We fear what is strange

We fear what is strange. We avert our eyes. We get annoyed when we hear someone speaking another language. We click the lock on our car doors. We want to build a wall.

We forget that our grandparents or our great-great grandparents were immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers. We, who are citizens, see no need to allow others a path to citizenship.

I thought about this the other evening as I listened to a Palestinian artist named Thaer Abdallah. He was showing his paintings in a small gallery in Medford, and in doing so, telling us the story of his life.

As refugees from Palestine, Thaer, his parents and 10 siblings, lived in a one-room apartment in Baghdad, Iraq. As Palestinians, they could not legally marry, hold jobs, or get a driver’s license. They were citizens of a country that did not exist.

Then in 2003 the bombs fell. The American war had started.

Thaer with others fought to put out the fires and clear the rubble, looking for survivors. But they could not stay. They ended up in a refugee camp in Syria, then back in Iraq, where Thaer was arrested and jailed. In jail he was tortured.

At the art gallery I couldn’t stop looking at one of Thaer’s paintings. It’s of an infant, cradled in a hammock held up by four angels. The infant is the soul of a man who has endured mental and physical anguish I will never know. The wings are carrying him through. Beyond.

In accented English, Thaer could not easily relate what has happened to him. But with a grateful heart he told how in a refugee camp he met an American woman and how he was finally granted asylum in America. Now married to the same woman, a practicing physician, Thaer has become a father and an American citizen. Showing his art throughout the region, he is also writing an autobiography.

Thaer is just one of thousands, rather millions, of refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers seeking a home in a safe country. The challenges they pose to the United States, Europe and regions around the globe, are not new, but they are more intense. Yet even as the refugee crisis worsens, our country is closing the gate, restricting the flow of immigrants to a trickle.

We are a nation of immigrants, and without them we cannot thrive. Recent data show that one in five Massachusetts workers is foreign born, and three in 10 in Boston. Immigrant households in Massachusetts earn $42.9 billion per year and have $31 billion in spending power. They pay $8.4 billion per year in federal and $3.5 billion in local and state taxes, plus payroll taxes. Equally as important, immigrants bring vitality and culture to our neighborhoods and civic life.

But for me the heart of the issue goes beyond economics and culture. How we respond to the strangers among us, the immigrants and the refugees seeking asylum is a matter of faith. In the sacred writings of our religions, there is no ambiguity.

"You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt,” Exodus 23:9.

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” Hebrews 13:2

“Matthew 25:35 “For . . . I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Matthew 25:35.

In Stoneham we grow used to the familiar, the people from our own ethnic backgrounds. But we also see new faces, hear new accents, see new styles of clothing, and skin color of varied shades. What is happening is essentially American, a story repeated over centuries.

Look around you. Start a conversation. Listen to a story. Extend a welcome. Call for a rational and compassionate immigration policy. What is strange will become familiar. It’s the American way.