In Defense of Our Neighbors

I am the son of two Greek immigrants who came to the United States to study and ended up staying when a military dictatorship seized power in their homeland. They were able to remain here thanks to a compassionate senator and a country that was open and welcoming to newcomers. I grew up as a beneficiary of that generosity. So when I see what is happening across America today—masked agents smashing car windows and racially profiling people on our streets, families separated without due process, and entire communities living in fear—I feel it not as an abstraction but as an assault on the very idea that shaped my life.

This past year, the administration has transformed immigration enforcement into something unrecognizable. Hundreds of thousands have been deported or pressured to leave. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents now operate in places that were once considered off-limits—courthouses, hospitals, churches, and schools. A new law has poured $170 billion into detention and deportation infrastructure. In cities across the country, from Los Angeles to Chicago, people are afraid to go to work, to take their children to school, to seek medical care, or to report a crime. The cruelty is not incidental; it is the point—to drive immigrants out of our country.

Migrants are being blamed for problems they did not cause. The housing crisis is not a function of immigration—it is a result of decades of underinvestment and undersupply. Overcrowded schools are not the fault of newcomers—they reflect policy choices made long before any migrant arrived. Yet because the immigration system appears chaotic and uncontrolled, it becomes easy for politicians to point fingers and stoke fear. When people come across borders in disorderly ways, it scares communities. And authoritarians exploit that fear, scapegoating the vulnerable to seize power. This dynamic is not unique to America—we see it across Europe, Latin America, and beyond. 

But here is what the headlines often miss. Even in this darkness, extraordinary acts of solidarity are happening every day. Parents in Washington, D.C. are escorting their neighbors’ children to school. Priests and ordinary people are showing up to support their neighbors in immigration courts, their presence changing how judges and ICE agents behave. Veterans are passionately defending the Afghan interpreters who once fought alongside them. Faith communities of every denomination are coming together to accompany people facing deportation—to sit with them, walk with them, and witness what is being done in our name. 

When you attack migrants, you attack entire communities. You cannot simply separate out ten or a hundred people without damaging everyone around them. We are witnessing something remarkable: neighbors standing up—not just for migrants, but for themselves and for the places they call home. 

At Open Society, we believe one critical answer to chaotic immigration is not cruelty—it is giving communities control. This means giving communities real power over who comes and how they are welcomed: through sponsorship programs, through local labor partnerships, and through civic integration systems that treat newcomers as neighbors rather than numbers. The research is unambiguous: when migration happens in an orderly way, when communities are invested in the process, public support increases dramatically. In the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, over 200,000 British citizens volunteered to sponsor Ukrainians into their communities. In the United States, Americans submitted more than 3 million applications to sponsor migrants from Ukraine, Cuba, Haiti, and other countries. These were not bureaucrats or smugglers deciding who arrived—it was neighbors expressing their willingness and capacity. 

Community control transforms the politics of immigration because it transforms who holds power. Instead of top-down systems where distant officials or criminal networks determine who enters a country, it gives that authority to the people who will actually live alongside newcomers. It works across faiths and across political divides. It creates what isolation and fear destroy: human connection, purpose, community. Through the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative, which Open Society helped launch with the Government of Canada and the United Nations Refugee Agency, this model is now taking root in more than 20 countries—from Brazil to Spain to Australia. What works in Texas can work in São Paulo. What works in rural Connecticut can work in rural Ireland. We are committed to expanding this model as the foundation for a more humane and sustainable approach to migration. 

These are hard times. The institutions we have built to protect the vulnerable are under sustained attack. But courage and compassion are contagious. When one person stands up, others follow. The communities mobilizing across this country right now understand something essential: defending their immigrant neighbors means defending themselves. It means defending the schools their children attend, the businesses where they work, the fabric of places they love. This fight is not only about immigration. It is about what kind of country we want to be. 

The willingness of a country to welcome newcomers is a test of its humanity—and a test of its ability to succeed in the future. We live in an interconnected world. If we shut ourselves off, we lose access to the talent, energy, and ideas that will shape the century ahead. I was the beneficiary of an America that believed in that promise. I still believe in it. And I see, in communities standing together from Texas to Georgia to Maine, that millions of others believe in it too.