Help more with refugee crisis

Looking at the refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East, I am appalled and ashamed that the United States isn’t doing more to help. Surely we can take in many more refugees than we have done over the past year. We cite problems such as homeland security – the possibility of terrorists coming into our country.

Surely, if we went to the sordid refugee camps on the Syrian border, we could register people there before they undertake the hazardous journey by sea and land to Europe, give them humanitarian aid there in the camps, look up their backgrounds and if they are genuine refugees, bring them directly to the United States.

I’m sure there are individuals and churches here willing and even anxious to sponsor a refugee family. The pictures we see on TV every evening are so heart-rending. Families with children walking for hundreds of miles uncertain of which nation will take them in. And now, with winter and cold weather approaching, the situation will become even worse.

We as a nation have been so proud of our compassion toward those who are desperate. Surely we have never seen such desperation as in those thousands of refugees fleeing the killing of war.

Ruth Calkins

Newport, Wash.