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The Golden Door

One fall afternoon, I got an excited call from María. After living in the United States for seventeen years, she had received a date to be sworn in as an American citizen.

Born near Guadalajara, Mexico, María Isabel Castro Gonzalez was one of ten children. Her dad was a farmer, her mother a shopkeeper. She had married young and, in 1998, at age thirty-one, moved with her husband and four children to Virginia, where he had found work as a builder. Cass and I first met María when one of his colleagues recommended her as an occasional babysitter. But the moment I saw the way she held our then-infant Declan, I had asked if she would consider becoming our live-in nanny.

María had tremendous energy. She kept running lists in her mind of all that she needed to do in a day or week, and when she got to the end of one list, she would immediately devise a new one. She was a perfectionist about her work and managed almost all aspects of our household when I was in government. She also made time to attend daily Mass during the week. Because Declan and Rían often accompanied her, to this day they say their Our Fathers and Hail Marys in Spanish. María’s faith in God’s love gave her an optimism and joy that I almost never saw falter. Knowing she was watching over our kids made it possible for me to work while having peace of mind about their well-being. Her presence in our family was a profound blessing.

I had spoken previously at naturalization ceremonies and wanted to help celebrate María’s big day. I offered to give brief remarks at the event where she would officially become a citizen.

Like many Americans, I was familiar with one of the verses from Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus,” the poem engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” But as I reread Lazarus’s poem on the drive to María’s ceremony, I took special note of her final line: “I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Mum, Eddie, Stephen, and I had entered through that door, and now María would do the same.

That morning, she would take the Oath of Allegiance alongside people originating from twenty-eight countries. I could only imagine what each had been through to gain a foothold and integrate themselves into American society. And as I looked out onto the crowd of expectant new Americans, I could see the pride in their faces: they felt they had earned their citizenship.

The ugly political winds in the United States contrasted sharply with the earnest gravity of the occasion. Donald Trump had launched his campaign for President on a platform that blatantly stoked fear about immigrants and refugees, falsely depicting them as criminals and terrorists who were cannily masquerading as persecuted civilians. Among his proposals, he had called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” claiming such a ban would prevent terrorism.^* Back in 1979, when my family moved to Pittsburgh, the Troubles were still roiling Northern Ireland and terrorists had killed civilians in Dublin, my hometown. The repulsive ideology of judging (and punishing) people collectively due to nationality or religion could have kept my family and other Irish immigrants out of the United States.

In my speech at María’s naturalization, I decided to address these worrying forces. For as long as the United States had existed, I said, some people had claimed to represent “an original, pure America” and defined themselves in opposition to immigrants. Nativists had once stigmatized Chinese, Irish, Italian, and Jewish arrivals. Now they had turned on Latinos and people of Muslim faith. In the face of such fearmongering, I urged those taking the oath that day not to hide where they came from, but to celebrate it.

The audience included not only those being naturalized, but Eddie, Declan, Rían, and several of my friends who had become María’s over the years. I recounted her journey from Mexico to the United States, describing all she had sacrificed for her family and for mine.

“She’s not only taught my children her language,” I said, “but more importantly, she’s taught them her values. How to listen. How to treat people with respect and dignity. How to live life and treasure the small wonders every day.”

María had held on to all she learned in Mexico, I said, “and now my kids will carry what María teaches them for the rest of their lives.”

When I returned to the US Mission after the ceremony, I was struck that the faces in a typical US government office did not look all that different from the courthouse I had just left. I had heard foreign ambassadors remark on the power of President Clinton choosing Czech refugee Madeleine Albright to represent the United States at the UN, President Bush naming Afghan immigrant Zalmay Khalilzad, and President Obama selecting me. But immigrants defined every part of American society.

Kelly Razzouk, the human rights adviser at the Mission, was the daughter of a Lebanese man who had escaped his country’s civil war as a nineteen-year-old, carrying with him just two pairs of pants. Kam Wong, the mission’s longest serving administrative assistant, had worked for the State Department for twenty-five years. Her father had fled Communist China when she was an infant. After spending his family’s savings on a boat ticket to America, he had worked shifts in a Chinese restaurant in Iowa until he could send for his wife and newborn daughter.

The parents of my military adviser, Colonel Mike Rauhut, were German survivors of World War II who had made their way to the United States when the Berlin Wall went up in 1961. By coincidence, their son Mike had been stationed in Berlin when East and West Germany were unified in 1990, and on the day of reunification he had walked through Brandenburg Gate with his mother. Mike would go on to become a decorated officer, serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wa’el Alzayat, one of my Middle East advisers, had immigrated with his family to the United States from Syria when he was a teenager. Wa’el’s father, a former colonel in the Syrian Air Force, drove limousines and ice cream trucks before returning to school in his fifties to become a semiconductor testing engineer. Wa’el, meanwhile, studied at top American universities and then joined the State Department.

