It is impossible to tell what is actually happening in the former Yugoslavia. From this distance, and with partial information on all sides, all one can tell is that there is a great deal of suffering. Is Milosevic solely responsible? Did NATO miscalculate? Only the judgement of history will tell.
But one thing is clear through the fog of war, right now: That the West can and should do something to help refugees from the conflict. As Misha Glenny wrote in the New York Times on 6 April, the NATO alliance has taken responsibility for the welfare of the Kosovars, and to fulfill that responsibility the NATO powers should accept those refugees who wish to seek asylum in Western countries.
This is also the position of the International Rescue Committee, established in 1933 by Albert Einstein to help those fleeing Hitler. At the time the United States enforced strict quotas enacted in 1924, which had the effect of trapping European Jews in Hitler's onslaught. The IRC has recently received donations to aid the refugees from the Pew Charitable Trusts and Bill Gates. But more needs to be done. Today, American immigration laws are more generous -- but the United States has not yet offered to grant asylum to all those who seek it.
Part of the reason is political. If the Kosovars disperse, no doubt NATO fears there will be no one to resettle the region. And many Kosovars may not wish to leave their homeland. However, some surely do not wish to be repatriated to a land associated with brutality and slaughter. If they are not to be used as pawns in an international chess game, it is these that America should welcome as potential new citizens.
Today the American economy is sound, indeed there is a labor shortage (and worries that the population will not support social security due to the lack of young workers).The country could well afford to resettle even 500,000 Kosovars were they to be dispersed among the 50 states. President Clinton's decision to permit 20,000 to be flown to Guantamo Bay is not enough. It is merely a symbolic gesture which does little to alleviate the suffering of hundreds of thousands in need. That Guantanamo has been chosen for a legalistic purpose -- to make asylum claims more difficult -- disturbing. Like our ancestors, the displaced Kosovars deserve the opportunity for a fresh start in a new land. Like others who have been given asylum, they will give much to America in exchange for its granting them admission.
Immigrants have shown their gratitude to America in many ways. John Belushi was perhaps the most famous Albanian-American. Whether building successful new industries like Intel, founded by Hungarian Andrew Grove, rising to the Chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff like Colin Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants, or inventing the Atom Bomb, opening a corner dry cleaning establishment or fruit stand, or taking jobs so dirty that native-born Americans shrink from them, immigrants give back to the country that granted them asylum.
Now is the time for America to rise once again to the challenge of providing refuge for Kosovar's huddled masses, the wretched refuse of a murderous civil war. As the inscription reads on the Statue of Liberty, "send these, the tempest-tossed, to me/ I lift my lamp beside the golden door." Now the door which has opened for Hugenot, Pilgrim, Scots, Irish, Germans, Poles, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Cuban, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, and Hindu can and should be opened to the Kosovars.
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America (BBC)