http://lobelog.com/todays-syrian-refugees-are-yesterdays-irish/#more-32238

Today’s Syrian Refugees Are Yesterday’s Irish

by Zaher Sahloul
Four months after I arrived to Chicago in 1989, my colleague at the hospital, Dr. Nancy Nora, invited me to her family’s Thanksgiving dinner. I was homesick in a new country after graduating from medical school in Damascus. Nancy Nora was an Irish American from a large Catholic family. Her father was a respected local physician.
Nancy told me that it was a tradition in her family to invite a newcomer to the city. After all, Thanksgiving, I learned, celebrated Native Americans welcoming European refugees who fled their homelands due to religious and political persecution.http://lobelog.com/todays-syrian-refugees-are-yesterdays-irish/#more-32238