Rebuilding With Strength: Omar’s Story
*Omar arrived in Vermont in 2024 after a long journey — one made even harder by navigating the world without...
READ FULL STORYBy Alexia Gardner
250 years ago, this country was born with a declaration: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
This promise has been long hallowed, yet forever grieved. All men are created equal, but enslaved African Americans counted only three-fifths of a person. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, but our nation’s birth forced Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands. That among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, yet many immigrants, including children, are denied freedom, detained in harsh conditions.
The United States was built by the very people it has tried, over its history, to exclude. The U.S. Capitol itself was built in part by enslaved Americans. Indigenous knowledge fed the early colonies through their first winters and has provided wisdom ever since. Immigrant labor dug our canals, laid down our rail tracks, and provided an innovative spirit that has fueled our economy for centuries.
Amid these contradictions, it would be easy to forsake the United States as a failing project: our history clearly provides cause for pessimism. But there is a reason these ideals continue to echo, 250 years later.
Refugees, having fled to find freedom, understand the value these ideals hold, and fight to defend them.
During USCRI’s 115-year history, we have welcomed over 400,000 refugees: each of them longing for the freedom offered by their new lives in the United States. Persecuted in their home countries, refugees intimately understand the value of freedom and liberty for all. Queer refugees revel in being able to leave the house in the clothing that matches their gender identity; persecuted religious groups rejoice in being able to attend ceremonies outside an underground bunker. Journalists and human rights defenders can finally speak without risking imprisonment; women and girls can pursue education once denied to them; political dissidents can cast a ballot without fear of retaliation. Refugees are a reminder that the values this country professes—even when it falls tragically short of meeting them—are worth fighting for.
Refugees know what it is like to be harmed by the country that swore to protect you. One of the deepest tragedies of current refugee policy is that it has come to resemble the oppression that refugees risked their lives escaping. Earlier this year, refugees with no criminal history were rounded up in Minnesota and flown to Texas, where they were detained until being released with no way home. Where we once promised to provide freedom to the world’s persecuted and oppressed, we now turn them away.
This is a great loss for our national identity. Americans are not united by blood or ancestry, but by shared creed. This has long been our nation’s strength. For centuries, refugees and immigrants have adopted what it means to be American, and have made it their own in the process. They have also been amongst those most willing to fight to defend our values.
During the Civil War, one quarter of the Union Army was foreign-born. Another 18 percent had at least one parent born overseas. When President Abraham Lincoln resolved that the soldiers who died at Gettysburg would not die in vain, that the nation shall have a new birth of freedom in their honor, he was honoring not just American-born soldiers, but all those who died dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. In the Second World War, Japanese Americans—at first stripped of their title and rank by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s declaration that they were ‘enemy aliens’—served as linguists in crucial intelligence roles. And most recently, thousands of Afghans, many of whom have now been resettled in the United States, fought alongside U.S. forces against Taliban rule. You cannot tell the story of this country without telling the story of the refugees and immigrants.
The United States should always be open to those willing to defend its promises, and refugees have answered that call in every generation. They know the value of freedom because they have lived without it. Welcoming them is not an act of charity. Instead, it is an affirmation of the very ideals that have long defined the United States. In every generation, refugees have strengthened our communities, enriched our economy, served in our armed forces, and renewed our faith that freedom is worth defending.
As America marks 250 years, we should all remember that by opening our doors to those who have already sacrificed so much in pursuit of liberty, the United States continues its journey to be more fully the nation it aspires to be. The American story is still being written, strengthened by each generation of immigrants, refugees, and all those who come seeking freedom, opportunity, and the chance to build a better life.
