Letter: To be great again, let’s bring back compassion in America

Editor,

What’s happened to our compassion?

As I watch with much anxiety the very long road to a hopefully better life for the hundreds of refugees/migrants walking their way north through Mexico, I can’t help but think of the thousands of migrants making their way to America from Eastern European countries at the start of the 20th century.

We must have been a much more compassionate country back then because we never turned away the hundreds of people coming over on each and every ship crossing the Atlantic.

Sure, their life here once they arrived was anything but easy, just read “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, but they came, they worked hard, and they started a new life, one much better than the one they left behind in the “old country.”

Our country was founded and grew into what it is today by migrants moving here bringing their intelligence, fortitude and willingness to take any job just to stay.

So why is it so difficult for us to draw the parallels to the Central American people trying to do the same thing 110 years later?

If we really want to make America great again, let’s bring back our compassion.

John Scehovic

Langley