After the Last Border

by Jessica Goudeau

  Liberalizers had effectively blocked bills in 1895, 1903, 1912, and 1915, but in 1917, they no longer had the political power to resist the growing restrictionism. The 1917 Immigration Act listed a significant number of “undesirables” that the American government did not want to allow into the country, including what it termed “idiots” and people deemed “mentally or physically defective.” On the list of “undesirables” were not just people from China, but now from every country in the “Asiatic Barred Zone” except for those from the Philippines—who had been US nationals since America colonized their country—and Japanese immigrants, who were bound under other restrictions. It also mandated that all potential immigrants pass a literacy test and gave immigration officials wide freedom in denying entry to anyone they wished. The act blatantly described the kind of immigrant the people in leadership within the US valued: literate, upper-class, white, Northern Europeans without disabilities.

  By the time the next major immigration bill passed Congress seven years later, the racism was not only overt, it was masquerading as cutting-edge science. Politicians argued for the Immigration Act of 1924 based on eugenics, the science of population control and human breeding. Eugenicists argued that white people were scientifically, biologically, and culturally superior and that one of the ways to preserve the best aspects of the human race in the United States was by limiting nonwhite immigration. In an April 9, 1924, speech, Senator Ellison DuRant Smith of South Carolina encouraged his fellow senators to read eugenicist Madison Grant’s 1916 work, The Passing of the Great Race, and touted Grant’s arguments about the superiority of “pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock” to “shut the door” and “breed pure American citizens” rather than allowing the US to be “an asylum for the oppressed of all countries.”

  When it passed, the bill stated that the number of immigrants from each country would be limited to 2 percent of the population of each of the countries represented in the US during the 1890 census—before the large wave of immigration brought more people from Southern Europe. The 1924 act was an attempt to allow in more people from England and Austria than from Greece and Italy. The act also almost completely excluded arrivals from Asia, South America, the Middle East—and of course the entire continent of Africa, since most African Americans in 1890 had arrived as a result of being trafficked through the Atlantic slave trade routes. The act also actively barred the admission of people who were “likely to become a public charge.”

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  —

  The Great Depression in the 1930s solidified the restrictionists’ hold, since anyone coming to take scarce jobs was now especially unwelcome. As the decade went on and the conflict in Europe increased, national security became a rising concern. The racist views of the 1920s remained largely unchecked; eugenics was a mainstream view in the US and Western Europe until the Nazis took the philosophy to its logical, awful end in the Holocaust.

  By the time the MS St. Louis arrived off the shore of Florida in the summer of 1939, the American public was still largely unwilling to accept even the most “tempest-tost” refugees. There were floods of sympathetic articles across the nation advocating for these refugees and others, personal and political appeals from desperate relatives who told alarming stories of what was happening as Hitler’s forces moved through Europe. But whether those stories were dismissed as rumors or disbelieved, the attitude of the American public toward refugees remained against arrivals even in the early years of World War II. The prevailing public view was a kind of restrictionism that could be summed up by the very American phrase, “better safe than sorry.”

  The brand of “better-safe-than-sorryism” from the late 1930s through the early 1940s presented national security, racialized, and economic fears as commonsense policy. It rationalized dehumanizing tactics as a necessary political move to protect US citizens. It quelled the impulses of people who might have been uncomfortable by arguing that it was more important to defend the rights and safety of the American public (even if the people affected were also US citizens or their relatives).

  Better to be safe by turning away thousands of panicked refugees fleeing the Nazi regime than be sorry if one of them turned out to be a German enemy alien. Better to be safe by forcibly detaining almost 120,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps along the West Coast than to be sorry if US information leaked across the Pacific. Better to be safe by arresting, indefinitely holding, or even deporting patriotic Italian citizens than to be sorry if rumors in their local neighborhoods turned out to be true.

  Better-safe-than-sorryism was the staple of such groups as “The America First Committee,” established in 1940. Their spokesman, Charles Lindbergh, used blatant anti-Semitic language in Iowa in 1941 to argue that the “greatest danger to this country” comes from the “large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, or our radio and our government” of “the Jewish.” As he framed it, these “war agitators” pushed the US to enter the conflict “for reasons which are not American.” While he nodded to the suffering of Jewish people and others under Nazi rule by acknowledging that intervention by the United States was “understandable from their viewpoint,” he spent much of the speech laying out the case for why the US entering the war would only lead to “chaos and prostration.” By resisting their “misinformation” and “propaganda,” the US could avoid “sending our soldiers across the ocean to force a landing on a hostile coast against armies stronger than our own.” The reasoning of Lindbergh, an established Nazi admirer, relied on the fact that the Nazis were the superior race, had superior technology, and would certainly defeat the US Army. In his configuration, while it might be regrettable for the victims of the Holocaust, the best policy for US interests was that it was better to be safe than sorry.

