In 1948 after the Holocaust, the U.N. determined there needed to be a refugee status, or that people should have the right to seek shelter from harm. In 1980, the U.S. Congress legislated a similar definition that we would accept people “who have a well-founded fear of persecution.”

Trump won an election partially on calling the people at our border “thieves, rapists and drug lords.” Some might be, but so many are not.

Half of all refugees are children. Their parents take huge risks to bring their children from countries at war or where gangs and violence rule.

Call them illegals if you like, but the U.S. signed on to be part of the world community that acknowledges that humanitarian crises produce refugees. So many refugees exist, that they collectively would be the 20th largest country in the world. The U.S. has a small population asking to become refugees here compared to the rest of the world.

The people coming to our boarder seek to be vetted as non-criminal entrants to our country. Instead of providing legal help to speed these people through the process and either let them in or send them back, we spend our money on for-profit warehousing of families while separating the children from their parents.

What is the real cost of Trump’s decisions?

He is pitting us against the rest of the world and proving to impressionable militants around the world that they should hate us enough to strap on a bomb and come kill us. Terrorism increases.

And he has destroyed our moral leadership. Children dying in cages?

But worst of all, he has transformed us into a country where only white, straight, Christian males are full citizens. And he revels in dividing us more as we grow suspicious and distrustful of each other.

CAROLYN MEDLAND,

Alcona Township