As winter approaches, a plan to settle 5,000 Syrian families in the US

Winter is coming to Europe. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees are stranded in camps from Greece to Germany. This is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. We need to lay aside for now further discussion of both responsibility for regional instability and immigration policy and respond. But how?

America has traditionally been welcoming to refugees of conflict. We accepted approximately 400,000 Eastern Europeans in the aftermath of World War II. Nearly 38,000 Hungarians came after their failed 1956 revolution. Almost 650,000 Cubans were resettled after Castro came to power. The second wave of Vietnamese refugees, the “boat people,” numbering about 2 million fled in the decade following the capitulation of the South Vietnamese government in 1975. Sadly, and little known, almost 500,000 Vietnamese drowned. Between January and July 1979, Malaysia towed some 58,000 back out to sea, where many died.

The American response to the Vietnamese is a model we should use to immediately accept 5,000 Syrian families into America. We opened large or underused armed forces training centers, notably at Camp Pendleton in California, Fort Chaffee in Arkansas and Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. At Camp Pendleton, a tent city that ultimately housed 50,000 was erected with 36 hours of notice. We were prepared to open at least one additional facility, at Camp Shelby in Mississippi. I was to be the director of Health Services there.

We have a large inventory of bases, some of which serve only for reserve unit training during the summer months. We could easily prepare and make available five such posts, each dedicated to receiving 1,000 families.

This is preferable to vetting prospective immigrants in the chaos that is the European camp setting. In the American camps, the vetting process can be carried out more efficiently; obviously there must be a plan for those who don’t “pass.” Other government agencies on site can handle the myriad administrative requirements. Education and acculturation can begin, and nonprofit and community organizations can identify and begin to work with sponsored families.

We don’t know much about the people we see on the nightly news. Some are no doubt well-educated urban dwellers. Others may be craftspeople or farmers or others whose skills are not transferable. What they share is a desire to escape the violence and provide for their families.

The task of integrating them into American life will not be easy under the best of circumstances. If our government is serious about the promises made and we as a people are as welcoming as we have been to other refugees, then we need to get started. We need to get the camps open and prepared. Now.

This story was originally published November 2, 2015 at 5:15 PM with the headline "As winter approaches, a plan to settle 5,000 Syrian families in the US."