We must prevail for America’s refugees

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, September 19, 2001

On the afternoon of Sept. 11, my wife and I received a tearful call from our former exchange student in Argentina expressing her concern. She said that if we needed a place to go we were welcome in their home. I told her we were OK and that America would prevail.

As I later reflected on her offer, I remembered something a good friend of mine told me some 20 years ago. Kim Seng Ung had been in America less than a year when I first met him. He and his family had escaped from the killing fields in Cambodia and made it to a refugee camp in Thailand after five years of living hell in a Communist camp.

He told me that on the flight to America his father told him that “we will never have to flee again”. When he asked his dad how he knew, this is what he said. “I had to flee from China to Cambodia when the Communists took control. Now we are forced to flee Cambodia to America. If we ever face a situation where we need to flee from America, there won’t be anywhere else to go.” God bless America.

Snohomish