To: Governor J.B. Pritzker
Tell IL Governor Bruce Rauner to welcome Syrian Refugees
The U.S. should lead with strength, not fear. I urge you to welcome Syrian refugees.
Why is this important?
I can only imagine choosing to carry my precious 1-year-old daughter, Abigail, as we flee halfway across a continent, and placing her in a rickety boat or rubber dinghy that may not survive the dangerous trip across the Mediterranean Sea, because that ordeal is still safer than staying home.
That is exactly the choice parents are making in Syria today.
America must be resolute in the face of terror and never allow our enemies to scare us into retreating behind walls and abandoning our values.
It is not difficult to imagine a child we reject today fighting alongside the Islamic State years from now. Abandoned in a dangerous and hopeless place, that child could turn into a fighter firing rocket-propelled grenades at American helicopters, just like the one who brought down my Black Hawk 11 years ago this month.
We are not powerless in that child's fate.
When I was a child, I witnessed the refugee crisis borne out of people fleeing the Khmer Rouge and Pathet Lao in Southeast Asia. I remember families loading all they had into boats and risking everything on the South China Sea. I am proud the U.S. took in refugees during those years, and ever motivated by the knowledge that we could have done more.
This is a time for the United States to lead with strength, not fear.
That is exactly the choice parents are making in Syria today.
America must be resolute in the face of terror and never allow our enemies to scare us into retreating behind walls and abandoning our values.
It is not difficult to imagine a child we reject today fighting alongside the Islamic State years from now. Abandoned in a dangerous and hopeless place, that child could turn into a fighter firing rocket-propelled grenades at American helicopters, just like the one who brought down my Black Hawk 11 years ago this month.
We are not powerless in that child's fate.
When I was a child, I witnessed the refugee crisis borne out of people fleeing the Khmer Rouge and Pathet Lao in Southeast Asia. I remember families loading all they had into boats and risking everything on the South China Sea. I am proud the U.S. took in refugees during those years, and ever motivated by the knowledge that we could have done more.
This is a time for the United States to lead with strength, not fear.