Maher Bitar, my deputy in Washington, was the son of a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother who had met in Beirut before being displaced by Lebanon’s civil war. Maher spoke Arabic, French, and German and had gotten his law degree at Georgetown by taking night classes while serving as an aide to Middle East peace envoys George Mitchell and David Hale. My assistant Manya-Jean Gitter’s grandfather had been a prominent Jewish businessman and her grandmother a well-known psychologist in Vienna. After Hitler annexed Austria in 1938 and the Nazis began confiscating Jewish property, her grandparents, each of whom spoke six languages, fled with their young son, Manya’s father, to New York City. Manya’s grandparents learned after the war that their parents and many of their siblings, nieces, and nephews had been murdered in the Holocaust.

Along with María, so many of the people I relied upon every day—patriots who often worked seven days a week to promote US interests—were themselves immigrants or children of immigrants. The United States is the only country at the UN about which this is true.

IN SEPTEMBER OF 2015, the lifeless body of Alan Kurdi, a two-year-old Syrian boy in a red T-shirt and tiny Velcro shoes, was photographed after he washed up on a Turkish shore. When an inflatable dinghy bound for Greece had capsized, Alan had drowned, along with his mother and five-year-old brother. The image ran on the front page of newspapers all over the world, focusing people on the danger that refugees endured in their search for safety. By the time of Kurdi’s death, some 65 million people in the world had been displaced, with an additional 34,000 people fleeing their homes each day.⁴⁶

In the decades since the US government had slammed its doors on thousands of Jews seeking refuge from the Nazis during World War II, America had become the world’s leader in responding to refugee crises, resettling more than four million people. Even after the fear brought about by the September 11^th terrorist attacks, the Bush administration had still managed to resettle an average of nearly 45,000 refugees each year. Yet from the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011 until that September in 2015 when Alan Kurdi died, while the United States had admitted more than 284,000 refugees of other nationalities, we had only taken in 1,484 Syrians. This was a tiny fraction of the nearly five million people who had poured out of the country.

On trips to places like Jordan, Turkey, and Germany, I would meet Syrian refugees desperate to find somewhere safe to restart their cruelly interrupted lives. At a refugee center in Amman, I spoke with a twelve-year-old boy named Ibraheem who had lost his mother and four siblings after Assad’s forces struck his home near Damascus with a barrel bomb. Because Ibraheem couldn’t walk after the attack, his father had carried him in his arms for eight months in a desperate quest to find a doctor who could remove the shrapnel in Ibraheem’s head, chest, and leg. Ibraheem eventually got the specialized care he needed, but only when he reached Winnipeg, Canada, where he and his father found refuge and where Ibraheem is now a high school student.

On one visit, I was introduced to an extraordinary Syrian Kurd from Aleppo named Nujeen Mustafa. Nujeen, who was seventeen years old, had cerebral palsy and needed a wheelchair to get around. Unable to attend school even before the war, she had educated herself and became fluent in English from watching American television shows like Days of Our Lives. In 2014, she and her family had fled Syria, and Nujeen began a 3,500-mile wheelchair journey, traversing Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria before arriving in Germany. Her older sister Nisreen had stayed by her side, helping push her wheelchair during their sixteen-month trek. When I met the two sisters in Berlin, I asked Nujeen why so many Syrians like her risked drowning in the rough waters of the Mediterranean for an uncertain future in Europe. She explained that their motivation was elemental: “People are dying every day for the chance to brush their teeth in the morning and go to school.”

In the early years of the war, Syrian refugees had not intended to resettle in faraway places like Germany or the United States. They had instead remained in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey so they would be nearby when the time came to return home. But as the war dragged on, many lost hope and began trying to move to Western countries, where they hoped to find work and build new lives. Not until 2015 did the UN refugee agency ask the Obama administration if the United States would be willing to resettle several thousand Syrians. Unfortunately, with Republicans caricaturing those in flight as dangerous threats, senior officials in the Department of Homeland Security and the White House claimed the political support did not exist to take in large numbers. Kurdi’s death, however, became a catalyst for reopening the internal Obama administration debate over how many Syrians we could admit.

Taking in Syrian refugees wasn’t mere charity; we had real national security interests at stake.⁴⁷ Most refugees were living in countries of modest means, with fragile political systems or recent histories of violence. For all the political noise generated in countries like the US, almost 90 percent of the world’s refugee population had fled to low- and middle-income countries.⁴⁸ Lebanon, for example, had become home to more than a million Syrian refugees since the start of the war. By the time of Alan Kurdi’s death, one in every five people in the country was a refugee—roughly the equivalent of the United States receiving 64 million new Canadians or Mexicans. Other frontline states like Jordan were experiencing similarly huge influxes.

