Nearly every day, we watch refugees from one Mideast country or another, be it Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or Eritrea, trying to escape their war-torn communities and begin a new life in a part of the world where they will be safe from harm. Many have suffered atrocities beyond description, lost loved ones and are homeless, without either food or shelter. It’s heartbreaking to see them being turned away at the border by governments overwhelmed by the thousands who seek asylum. It’s truly a worldwide tragedy.

These refugees are leaving their homeland reluctantly and those who do succeed in gaining access to a foreign country find their problems are far from over.  While they may be safe from the ravages of war, they are facing other obstacles. Most of the neighboring countries must now accept responsibility for housing and feeding them and they are arriving by the thousands so it’s a daunting task, to say the least.

We can’t understand why free world countries appear to have made precious few attempts to help some of these families relocate to another part of the Mideast either in their own country or close by, in a “safe zone’ where we can provide needed food and shelter for them. Instead, we let them continue to try to cross borders into foreign lands which can’t or won’t let them in. In most of the areas under siege, there are places much closer to their own home where they would be safe from daily gunfire and bombings, sometimes only a few hundred miles away. Maybe it’s not a workable plan, but it makes more sense to us to keep them together in more normal surroundings until it’s safe for them to return home, which is what most of them hope to do some day. If all of the countries being asked to accept refugees cooperated and worked to set up temporary housing and provide food at locations somewhere in the Mideast, it would make more sense. Those accepting refugees are already being asked for financial and humanitarian support anyway. If you had to leave your own home town wouldn’t you prefer to be someplace you felt comfortable, surrounded by people who at least spoke the same language and practiced similar traditions? We sure would.

Frankly, we think our country and many of our allies blew it when it came to handling refugees. To say that we were unprepared would be an understatement. We all agree these desperate families need our help and that asking just a few countries to continue to welcome the thousands who cross their borders every day isn’t either a good long-term or short-term solution. There’s got to be a better, more humane, way to handle it.