The entry below is being cross-posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

After the Last Border by Jessica Goudreau should be required reading for people who fear or loathe strangers coming to the United States to avoid persecution, war and chaos in their home countries.  The author tells of two such women, weaving between their alternating stories the history of immigration and refugee resettlement in this country. Both of these women – Mu Naw from Myanmar and Hasna al-Salam from Syria (their names are changed to protect them and their loved ones left behind)  – are courageous, hard-working, and long-suffering. They confront insurmountable struggles to reach a place of safety for them and their children.  Eventually they both find that place in Austin, Texas, Mu Naw in 2007 and Hasna in 2016.

Goudreau met Mu Naw while the author and she were watching their young children in an Austin park. Despite a gaping language barrier, they managed to communicate with one another. Their growing friendship led to two years of interviews laying the groundwork for Goudreau’s commitment to tell Mu Naw’s story.

Goudreau had worked for a decade with refugees in Austin and got to know Hasna as well.  In humanizing their narratives, Goudreau captures the angst of having to flee one’s homeland, the dangers of flight and living in tented camps, the bureaucratic impediments and protracted vetting endured in the refugee resettlement process, the disorientation of being dropped in substandard housing, not speaking the language, having to find their ways to grocery stores to feed their children and not recognizing the products on the shelves. How to work the thermostat in an apartment, or even how to turn on the strange-looking stoves on which to cook their dinners?

We also learn about the resettlement workers and volunteers who help them fill out the necessary paperwork to get income assistance, find entry-level jobs, gain access to medical care and find schooling for their little ones. It is a lonely, terrifying existence, sustained largely by being able to communicate with their spouses, siblings and other loved ones back in the refugee camps waiting and hoping for family reunification.

Goudreau recalls the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 limiting an entire group based on their national origins. Later came many decades when people were admitted according to national quotas. She reminds us of our nation’s 1939 rejection of the Jewish-refugee-filled ship St. Louis, which led to the concentration camp deaths of hundreds of passengers seeking refuge in the United States. Years later came Harry Truman’s 1948 Displaced Persons Act. There followed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on Genocide, the creation under Jimmy Carter of a special category of refugees from war and persecution. The liberalization of policy was often followed by more restrictions, and almost always we have shown a preference for educated whites from northern Europe.  There have been seismic debates around issues of  morality and foreign policy. She sees our responses to humanitarian crises as deeply reflective of the soul of our nation.

Goudreau is never so totally immersed in the background history that she wanders from the pathos of the stories of Mu Naw and Hasna el-Salam. If her goal is both to educate and create empathy, she does it smoothly and powerfully. From Cubans to Syrians, from Catholics and Jews to Muslims, from the plight of DACA young people to ending the Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and others for whom return to home countries is perilous, her book is brilliant, deeply moving and slated to become a non-fiction classic. The book was published in 2020, before the terrors and traumas by ICE under Donald Trump.

It’s important to remember that both Mu Naw and Hasna el-Salam came here legally. They had been extensively vetted and processed. Despite their playing by all the rules, they faced daunting new challenges upon their arrival. Trump may rightly decry the small proportion of criminals who have slipped through the system, but he has shown no compassion for law-abiding refugees. Goudreau’s writing evokes deep empathy for the Mu Naws and Hasna el-Salams who were forced to flee their homes and endure endless suffering in refugee camps till they could be transitioned here, part of Emma Lazarus’s “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Apparently, the poet’s “golden door” of entry to the United States is the only golden object that has no value for Donald Trump. This book could shine a light for him, if only he read – and was capable of change.