To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (1314165 ) 8/20/2021 9:07:21 AM From: Brumar89 Respond to Evacuate Our Afghan Allies—All of Themby LINDA CHAVEZ [ Look at that shipload of Vietnamese. Their children are now doctors and lawyers and professionals and business people. Whether you have the guts to admit it, Ten, your SKean ancestors were the same sort of "losers". unable to save themselves from their enemies, like the Viets and the Afghans. You're fully Americanized so much that you seem to have our worst vice - the vanity that our ancestors were worthy but later immigrants are lessers What am I saying?: That we should have the same welcoming attitude to new Americans as we did when the Koreans and the Chinese and the Italians and the Irish and the Poles, etc. showed up. By an accident of history, my ancestors were here before the American Revolution. If I can welcome new Americans, why shouldn't everyone? ] asked the American public this week, defending his administration’s reckless abandonment of Afghanistan. But what about those Afghans who risked their lives to protect our soldiers, contractors, and embassy personnel? Are their lives not worth something? We are the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. Can we really do nothing to evacuate those who stood with us for twenty years? paperwork, including passports, destroyed when we abandoned our embassy. The vetting that would normally take place in country will have to be handled once the Afghans arrive safely in third-party countries like Qatar, Albania, and Kosovo, where discussions are underway to house them temporarily. An operation this big—we are looking at some 80,000 or more people, including dependents of those who worked directly or indirectly for the U.S. government—will require resources and personnel working round the clock. But there are also organizations who are willing to help: non-governmental agencies, churches, mosques, civic groups.This is not the first influx of tens of thousands of refugees the United States has dealt with . When Vietnamese whom we’d left behind started fleeing their homeland after the Vietnam War, we managed to evacuate 125,000 in fast order, and over the next 15 years successfully admitted 500,000 such refugees. I saw this first-hand in 1978 when two brothers who had fled Vietnam by boat came to live with me for a short time. I picked up the scared young men at Dulles Airport, clad in short-sleeve shirts, khakis, and flip flops, despite the freezing weather. Like so many of their contemporaries, these men went on to lead exemplary lives, acquiring education, becoming citizens, and contributing to their communities and the country. One of them recently retired from a career as an FBI computer specialist.The politics of admitting Afghan refugees will not be easy. Already, the trolls at Fox News are warning of invading hordes. But neither was admitting so many Vietnamese. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter doubled the number of Southeast Asian refugees the United States admitted. As one of those refugees wrote four decades years later: “A poll from CBS and The New York Times showed that 62% of Americans disapproved. He did it anyway.” And so should President Biden. thebulwark.com
