Before the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, Bierre and his family lived a comfortable life in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and once its commercial hub. Bierre’s wife, “Maria,” taught at the nearby school attended by their son and daughter.
But then the Arab Spring bloomed and civil war broke out, and Aleppo became a center of armed opposition to the Syrian government led by Bashar Assad. Rebels, including radicals from the Islamic State, known throughout the Middle East as Daesh, soon moved in.
For two years, Bierre and his family (they asked that their last name be withheld to protect their identity) rarely left their neighborhood. Islamic State militants got so close that the family could hear their voices as they drove through the streets yelling, “Allahu akbar!” The stress caused Maria’s hair to start to fall out.
After a Syrian government bomb destroyed their house, the United Nations granted them permission to seek refuge in neighboring Lebanon. One day, Bierre, Maria and their young son and daughter packed up a few belongings and fled the besieged city on a bus.
Bierre and his family recently related this story to me while we sat in the library of Keys Grace Academy, a charter school in Madison Heights, outside Detroit, where the family moved three months ago as refugees.
In the great refugee debate, the term “Syrian refugees” has become a synonym for “Muslim refugees.” But Christians made up about 10 percent of Syria’s pre-war population, and many remain in Syria, while others languish in refugee camps in neighboring countries.
Bierre and his family are Syrian Christians. They were reluctant to abandon their ancestral homeland, but were forced to flee as the Islamic State gained ground and began committing what the State Department has labeled genocide against Christians and other religious minorities.
Few Syrian Christians have been re-settled in the U.S. Of the nearly 12,000 Syrian refugees re-settled here this fiscal year, just 53 are Christians.
As incidents of terrorism have increased in America and Europe, so have calls for a moratorium on refugees from countries where terrorists control territory, such as Syria and Iraq. And even though there have been no reported incidents of terrorism committed by Christian refugees, some American political leaders have suggested that even they should be barred from re-settling here.
Speaking Arabic and communicating through a translator, Bierre and Maria told me they spent two-and-a-half years as refugees in Lebanon. But instead of living in a refugee camp, where as Christians they feared becoming targets of Muslim extremists, they rented a house.
The American re-settlement process is, despite claims to the contrary, long and arduous, involving background checks and extensive interviews. Bierre said it seemed to him like Christians have to endure a more rigorous vetting than Muslims. “The Muslims hate America and aren’t excited to come,” he said. “But they are accepted by the U.N. as refugees. But Christian families who want to go are put on a waitlist.”
Bierre and his family were interviewed six times by U.N. and State Department officials. The last interview included lessons on cultural integration and what to expect when they arrived in the U.S. I asked Bierre if he would like to return to Syria someday. “No, never,” was his quick reply. “It is done.”
I also asked Bierre and Maria for their thoughts on Assad, who was once a darling of the West but is now the subject of an international war-crimes investigation for slaughtering thousands of his own people with chemical weapons.
Maria said that before the war, Assad was a good man who fixed problems. But after the war started, “he stopped caring about people. We don’t need him now. He’s got his own agenda and only cares about staying in power.”
Bierre said he supports Donald Trump for president because the GOP presidential candidate opposes allowing Syrian Muslims to re-settle in the U.S. Though happy to be in America, Bierre is concerned about the well-being of his mother, who is ill and living alone in Aleppo.
The family is thankful for Keys Grace Academy, where Bierre has a job and where the children are taught alongside a majority-refugee student population.
The school has so many students from Syria and Iraq that it offers classes in Syriac (a modern version of Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus) and Mesopotamian studies. But the students are also taught to embrace their new home, Maria says: “They teach the refugees, ‘This is your country.'”
When I asked the family whether they want to become U.S. citizens, they seemed baffled by the question. “Of course,” Bierre said. In America, “we know that the future very good,” Maria added in English. And for the first time since our interview began, I saw her smile.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
