To the Editor:
For weeks now, thousands of Muslims — mainly from Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan — have been flooding into Eastern Europe. Their destinations are Germany, Scandinavia, Britain, other Western European countries, and the United States. They don’t want to live in Eastern Europe, and the Eastern Europeans don’t want them.
If a tolerable level of peace and physical safety should someday be achieved in their chaotic Muslim countries of origin, many will return home. But the large majority have no intention of returning. They are determined to live in the West for the rest of their lives.
Angela Merkel has invited at least a million to come to Germany. (This may trigger a rush of several million, each hoping to secure a place there.) Our own government appears to be planning to bring about 200,000 over here in the next couple of years.
And how will we treat these people upon arrival? Presumably we feel an obligation to provide them with at least a minimally acceptable level of food, housing, and medical care. After all, how could we claim to be “welcoming” refugees if we say to them, If you have no money to pay rent, you can sleep in the streets. If you have no money to pay for doctors, you can do what a great number of American must do: Go to the emergency room.
There are, of course, many Americans who are homeless. And millions of Americans whose access to medical care is constrained by their lack of any health insurance coverage.
It is ironic that, as a nation, we may be willing to extend greater compassion and concern to people we will be transporting here from distant lands than to the least fortunate among our own American fellow citizens.
R.E.L. Knight
West Tisbury