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Imagine loving the idea of a country so much you would leave everything you’ve ever known to risk being detained indefinitely in horrific conditions and having your children taken away just for the slimmest chance of a safer and more prosperous life in it.
Despite all the news of what welcomes them here, these people still come with their kids, so either these conditions are better than what they’re fleeing—which is disturbing enough—or they still believe America couldn’t possibly be the kind of place that would let their kids die.
I can’t tell you how many times children in refugee camps in the Middle East have asked me to tell America that they need help, because they know Americans are good people who will care about their pain. It’s absolutely heartbreaking, this persistent belief in our heroism
But what else can we expect from them? That’s what they see in all the movies we make about how heroic we are, how we fight evil and liberate the oppressed. That’s what they learn from our incessant fetishizing of our origin story, from the words on our most treasured monuments.
We have conditioned these people to believe we are not like where they were born, that we will not hurt the powerless. That’s why they keep coming no matter how many stories they hear about what awaits them. We created an idea of America, and now we punish them for believing it.
