re: #400 Old Liberal

I guess we would have to ask him to elaborate. I don’t think it implies that. If he said “Tibet is for Tibetans” and “Tibetans should go back to Tibet”, would we think he was a Tibetan supremacist? I think most of the refugees were driven out, and had no desire to leave. I think to say that they should go back is recognizing that they have a right of return. In Western Sahara, for example, there are tens of thousands of refugees living in desert camps with nowhere to return to. Teenagers today have lived their entire lives in these camps supported by the UN. They would like to go home, Morocco begs to differ. I think the best long term resolution is for refugees to return safely to their homes as soon as possible. If some want to stay, I support that. The more time that passes, the less chance there is of ever returning even if they want to, as their property and places have been taken and their children raised in a different culture.

I see no benefit in figuring out what the Dalai Lama thinks. I don’t think refugees should be kept in camps, even nice ones like the Turks have on the Syrian border. They should live in the neighborhoods of the host.

Generations of refugees have made this (the US) their home. Navajos and Apaches could be understood for wanting them to go back to where they came from. They make better hosts from the little pieces of their original homes they were forced to live on than some of their interlopers do.