The stature of liberty inscription: "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free" used to be a point of American pride.
Stability is nearly always preferred to displacement; more so when children are involved. Survival is nearly always preferred to death. If people are choosing displacement for themselves and their families, they are desperate and deserve compassion.
Based on my wife's experiences as a elementary guidance counselor in two struggling school districts in the Philly area, it seems like refugees-as-immigrants are often relocated to low-income areas where the social services they need, including education (our traditional main-method of assimilating immigrant communities), are already over-utilized and under-resourced.
Concerns that terrorists would infiltrate the U.S. alongside genuine refugees seem legitimate to me, given ISIS attacks that I am aware of in at least 8 countries outside of Iraq and Syria.
A Quaker friend of mine sent an email to our governor Tom Wolfe (Dem - PA) applauding him for his commitment to accepting Syrian refugees. He received a mildly defensive email in response that could only be interpreted as an automatic reply to what must have been a flood of critical emails, but you know the old saying about the squeaky wheel and the grease? I think the flip side is also true. Greased wheels don't squeak and people that are pleased, content or satisfied with a decision never make as much noise as the displeased, so the knee-jerk response email just indicates who is making noise, not the will of a certain majority.
Stability is nearly always preferred to displacement; more so when children are involved. Survival is nearly always preferred to death. If people are choosing displacement for themselves and their families, they are desperate and deserve compassion.
Based on my wife's experiences as a elementary guidance counselor in two struggling school districts in the Philly area, it seems like refugees-as-immigrants are often relocated to low-income areas where the social services they need, including education (our traditional main-method of assimilating immigrant communities), are already over-utilized and under-resourced.
Concerns that terrorists would infiltrate the U.S. alongside genuine refugees seem legitimate to me, given ISIS attacks that I am aware of in at least 8 countries outside of Iraq and Syria.
A Quaker friend of mine sent an email to our governor Tom Wolfe (Dem - PA) applauding him for his commitment to accepting Syrian refugees. He received a mildly defensive email in response that could only be interpreted as an automatic reply to what must have been a flood of critical emails, but you know the old saying about the squeaky wheel and the grease? I think the flip side is also true. Greased wheels don't squeak and people that are pleased, content or satisfied with a decision never make as much noise as the displeased, so the knee-jerk response email just indicates who is making noise, not the will of a certain majority.
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