Op-Ed: Refugees and Defense of the True American Dream
by Heather Hunt
In June of 1939 the German ocean liner St. Louis, carrying 937 mostly Jewish souls, was turned away at the port of Miami and had to return to Europe. At least 254 of those onboard are known to have subsequently died in the Holocaust. They were a mere handful of tens of thousands of Jewish refugees that the United States, invoking national security, refused asylum during WWII, claiming there might be Nazi spies among them. We can only speculate how many of Europe’s stranded Jews might have been saved by a policy of deliverance.
With books and movies we pay homage to individuals, families and communities who chose the moral high road and risked personal peril to rescue Jews from the killing fields of the Third Reich. Many of them paid dearly for their choice. The moral high road is often perilous and is only traveled with courage and conviction, not security.
Sadly, the animal instinct of self-preservation can thwart our better nature when we are tasked with moral choice.
We’ve learned little from our history. Seven decades after the Holocaust we have cued a replay of our national moral misstep, this time denying refuge to the beleaguered unfortunates of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, etc. Once again we cite security concerns; there might be terrorists among them. We recuse ourselves from offering asylum because it’s risky. Too dangerous. Too costly. Too bad.
Nothing excuses our retreat to the low ground of self-preservation while thousands die, especially when what we fear losing is not our lives as much as it is our questionable lifestyle. Our American Dream.
Non-Jews who risked — and often lost — everything to save Jews from the Holocaust are accorded the honorary title “Righteous Among the Nations,” by the Jewish Holocaust organization Yad Vashem. A total of five U.S. citizens have been so honored. I suspect the judgment of history will be that we were not righteous among the nations during the present refugee crisis either. Righteousness is at odds with worldly wisdom, but every book of scripture reminds us that God favors the righteous, not the strategically sound.
The Book of Mormon can be read as a narrative of refugee families from the Near East who escaped tribulation and/or destruction because they were led by Divine Providence to the Promised Land. The Jaredites, Lehites and Mulekites were all refugees. The later peoples from Ammonihah, and of Ammon, were also refugees and might easily have been infiltrated by enemies. Nevertheless, the Nephites sacrificed to embrace, protect and aid them.
Is it possible that God wants to lead refugees out of the blighted Near East again? That He wants to save them from the worst humanitarian crises on the planet and bring them here where they can enjoy basic security and provide for their families in peace? That He wants them to have liberty of conscience with all the possibilities it encompasses? I don’t find it difficult to imagine.
We deny safe harbor to the most endangered peoples on earth in the interest of protecting the ‘American Dream’. The President of the United States boasts of this before the United Nations while personally exemplifying that the American Dream has been hijacked by the love of money and self. This counterfeit dream, a moral nightmare, doesn’t deserve to be defended.
The midterm election offers us an opportunity to step up to the moral high ground by voting for candidates who defend the true and ennobling American original — the dream of safety and a free conscience; it is the dream of physical and spiritual refuge.
