I am of the belief that the human race is basically the same when you get down to core needs, regardless of where you are from in the world. Are there cultural differences? Yes, but when you get down to it all any of us really wants is a safe place to live and raise our families, clean water to drink, and food to nourish us. Which is why I find it so disturbing to hear the president of the United States complain about people from “shithole” countries coming to America and that we only want those who are highly educated.
Sadly, our president is not alone in his thoughts. If you have any right-leaning friends on Facebook, or listen to right-wing talk radio, you will hear or see the same things. Recently one of those things, a meme, scrolled through my newsfeed, it stated:
Illegal Refugees Get $3,874/mo. under Federal Assistance Program. Our SS checks are approximately $1,200/mo.
First off, you cannot be an illegal refugee. If you are granted refugee status you are in the United States legally. Second, no one chooses to be, or wants to be a refugee. They have lost everything, and have nothing.
Third, refugees do not get $3,874 a month—that number has been pulled out of someone’s ass, but what really struck me was how precise a number it was. The amount of Social Security was an approximate number, but the amount refugees get, down to the dollar, it seemed a little fishy. When I tried to verify the amount refugees receive I found several conflicting sources, and as I am not going to pull a number out of the air I will just leave it as considerably less than $3,800 a month.
The person who originally posted this identifies as a conservative in the suburbs of Milwaukee. Not exactly a place where the thought that she could end up as a refugee probably crosses her mind. I am not sure any of us have ever thought about it. What would you do if your entire world were turned upside down? You lost your family, your home, your country. Everything you had ever known since birth had been ripped away. You end up in a place foreign to you. You do not speak the language, know the customs, and you know no one. You have to start your entire life over again.
Ask yourself, “what would I do in this situation?” What could I do? How would I feel when the people who are supposed to be taking me in, and making me feel welcome have made me out to be a villain because of my age, gender, religion, skin color, language, accent, customs, etc.
I am sick of people like the woman who posted this meme, and the America First garbage they peddle. We should be welcoming refugees into our nation. We should be showing compassion and empathy to them. Throughout American history we have struggled with accepting various ethnic groups, religions, refugees and others into our country. The woman who wrote this meme is not unique to this time, or any time before. The words inscribed at the foot of the Statue of Liberty have fallen on deaf ears for many in this country. Instead of welcoming people with open arms, we are, and always have been xenophobic to groups who do not fit what are considered the cultural norm—white and Western European.
We have always had a long way to go to live up to Ms. Lazarus’s words:
“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!”
Those words are the promise of America. That is the standard we should be held to—those refugees, those immigrants, are exactly what made American great in the first place.