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc... In western society we have taken that even a step further judging and casting out people based on their income, social status, job, home, or even things as petty as the kind of music you listen too. These are all forms of hatred that blind us to how we should treat each other. Do we want to let the bad guys bully us into becoming just like them - extremists that are tolerant of no one else?