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-tossed, to me . . .
– Emma Lazarus (1849-1885)
“The New Colossus”

I was reading LookingTowardPortugal just now. It’s a good blog by a friend who writes better than I do (not a high bar, I know). He started his Feb. 5th post with that classic Emma Lazarus quote, so I stole it.

It’s good to be reminded that America isn’t only open to just the right people. We want the people other leaders left behind and didn’t want. We asked to take ‘the wretched refuse’ unto us. I hope me mean that. We say it on the damn Statue of Liberty, for god’s sake!

There is no rational reason I can see that we’re trying to deny refugees. Feel free to enlighten me if I’m missing something. It’s certainly not a safety thing. The numbers, if you bother to look, are decisive. Refugees are safer than planes, trains or automobiles. They’re safer than amusement parks, ski resorts, or power boats.

More to the point, they’re safer than an equal number of Americans drawn randomly. Violence by refugees is so small it’s hard to measure accurately. They are not dangerous at all.  Even normal immigrants, as a population, are safer than the rest of us, but with refugees, the risk is magnitudes of order smaller.

Refugees bring grit, enterprise, desire, and love. They enrich every area they enter.  I’m not being romantic, I’m talking about economic gains. The numbers are openly available.

Oh yeah. And refugees bring really cool, new foods. Got to remember the important stuff.

Yes, they talk with accents, usually, and some struggle with English, especially in the beginning. Yes, they dress differently, sometimes. Some of them practice different religions. Sometimes they aren’t lily white. Get over all of that.

The odd part is that most Americans are wonderfully generous! We are so much better than our leaders pretend. Even in deepest red Trump territory, grab three people at random and introduce them to new refugees, and they’d be falling over themselves to help. Most people are easily that good, and we’re aching to make a difference. How often do you get a chance to help someone who really needs it?

Sure, maybe you don’t have much, but they have nothing. Almost literally. We forget that refugees arrive with what they carry.

I’m not pretending that Trump people are rich or poor, but everyone seems to want more than they have. After the last recession, a wide swath of people are struggling to meet their bills each month. Some have extra, but many remain deeply insecure.

So maybe you have a crap car, beat furniture, and credit card bills. Maybe you’re only working part-time.

They don’t own a chair to sit in. And they’re in the dark at night because they don’t even have lamps. You, on the other hand, have that old chair you don’t like that’s sitting in the basement. And those two lamps you never use. And the instant you think of that, you start looking around to see what else you could clear out. Hell, it’s almost selfish.

Except it isn’t.

If we could see them, we’d help. That’s who we are. I’ve seen it lots of times. But we’re being lied to, and they’re leading us to do things we’ll regret through the rest of our lives.