Despite being a cauldron of sectarian tensions, Lebanon had somehow managed to avoid returning to conflict even as its neighbor, Syria, was engulfed in flames. But Lebanon’s generosity was putting an impossible strain on its infrastructure and politics. The more refugees the United States and other wealthy countries could accept, the more we could lobby other countries to do—and ultimately the lighter the load the Lebanese would carry.

The US government’s first responsibility was of course to keep the American people safe, and US officials were determined to prevent violent extremist groups from planting terrorists among resettled refugees. When I served on the NSC staff, I had seen all that our counterterrorism experts had done to strengthen the screening process. The Department of Homeland Security vetted refugee applicants against multiple databases, including those maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI, and the Department of Defense. Refugees were also interviewed, often several times, before ever being allowed to travel to the United States. For Syrians, we had even put in place an additional layer of review to ensure that US officials thoroughly interrogated even the smallest inconsistency or gap in information. A typical application took more than a year to vet. Some took much longer.

Candidate Trump repeatedly lied about this process, promoting falsehoods like, “We have no idea who [refugees] are, where they come from. There’s no documentation. There’s no paperwork.”⁴⁹ In fact, two-thirds of all of the refugees who had come to the US in the previous decade were women and children—and we knew who they were. Of the millions of refugees admitted to the United States since the landmark Refugee Act of 1980, not one has carried out a lethal act of domestic terrorism.

Along with many others—most notably White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, who had gotten to know Vietnamese refugees through his church as a child—I urged that the administration increase the number of refugees accepted into the United States. Recognizing that the more people we admitted, the more we could reasonably urge other nations to take, President Obama increased the national “cap” on refugees from 70,000 in 2015 to 85,000 in 2016, and designated at least 10,000 spots for Syrians. In 2016, he would set the cap for the following year at 110,000 refugees—a bold message to world leaders, who typically looked to see what the United States did before themselves acting.^*

Unfortunately, as our administration tried to respond to the growing need to take vetted Syrian families, prominent Republicans—perhaps eyeing Trump’s political ascent—took up his cause. Two months after Kurdi’s death provoked such an outpouring, coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris perpetrated by followers of ISIS killed 130 people. In the immediate wake of these attacks, thirty-one governors—thirty of them Republicans—made statements opposing the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states. And within a week, the Republican-controlled House had passed a bill that would have effectively halted the admission of Syrians.⁵⁰

The political battle lines were drawn, with the fate of vulnerable refugees suddenly at the center of a national debate about American identity and security. Hearteningly, I began to hear from a growing number of people—through emails, letters to the US Mission, and queries on my Twitter feed—asking what they themselves could do to help refugees.⁵¹ Mum and Eddie were among those who felt compelled to do more; along with their neighbors, they sponsored a recently arrived Afghan father and son who moved in with them for several months while the father looked for work.

When I dropped by an International Rescue Committee office in New York to thank volunteers who were teaching English to resettled refugees, I couldn’t help but notice the vast number of boxes piled in the hallways and on desks. When the office director saw my puzzlement, she explained, “It’s donations. Ever since politicians started demonizing refugees, the grassroots response has been incredible. We can’t keep up. Toys, clothes, money—we are overwhelmed.”

Seeing this, I wondered how many more people would help if they knew what they personally could do. I asked my team whether the US government could create a website where individuals would enter their zip code to learn which nearby organizations needed help welcoming refugees into the community. Although it took months, NSC aide Ronnie Newman worked with the web designers at the White House to create aidrefugees.gov, a site that allowed users to easily find out how they could offer after-school tutoring or provide groceries, bed linens, or even rides to job interviews.⁵²

In order to fulfill President Obama’s promise to admit 10,000 vetted Syrians, Deputy National Security Advisor Avril Haines, Deputy Homeland Security Advisor Amy Pope, President Obama’s human rights adviser Steve Pomper, Ronnie, and others pushed the entire administration to innovate in new ways. The US Digital Service, a team of information technology experts at the White House, computerized the paper processes and studied the data to understand the source of bureaucratic bottlenecks. For the first time, the different agencies involved in vetting sat together in a fusion cell to work through issues that arose. And once the President had announced the US goal, the Department of Homeland Security brought on new staff to its “refugee corps” in order to interview refugees and process their applications. When DHS and the intelligence community put out the call for volunteers to join the refugee processing effort, many dozens of civil servants stepped forward, working around the clock to be sure that applicants in the pipeline got a fair hearing.

