Corporate CEOs and politicians habitually team up to make decisions that put stress on lands all over the world in order to extract resources. When the land is stressed, people are stressed. When people are stressed, war breaks out. Where there is instability, people may need to flee their homes when they would prefer not to.

In an Al Jazeera commentary headlined “Africa is not poor, we are stealing its wealth,” Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now writes, “Western governments would like to be seen as generous beneficiaries, doing what they can to ‘help those unable to help themselves.’ But the first task is to stop perpetuating the harm they are doing. Governments need to stop forcing African governments to open up their economy to privatization, and their markets to unfair competition.”

Alarmingly, many Americans fail to recognize the major role the U.S. plays in perpetuating the global unrest that turns international residents into refugees. Asylum seekers are not a burden. They are people with skills to share, who are looking to provide stability for their families. As a country, we currently lack the ingenuity and capacity for compassion needed to welcome them appropriately.

Sable Knapp

Portland