The Underground Railroad was a network of covert routes, tunnels and safe houses used in the 1800s to help African slaves escape terror and enslavement in the South. The Railroad, run by freed slaves, other blacks and white abolitionists, took the slaves to Free States in the North and to Canada.
These days, another Underground Railroad is helping to bring Iraqi and Syrian Christians from their ancestral homelands to the United States.
Today CNN.com has a video featuring Iraqi and Syrian Christians threatened by the self-styled Islamic State who are seeking asylum in California.
With the help of Chaldean Catholic groups in San Diego and elsewhere, scores of Christians have come to the U.S., often via Mexico. Once on U.S. soil, they apply for asylum. Many are in immigration detention centers or staying with family as they wait to see whether they’ll be granted asylum.
Those running the railroad say they are fed-up with an American government that’s done very little to help Iraq and Syria’s most vulnerable populations.
In areas of Syria and Iraq controlled by the Islamic State, Christian men have been executed and Christian women taken as slaves. An estimated one-third of Christians in Syria have fled and approximately two-thirds have fled Iraq.
The Obama administration recently announced that it will increase the number of refugees it admits. But according to a Politifact analysis of State Department statistics, the U.S. has admitted Christian refugees from Syria at a lower rate than Muslim refugees.
Find out more here.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
