Our world has never seen a refugee crisis of the magnitude of today's, not even after Hitler and others ravaged the world, intent upon destroying a group of people — the Jews — because of their ethnicity, killing millions and displacing millions more. As a historian and an educator, I cannot ignore the historic human tragedy taking place before my eyes.
Our brothers and our sisters — millions of them — are fleeing religious and other persecution, leaving the homes they love to climb mountains and sail seas in the hope their children will be safe. To my mind, there is no debate: We must help the refugees.
We cannot allow falsehoods to frighten us from doing the right thing. The Department of Health and Human Services found that refugees brought in $63 billion more in government revenues over the past decade than they cost, but the White House pushed them to play around with the metric, producing a study more to Donald Trump's and Stephen Miller's liking, citing only the per capita refugee costs for major HHS programs.
This is wrong. We cannot run our country wisely if we base policy on poor data. Even if the study showed a drain, I personally would want our doors wider open. I would want us to recognize the sufferings of our brothers and sisters and bring them in. But to close the doors because of untruths is foolish and mean-spirited and wrong.
The administration wants to further reduce our already paltry flow of refugees. The president is given the power to establish this number, and the power is useful to quickly raise that number in times of emergency. However, I believe that Congress should set standard annual caps. We can ask our members of Congress to legislate this. We can ask our governors to take a stand. We can donate to international refugee efforts and volunteer with local ones. We can write our president and ask him to have mercy upon the downtrodden.
We can do better.
Lisa Halverson
Springville