America should be a place of refuge

A handful of humanitarian disasters have recently attracted the attention of American politicians and national news outlets.

One of them is Turkey's invasion of Syria, which began just last week and is still ongoing. Turkey's invasion has been widely condemned on the international stage. NBC News reports that 160,000 people have been displaced, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates the number is closer to 250,000. U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper called it an 'unacceptable incursion,” and said it undermined the campaign to defeat ISIS.

The Associated Press reports that the invasion occurred after President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of American troops from northern Syria. Trump was initially dismissive of criticism that he had abandoned Kurdish allies who had fought against ISIS, telling reporters Oct. 9 that '[The Kurds] didn't help us in the Second World War. They didn't help us with Normandy, as an example.”

After receiving criticism from Republicans and Democrats in Congress, Trump announced Monday he would place new sanctions on Turkey, raising steel tariffs and stopping trade negotiations.

Another humanitarian disaster unfolding is China's persecution of a Muslim minority group called Uighurs who live in the western part of the country. Human Rights Watch has estimated that a million Uighurs have been put in detention centers. According to the BBC, former prisoners have told of being tortured physically and psychologically in the camps, and being made to learn Mandarin Chinese and renounce their faith.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called China's actions an 'enormous human rights violation.” The Hill reports that the U.S. has expanded its trade blacklist to include China's artificial intelligence companies and Chinese government officials believed to be involved in the abuses against the Uighurs.

I want to leave aside for the moment a discussion on the propriety of sanctions or military intervention in these cases. Instead, I want to say that it's heartening to see that people care about other human beings, even if they're on the other side of the world. It's better than the alternative of a flippant 'So what? How does this affect me?”

At the same time, condemning other countries' persecutions are just words. It won't help the people suffering. It's cheap moral grandstanding.

But there are concrete steps the U.S. could take that would help a large number of people, especially those suffering from war and oppression. The U.S. can be and should be a refuge for persecuted and displaced people from around the world. In fact, it was that for several decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations until 2017 when the Trump Administration slashed the refugee program, admitting fewer than half of the refugees settled the year before when 53,700 came. Trump announced he was lowering the refugee cap even further to a maximum of 18,000 in fiscal year 2020.

What is particularly galling about this move is that refugees are not even a burden on the country. According to a study by the Department of Health and Human Services, refugees generated $63 billion more in revenue to federal, state and local governments than they cost over the 2005-2014 period surveyed.

When it comes to helping desperate people, let's save our breath and let our actions do the talking.