  The backlash against Lindbergh’s speech was immediate. Over the next four years, the tide of public opinion rose in favor of US investment in humanitarian endeavors, including resettling refugees. The obvious ramifications of better-safe-than-sorryism became clear: The cost of “sorry” was the humiliation and dehumanization, the lost livelihoods and freedom, of innocent Japanese or Italian Americans. The cost of “sorry” was the lives of the 532 passengers on the MS St. Louis who ended up in concentration camps. The cost of “sorry” was a genocide so horrifying, affecting so many millions of people, it needed an entirely new word. The cost of “sorry” was the displaced faces haunting Europe after the war, hoping for news of their loved ones and a safe place at last.

  That was the political ground in which the unprecedented refugee policies following World War II had their roots. The profound American desire to prevent better-safe-than-sorry restrictionism from occurring lasted almost a decade, until the memory of gas chambers and pogroms faded, until the country forgot there had ever been a time before the word “genocide” existed. But some of the core values of the years following World War II remained, especially our shared identity as a global leader with the strength and responsibility to help others. The argument of the Army-Navy newsreel that “our half of the world cannot remain well if the other half is sick” would become so well-worn, it would seem that it had always existed—that refugees were always a part of our national consciousness. What changed over the next few decades was the nation’s definition of the “other half of the world.”

  Chapter 11

  HASNA

  DARAA, SYRIA, MARCH–APRIL 2011

  Within days, it felt impossible to Hasna that there had been a time before the soldiers came to Daraa, before tanks menaced every crossroad, before fear of what was happening to Malek and Yusef infused her every waking moment with dread. The government forces had returned the bodies of the young men who had been killed so their families could bury them. There was no word on the dozens of other young men who were missing.

  Hasna hated to find hope in the other families’ grief, but the return of the other men’s bodies seemed further proof that Malek and Yusef were among
the men carried off to Damascus. No one had seen them killed. Some people who had remained at the soccer field after Jebreel was sent home told Hasna that they thought they had seen the two of them among those who remained behind. Hasna clung to the thinnest scrap of hope, rubbed it to tatters beneath anxious fingers, felt the edges fray and unweave as each day passed without their boys.

  A large building several blocks from their home had become the headquarters for the soldiers in this section of Daraa. Because there were soldiers near them, their grocery stores still had food. The electricity in their area of town returned and remained on. There were no raids on their already-occupied block.

  Their luck was relative, of course. They lived every day in a state of occupation in a city with no communication with the outside world. No journalists documented what was happening; the only news was being propagated by the government-owned media outlets. Immediately after the attack on the Omari mosque, the government released video in which they claimed that they had saved Syria from outside dissidents who were planning an attack. Hasna thought it was ludicrous—everyone in Daraa knew government forces staged the video with their own guns, propped innocent Syrian men up and made them lie to the camera under threat that their families would be killed. But because it became the official story on the government news, people outside Daraa believed—at least for a time—that the Syrian government was only trying to stop terrorists, rather than killing innocent civilians. Without free journalists, rumor and hearsay were the only counterweight to the official story.

  Hasna heard reports that mercenary soldiers from Iran and Hezbollah had been seen elsewhere throughout town—they were easily differentiated from the clean-shaven, modern-Arabic-speaking Syrians either because their beards revealed they were in Hezbollah, or because they spoke the classical Arabic of the Quran—fusha—indicating their first language was Persian. Hasna heard reports that these mercenaries were telling people they suspected could be dissidents that they could turn in guns and receive amnesty, but when they turned the guns in, the soldiers killed them for confessing. Anyone who was assumed to be taking part in the protest was shot on the street. The government imposed a curfew and officials often kept suspects out until just minutes before the curfew, when government snipers would shoot any men seen out in the street, even the innocent ones who had just been released and were trying to get home.

  In the parts of town where known dissidents lived, foreign soldiers knocked on doors and told the residents they had five minutes to get out. At the first houses they went to, the residents did not leave. Why should they, when it was their home? What was the worst these hired men would do? The soldiers threw white phosphorous bombs into the homes, jamming the doors shut behind them so the residents could not escape.

  The bombs melted the walls within seconds.

  The horror of melting alive in her own home turned the blood in Hasna’s body to ice every time she thought of it. She could not sleep. She roamed the house, touching the walls with the palms of her hands as if their solidity might reassure her, running her fingertips over the leaves of her beloved plants, gray in the moonlight. She haunted her own home like a ghost, desperately searching for some measure of peace. The sleepless nights left permanent smudges under her eyes.

  And yet, every day, with surreal routine, they went about their lives. They ate and they tried to sleep, they talked to their neighbors. Rana went back to school. Jebreel went back to work. It was astonishing how quickly they adjusted to this new reality.

  On Fridays, the city erupted into protests and the demonstrators clashed with soldiers. At the funerals on Saturdays, more protests flared up, which only led to more deaths, which only created more riots, in an ever-escalating cycle.

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  —

  One morning, Hasna could not stand it any longer; there seemed no worse fate than waiting and not knowing. Every day that she went to the bakery or to the store, she watched young soldiers on the street.

