Virtue in a refugee, peril in a ‘patriot’
America is enriched by its immigrants Too many Americans are afraid of the wrong people, and it endangers our republic. I think of this on a spring evening as I text Fatima, a trans woman in Nairobi.
She needs to go to a hospital; I send her transport money as I hear shouts from the soccer field around the corner. Health issues often accompany the poverty of someone like Fatima, who fled from Burundi to Kenya due to hatred and violence fueled in part by right-wing American evangelicals.
I sent her a little money a few days earlier to celebrate breaking the fast on Eid al-Fitr, the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
Several of my refugee clients are Muslim. Fatima often ends messages, “We will talk again, Inshallah” — if God is willing. I write the same to her.
