To Receive or To Reject?

Like many of you, I’ve been following, at least a little bit, the ongoing Syrian refugee situation.  Refugees fleeing the so-called Islamic State will be arriving in the United States soon.  It’s been more controversial than I’d imagined.

I’ve heard and read the news reports. I’ve seen the internet memes.  I’ve read the claims that ISIL will use the refugee situation to sneak terrorists into the United States, although I’ve seen little in the way of hard evidence to support these claims.  I’ve read of state governors, in Texas and elsewhere, proclaiming that Syrian refugees will not be allowed into their states—although, Xth Amendment notwithstanding, I’m not convinced they have the Constitutional authority to make such decisions.  And, of course, I’ve seen all kinds of social media posts and polls asking the big question: Should Syrian refugees be allowed to enter the United States?

So, for those (if any) who care, here is my opinion: I am in favor of allowing Syrian refugees to settle in the United States.

Because I would want someone to do that for me and my family if the situations were reversed.

I can’t imagine what these people are going through—driven from their homes by threat of violence, forced to leave behind everything they’ve known and make a new start in a strange country.  There is nothing in my experience that even comes close to that.  I can’t relate.

But I have family who can.  Because I count among my ancestors some of the Mormon pioneers.

They were refugees, too.  Outsiders?  Foreigners?  Subversives?  Evil?  The Mormons were called all of these things, and worse.  They were expelled from their homes and their society, and traveled hundreds of miles to make a new start somewhere else.  A few welcomed them, but most treated them with suspicion and mistrust.  Persecution eventually began, and culminated with the expulsion of the Mormons under threat of violence—by their own government, in at least one case.  So they would leave, and the whole process would start all over again.

My wife, and therefore my children, are descendants of Brigham Young.  He was there when the Mormons were driven out of Ohio, driven out of Missouri, and driven out of Illinois into the Iowa Territory.  He led them, over the course of two years, across what is now Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming into what was then another country (Mexico) and into the valley of the Great Salt Lake.  He helped them settle there, in a desert valley that was available because nobody else wanted it.

I read the accounts of that migration and settlement, and I marvel.  I can’t take it all in.  I can’t conceive of how these pioneers endured all the hardships, all the persecution, all the threats to life and limb, and didn’t just give up.  I can’t understand the extent of their suffering.

It seems to me a shame and a waste for my ancestors to have suffered so much for me not to learn something from their experiences.

So yes, I can, at least by proxy, empathize with the plight of the refugees fleeing ISIL.  And I’m okay with them having a home here.