Recent violence in Paris and now Mali has set off a storm of anxious discussion and disagreement about
how best to help the Syrian refugees. The arguments rage on TV between pundits and politicians, but also
across American dinner tables, with people of good faith coming to wildly different conclusions.
The United States has a long and proud history as a place of refuge for people fleeing violence and oppression. Where I live in Miami (which we fondly call the capital of Latin America) it’s hard to run across someone who isn’t eternally grateful to be here. Whether Cuban, Venezuelan, or Honduran, so many are refugees or, like my siblings and me, the children of refugees.