In 1939, 937 Jews sailed from Europe aboard the St. Louis. It was six months after the Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, when synagogues and Jewish businesses were desecrated across Austria and Germany. Jewish children had recently been barred from attending public schools. The SS had already opened concentration camps at Buchenwald and Mauthausen. These refugees had good reasons to flee.
When the St. Louis arrived in Havana, some of its passengers cabled President Roosevelt. They begged to disembark in Miami, to find refuge in the United States. As much as they believed in America, America did not believe in them. Public opinion was not on their side. Unemployment, nativism and anti-Semitism had boiled into a heady brew of intolerance. The American government feared that accepting Jewish refugees would mean letting Communists and Nazi spies into the country. Roosevelt, wary of taking on an unpopular cause as he was gearing up for a third presidential campaign, never replied to the passengers. It would not be the last time an American politician turned his back on refugees.
The St. Louis returned to Europe. Of the 937 passengers who sailed for America, 254 would perish in the Holocaust.
In 2015, it seems that we have forgotten the lessons of the St. Louis. As we live through the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War, America's doors are once again swinging shut. Following the terror attacks in Paris earlier this month, a majority of Americans now oppose accepting Syrian refugees. We’ve been here before. For the refugees, this doesn’t end well.
Who are the Syrian refugees? Many of them are educated professionals leaving what was once a middle-income country where they used to practice medicine or engineering. Some are children like Aylan. Most of all, they are ordinary people who found themselves trapped in unbearable circumstances, wedged between the brutal Assad regime and the expansionist Islamic State.
Brutal is too weak a word to describe Assad. It was his decision to crack down on peaceful protests during the Arab Spring that precipitated armed resistance and civil war. His regime is responsible for more than 75 percent of civilian casualties this year in a war that has claimed over 200,000 lives. He is the first dictator since Saddam Hussein to gas his own people. Assad is the Islamic State's most effective recruiter.
ISIS has emerged as Assad's most formidable adversary. The quasi-state controls a territory of 81,000 square miles astride Iraq and Syria and earns oil revenues of up to $600 million a year. ISIS propaganda is by far the most sophisticated and engrossing of any terror organization in history. Over 5,000 ISIS fighters come from Europe; a few of them returned to wreak havoc in Paris two weeks ago. Under ISIS rule, religious minorities like the Yazidis are massacred and sold into sexual slavery. Women accused of wearing tight-fitting clothing face lashings from the morality police.
No wonder four million Syrians have fled since the beginning of the civil war in 2011. They have seen what Hell is like and call it Syria.
And now 10,000 of those four million are slated to arrive in the United States next year. They will be subjected to a rigorous screening process, waiting anywhere from 18 to 24 months for background checks to conclude. Many Americans are concerned over the possibility of terrorists slipping in through the refugee resettlement process, but as Nicholas Kristof rightly notes: "If a terrorist group wants to attack America, it won’t wait two years to try to infiltrate as refugees. It’ll send people in as students or tourists, use fake or stolen U.S. or European passports, or just pay a human smuggler to take their terrorists across the border from Mexico or Canada."
Besides, the best thing that can happen for ISIS recruitment is for America to turn away 10,000 Syrians, mostly Muslims, out of fear. ISIS wants to force Muslims to choose between their faith and the West. We must not let ISIS draw that false dichotomy.
We also need to stop thinking about the decision to accept refugees as some kind of sacrifice. Refugees do not weaken America—they strengthen America. Refugees quickly find employment, take ESL classes, enroll their children in public schools, and contribute to their new communities. Albert Einstein, Gloria Estefan, Madeleine Albright and Wyclef Jean all came here as refugees.
America's openness to newcomers has been one of our country's longest-lasting strategic advantages. It's one of our greatest moral stands as well. Waves of fear arise in the sea of public opinion from time to time, and now we face a choice: keep our lighthouses shining and guide newcomers to our shores, or shut off the lights and leave them in the darkness, bobbing up and down in perilous waters.
John Winthrop, himself a refugee fleeing religious persecution, once spoke of America as a "city upon a hill." As fondly as we remember those defining words, we often forget what Winthrop said next: "The eyes of all people are upon us." Winthrop's sermon is not a paean to America's virtue. It is a plea for Americans to act when conscience demands it.
Once again the eyes of the world are upon us. Will we let our light shine in the darkness? Or will the darkness overcome it?
Matthew King is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs on alternate Mondays.
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