Abandoned by America

The refugee camp where I work as a doctor, in northern Greece, is seven hours ahead of Washington, so news of President Trump’s executive order barring refugees for 120 days — and Syrian refugees indefinitely — came in the middle of the night. The next morning, it was the topic of conversation among the translators I work with. Given the enormity of our day-to-day tasks, they’re impressively well versed in the news: I first learned about the draft order early last week from one of the Syrian translators in our group.

He made a point of mentioning Mr. Trump’s promise to create vaguely defined “safe spaces” in Syria; I suspect this promise rings hollow, given that the Syrian government and Russia have shown no scruples about directly targeting hospitals and civilians, and the Islamic State acts without any regard for war conventions. Would Mr. Trump stand up to Vladimir V. Putin if the Russian president bombed a “safe space”?

Another translator seemed equally unfazed by news of the ban, reminding me, “He’s already been saying he was going to do this.” His brother was recently resettled in the United States, and he will now likely be unable to visit his family if they are ever relocated in Europe.

For most people here, though, the news is not really news, just another rejection by the West — and they have enough to deal with already. Having fled the horrors of an endless civil war, many Syrians languish in purgatorial refugee camps.

The idea that these people present security risks that America’s current, strict vetting process wouldn’t identify is absurd. In camps outside of Thessaloniki, Greece, I have treated children with stomach pains and constipation because they avoid the infrequently cleaned latrines. Young men arrive in my clinic with bodies covered in scabies. A translator has explained to me that almost everyone in the camp sleeps late because their nights are ridden with nightmares and insomnia, unable to let go of the horrors they escaped.

These patients live in converted warehouses that provide only partial shelter from the biting cold outside. The harsh Greek winter has brought inconsistencies in running water and frigid trips to sinks and showers, but surprisingly little relief from the constant stench of nearby waste-treatment facilities.

Far darker stories loom beneath the common complaints of headaches, stomach pains and muscle strains. A formerly successful businessman fled the constant threat of kidnapping and violence. A university student was separated from his family after the locations of his school and family were divided by battle lines between Syrian government and rebel forces.

Since Western Europe and, now, the United States have largely closed their doors to Syrian refugees, Greece is overwhelmed, with over 62,000 of them. Some fled years ago, floating from one host country to the next without finding a clear path to a stable new life or a safe return to Syria. Some arrived in Greece days or weeks after the borders through the “Balkans route” closed, leaving them separated from family members now living in Germany and elsewhere. They wait without end to be processed through the slow-moving and bureaucratic United Nations relocation program, promised opportunities to find a job, send their children to school and regain some degree of normalcy in an accepting European nation. These relocations, which grant safe haven for men, women and children fleeing terrible misfortune, have been characterized by President Trump as “a catastrophic mistake.”

Most refugees I speak with have resigned themselves to relocation to any country that will take them. They mention places like Ireland, Finland and Luxembourg as particularly desirable; nobody mentions the United States. The United States has accepted just a little over 19,000 Syrian refugees since the start of hostilities in 2011, a tiny fraction of the 4.8 million Syrian refugees outside of Syria, typically after an extensive two-year screening process involving multiple federal agencies.

The specific exclusion of Syrian refugees from the asylum process seems particularly egregious when compared with Greece’s system, which streamlines the asylum-seeking process for Syrian nationals, acknowledging the obvious validity of their asylum claim. And while refusing their admission to the United States, the Trump administration simultaneously seems intent on undermining the United Nations, which facilitates the camps and shelters these refugees are stuck in.

It should go without saying, but the violence, extremism and oppression that Americans fear Syrian refugees will bring to the United States are the very same dangers that Syrian refugees fled their country to escape. The Trump administration is now completely closing the doors to honest people fleeing unimaginable conditions — people I know intimately, people who want nothing more than peace and opportunity for themselves and their families. If we let these policies stand, the United States will abandon any claim it holds as a moral leader in the world, and abandon millions of refugees to a life of pain and suffering.

Ben McVane is a doctor volunteering with the Syrian American Medical Society Global Response.

©2017 The New York Times News Service