RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: Let refugees have the dignity of choosing where they live

Those huddled masses yearning to breathe free in the United States usually arrive with empty pockets.

Those who aspire to refugee status may have nothing more than a suitcase full of tattered clothes, a cigar box of family photos or their child’s favorite stuffed animal. Often, all they bring are tears, heartache and nightmares.

These people have been brutally robbed of everything. They have had their country snatched, their possessions stolen, their safety eroded and their identity erased. They are helpless and totally dependent on the kindness of strangers.

Given that horror, it’s not asking too much that these people be allowed to have and keep at least one precious thing. In fact, they should be able to take that priceless item with them wherever they go:

These folks ought to have the right to choose the country to which they would like to migrate. And that right should be nonnegotiable.

This is not to say they should be guaranteed a spot. In the United States, only about 1 in 4 of those who apply for asylum will get it. At best, it’s a crapshoot. But these people ought to get to choose in which casino they roll the dice.

It’s a simple concept. And it should also be obvious. Who would argue against it?

You’d be surprised. People can be petty. Some would like to strip away the “right to choose” from those who have already lost everything else. With no legal justification, they insist that would-be refugees should have to apply for asylum in the nearest country where they’re out of harm’s way.

Have to leave El Salvador? Mexico is lovely this time of year. Need to get out of Haiti? Why not try the neighboring Dominican Republic?

And these days, if you are among the 3.5 million refugees who the United Nations claims have left Ukraine since the Russian invasion, wouldn’t you be more comfortable remaining in Poland?

According to immigration lawyers, the first-place-you-feel-safe requirement is bogus. It’s the kind of rhetorical cotton candy that gets spun on conservative talk radio where the ignorant declare the way things ought to be.

Asylum seekers are under no legal or moral obligation — either implicit or explicit, under the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention — to claim asylum in the first country they reach where they’re safe.

It’s easy to see why. The issue isn’t where refugees are safe. It’s where they feel safe. And that feeling varies from person to person.

This attempt to manipulate the movement of refugees isn’t about what’s best for the refugees. It’s best for them to be around family and near a community of their own kind. Rather, it’s about the convenience of those Americans who don’t really want refugees here in the first place.

Why not admit that? The anti-refugee chorus in America isn’t just distasteful. It’s also dishonest.

These restrictionists could just admit what they really feel at the thought of thousands of refugees entering the United States along our southern border with Mexico — whether those people come from Guatemala, Haiti or Ukraine.

The answer is fear. The nativists are afraid of, well, you name it. They’re afraid of losing control of the border and diminishing the importance of the English language. They’re afraid that refugees won’t assimilate, or that they’ll end up on the public dole. They’re afraid of changing demographics.

Fearing the foreign is not new. In the 1930s, previous generations of fearful Americans pushed back against pleas that the United States take in Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. Later, in the 1960s, another generation of the fearful resisted the idea that the country should welcome Cuban refugees in the 1960s or Hmong refugees in the 1970s — both groups fleeing repression and death.

Americans gloat because, annually, we take in about 1 million immigrants and refugees. But that’s peanuts. In a nation of more than 334 million people, the newcomers account each year for only about 0.3 percent of the U.S. population.

That’s not even enough to replace those Americans who die off. Each year, a little more than 3.38 million people pass away, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The record is unkind. At critical moments in the history of the world, when the desperate have needed a lifeline, Americans have failed to toss one.

America is a sought-after haven for refugees where people will find any excuse it can to keep out refugees. We can do better.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is crimscribe@icloud.com. His podcast, “Ruben in the Center,” is available through every podcast app.