Some of my bleeding heart liberal friends might find my stance on Muslim Syrian refugees to be a bit harsh. But I probably know more about true refugees than most of them, especially those that are DAR and Mayflower descendants. See, my family has been in the U.S. less than 100 years. My grandparents married in Germany and immediately came to America to forge a new life. They were sponsored, educated, healthy, and my grandfather had a trade. They came here and my grandfather NEVER looked back. My grandmother, admittedly, was a bit more homesick. Yet, she took night classes to learn English because she didn't want to look like an idiot out in public. My grandfather worked with another German and an Italian immigrant. None of them really spoke English, yet they managed to communicate quite well nonetheless. My grandfather didn't speak much English but he totally understood it when spoken to and read an English newspaper cover to cover everyday. They assimilated.
They also left their families behind. With the exception of my grandmother's younger brother, all of their family members remained behind in Germany. This was in the 1920s, between the wars. My grandfather had served in the German army in China during WWI. He was done. All he wanted was some land and to live his life in peace. His family and my grandmother's family, however, stayed behind. Some were members of the German army during WWII. (Call them Nazis if you want, but most of the German army and citizens had no idea what Hitler was up to.) Several male family members were KIA or MIA during the war: killed in a sunken U-boat, MIA in Siberia, etc. Some, miraculously made it back. My great uncle, who my family had presumed dead, took years to WALK BACK from the prison camp where he was held in Russia after he was released at the end of the war.
But the soldiers and sailors weren't the only ones to suffer. When WWII ended, the Russian army basically shoved Poland to the west and, in doing so, displaced thousands of Germans who lived along the eastern border with Poland. My family was from Bauerwitz, now known as Baborów in the Opole Voivodeship of Poland. When the war ended, my family members were thrown out of their homes and displaced Polish families were moved in. The Germans of Bauerwitz were moved into the brick factory in town while they waited for the Poles to be resettled so that they may move back into their homes. That never happened and to this day Bauerwitz remains in Polish territory.
While in the brick factory, both of my grandmother's sisters died from typhus. One left behind 8 motherless children. When it became clear that they would not be returning to their homes any time soon, my great uncle took his 8 children and in similar, but less romanticized style, escaped into the hills with them a la The Sound of Music. They tried several times to enter Czechoslovakia as a way to reach the new West German but were turned away at the border several times. They eventually made it through and, literally, walked from easternmost Germany (now Poland) to the British Zone of Occupation in West Germany. THEY WALKED. A war veteran and his EIGHT CHILDREN, the oldest of whom was only 13, WALKED OVER 600 MILES to freedom. They walked what is now an 8 hour car drive. He kept 8 children alive and together all that time and distance. And they were trying to get to another portion of the country they belonged to! They weren't trying to infiltrate another nation. They just wanted to get where it was safe in what was left of their own country.
I never met my grandmother's siblings or siblings-in-law but I have met the cousins that were those children trekking through the countryside to freedom. So, PARDON ME when I don't have much sympathy for military-age males alleging to be refugees who are DEMANDING fast and easy transportation to countries where they DON'T BELONG! If they were really who they claim to be, they would stand up and fight against the tyranny in their homelands. Instead they run from it? No, I don't think so. I think these men (seriously, where are the women and children?) are not refugees at all but invaders. Invaders who play on bleeding heart liberal sympathy and the coddled snowflake mentality of millennials by demanding entry, demanding train transport, demanding rights that they have no right to.
I know what real refugees are all about. These Syrians are not refugees.