My team and I also worked with Steve and others at the NSC to help organize a refugee summit, the first of its kind, which President Obama hosted during the UN General Assembly. As the United States had done during the Ebola outbreak, we used our enhanced commitments to push other countries to do more. We also made sure to recognize the extraordinary leadership shown by American partners like Germany and Canada, where Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had boldly welcomed Syrian families in the face of domestic political backlash. By the time the summit ended, Obama had mobilized more than $4 billion in new funding for refugees, while doubling the number of displaced that countries around the world planned to admit.⁵³

Recognizing that all sectors of society needed to be involved in managing the largest displacement crisis since World War II, I also partnered with Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett to help the President convene at the UN several dozen CEOs, who made $650 million worth of specific pledges to support refugees. A leader in this effort was Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant to the United States who built his Chobani yogurt company into an industry giant while going out of his way to employ immigrants and refugees. Ulukaya pledged at Obama’s business summit to take responsibility for ensuring corporate follow-through after the President left office. Through what he calls the Tent Partnership for Refugees, Ulukaya has thus far enlisted 130 companies to house, provide banking and other services for, and—most precious of all—hire refugees.

IN ORDER TO LEARN how resettled families were faring at such a politically inflamed time, I reached out to offer support to a recently arrived Syrian family. At our first meeting, Morad and Ola Al-Teibawi and their five children joined Mum, Eddie, Laura, María, and the kids for an evening together in the Waldorf residence. Rían and Rama, their young daughter of the same age, colored together, and Declan befriended the middle son, an eleven-year-old named Mohamed. Mohamed did not yet speak English, but quickly showed he was up for any sport that Declan was willing to play.

As I put Declan to bed after the dinner, he peppered me with questions about his new friend. Why, he wanted to know, did Mohamed have to leave his home in Syria?

When I said that Mohamed’s home had been destroyed by Assad’s warplanes, Declan asked if we could help get bricks to rebuild it.

I explained that Assad’s forces would probably just bomb the house again.

“Why doesn’t Obama make Assad stop?” Declan asked.

“Because America has been in two really hard wars over the last fifteen years, and he doesn’t want to start another one,” I said. “It is also really hard to use war to make things better and save people. Often it doesn’t work.”

“But then Assad will keep doing what he’s doing to kids like Mohamed,” Declan replied.

“And to Syrian grown-ups too,” I added.

“Can’t Obama at least stop the airplanes?” Declan asked.

I couldn’t believe I was on the verge of debating the merits of a no-fly zone with my young son.

When I left the Waldorf each morning to take Declan to school, I picked up the New York Times from the guard stationed outside our apartment. Declan made a game out of grabbing the paper before me and racing down the long, carpeted hallway, daring me to catch him. As he did this, he would often glimpse whatever image was on the front page.

“Why do the kids in Syria always put white and gray powder on their faces?” he asked me one day.

Initially confused, I quickly realized that almost all the photos my son had seen of Syrian children were taken after bombings, which left them caked in dust from the debris.

Declan and Rían fortunately did not see the film of dazed and traumatized Omran Daqneesh, a five-year-old boy injured after a government air strike in a rebel-held area of Aleppo. A local activist captured footage of Omran covered in blood and dirt as he sat barefoot and alone in the back of an ambulance. As with Alan Kurdi, the image went viral, concentrating the world’s attention for a fleeting moment on the agony Syrians were enduring.

When someone in the White House circulated a letter that an American boy around Declan’s age had written President Obama about Omran, I decided to read it to my son.

Dear President Obama,

Remember the boy who was picked up by the ambulance in Syria? Can you please go get him and bring him to [my home]? Park in the driveway or on the street and we will be waiting for you guys with flags, flowers, and balloons. We will give him a family and he will be our brother. Catherine, my little sister, will be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him. In my school, I have a friend from Syria, Omar, and I will introduce him to Omar. We can all play together. We can invite him to birthday parties and he will teach us another language. We can teach him English too, just like my friend Aoto from Japan.

Please tell him that his brother will be Alex who is a very kind boy, just like him. Since he won’t bring toys and doesn’t have toys Catherine will share her big blue stripy white bunny. And I will share my bike and I will teach him how to ride it. I will teach him additions and subtractions in math. And he [can] smell Catherine’s lip gloss penguin which is green. She doesn’t let anyone touch it.

Thank you very much! I can’t wait for you to come!

Alex

Alex lived close to New York City, so when Declan asked if I could set up a play date, I contacted his family and invited them to the UN. When Alex arrived, Declan shyly introduced himself as if he were meeting a superhero. The boys took turns sitting in the Security Council president’s chair, banging the gavel used to start meetings.

As I watched Declan and Alex presiding over an imaginary meeting, it was hard to escape the thought that perhaps we would be better off with the children of the world in charge.