  She had seen something in the demeanor of a few of them that reminded her of Khassem and his cousins, who were also soldiers. She and her neighbors whispered among themselves that the Syrian regime could not have complete control of their army. Why else would they be dependent on Hezbollah and Iranian mercenaries already?

  According to one persistent rumor, the first shot fired at the Omari mosque was at a conscripted Syrian soldier who had refused a direct order to enter a sacred space and shoot unarmed young men. He had been shot by his commanding officer.

  Hasna bet that the soldiers who looked at her with kindness, who respectfully spoke the words of blessing and peace each time they saw her, were true sons of Syria caught up, like Khassem, in a situation beyond them.

  As she left the small bakery that had the best bread in town, she passed by some soldiers lingering outside. She asked one of the tall young soldiers to help her carry her bread home. When he came to her house, she offered him coffee and sat with him for an hour. He told her his name was Fahad al-Homsi, and he was deferential and gracious. They did not speak of the political situation—she would not put him in that position—but by the end of the coffee, Hasna was convinced that he did not want to be doing what he was doing and that he would, if pressed, err on the side of helping the people of Syria.

  When Laila came out to the courtyard and saw her mother entertaining a soldier, her small shoulders set rigidly and her eyes narrowed. She slunk away quickly after Hasna introduced them. Their argument after Fahad al-Homsi left was cataclysmic. Perhaps screaming at each other would have released some tension; instead their hissed whispers only seemed to magnify the pressure. Hasna was the worst kind of traitor, Laila said. Hasna tried to form her strategy in words—if they could befriend the soldiers, find the cracks in their professional demeanor, they could find out information. Laila wouldn’t listen, wheeling away and slamming the door to her room, the only way to express her raw fury. She woke the baby and Hasna could hear her shushing him back to sleep. When it was time for dinner, Laila came out to help her mother, but her mood was black. Later, when they were calmer, Hasna tried to broach the subject again, but Laila snapped and walked out of the room. Hasna did not bring it up again. She watched Laila warily, worriedly.

  The house had often seemed too small for their seven children over the years and now it felt stiflingly full of their collective anger, anxiety, and fear. Only Hamad and his peals of laughter brought any of them joy.

  * * *

  —

  Despite Laila’s censure, Hasna deepened her strategic friendship with Fahad al-Homsi. He brought other soldiers over to her house one day. They brought her bread and she served them coffee. She had often gone to other bakeries, depending on the day and the deals available, but she took to frequenting only the bakery by the soldiers’ station on the street. She noticed that Fahad al-Homsi was often the soldier posted at the entryway to their neighborhood or making the rounds through the narrow streets and alleys around Al-Salam Square. Soon she spoke to him at least once a day.

  The earnestly handsome Fahad al-Homsi became an almost constant focus of the giggling neighborhood girls. He was kind to them, but it was Laila he followed with his eyes every time she and Hasna left to go to the store or sat on the street with their neighbors. Catching his eyes on her only seemed to make Laila angrier. She and Hasna were both aware of the direction of his eyes, but they never spoke of it.

  One day, he brought a loaf of bread to Hasna’s gate early in the morning. He knocked gently and, when she answered, leaned his head down briefly so his voice did not carry: “Good morning, Um Yusef. Peace be upon you.”

  “Peace be upon you, Fahad.”

  “I hope you are well this morning.”

  “I am as well as I can be, thank you, son.”

  “Um Yusef,” and here he looked over his shoulder for a brief moment, “I’ve gotten . . . I heard . . . Yusef and Malek are alive. They are in a prison in Damascus
with some of the other men. All nineteen of the men from this neighborhood are alive.”

  She put her hand to her heart, felt it beating raggedly. She took a step back from the door, making room for him to come inside, but he did not. He spoke low, just above a whisper.

  “I am not the one who told you. But they do not have proof against them and, if they do not find any in the next few days, they have to let them go.”

  “And they will come home?” She tightened her grip on the metal gate and felt its edge bite into her palm.

  His eyes shone with what she thought might be tears, but his hat shadowed his face and she could not be sure.

  “There is a very good chance they might be coming home. I will do what I can to get you news.”

  “Thank you, son. You are very kind.” They looked at each other, all of the things they could not say laid bare between them. “I will pray for you, my son.”

  “Thank you, Um Yusef. I would appreciate that.”

  “May peace be upon you.”

  “Peace be upon you and your family.”

  Hasna rushed to tell Jebreel and Laila what the soldier had told her. They all cried, with relief, but now with added worry—when would they come home? And what were they enduring as each day passed in captivity in Damascus? Underneath, though, Hasna felt a spike of triumph—her strategizing had paid off.

  As quietly as they could, without revealing the source of the information, Hasna and Jebreel told the mothers and fathers of the other nineteen young men what they had learned. Laila went back with Jebreel to her house to get a few more things, to make sure their valuables were hidden, and to get Malek’s clothes in case he came back to the house. They also told Laila’s in-laws. Word leaked out slowly, like spilled oil, that all of the boys were safe.