Legislators need to get a clue

To the editor,

Thank you for highlighting the politicized and jingoistic sham arguing against refugees.

I’m embarrassed by our state legislators, presidential “candidates”, and the historical amnesia displayed by many Americans.

This hysteria is un-American. Refugee status is by no means the easiest way for terrorists to enter the U.S. War hawks started by blaming President Obama for the Paris attacks, then claiming terrorists were hiding among refugees, that all Muslims were terrorists and finally Obama again for not taking care of homeless vets. Immigration doesn’t preclude numerous congressional votes against protecting vets.

Scared Americans are more terrifying than a 50-year-old man with nothing but his family murdered, little food to eat, and hoping that Americans still stand by the text written on Lady Liberty’s tablets.

Elected officials are lying and proselytizing to fear-induced Americans who know too little, watch too much, and vote on talking points next to the letter R or D.

Let me provide some perspective on my own history: In 1917, my family of Ukrainian descent fled the Bolshevik revolution in former Czarist Russia. To prevent being conscripted by the red army that was sweeping the country, my great-grandfather left and entered the U.S. He was not a communist in hiding, a rapist, or a petty criminal. I’m sure he was called at least as much. He did not expect welfare, and he certainly expected to get his butt to work becoming a part of the United States.

My paternal great-grandmother shared a similar story, the only sister of three chosen to enter America in 1917. The other two fled to Spain, eventually being killed in the fascist Franco revolution preceding World War II (another refugee crisis Americans chose to ignore).

My great-grandparents married, and after they forcibly changed their name to something less “jewy”, opened a grocery that persisted through the great depression, creating a family spanning North America. They succeeded in providing a better life, and brighter future for our family.

Patriotism and immigrant past define our family. We’re thriving with 100 years of American assimilation, complete with former and current veterans of three wars, and blessed by the tail end of American Exceptionalism and political compromise that followed WWII. We are proud Americans.

Considering the myriad names of our politicians, how convenient the gates of freedom weren’t closed on their families.

Dunleavy, Stoltze, Hughes, Tilton, Keller, Gattis and Neuman ... get a clue.

Ed Kessler

Palmer