Setting the record straight on Syrian immigrants

• It's time to put aside fear-mongering over refugees who are seeking a better life, like my mother.
• Immigrants are willing to sacrifice, work hard and earn their place in society.
• The notion that they will 'destroy our country' is false and ugly.

My mother recently overheard a fellow physician in Nashville loudly protesting the Obama administration’s decision to take in more Syrian refugees. She heard this physician saying, among other things, that “those Syrians will destroy our country,” presumably because “they all have that Sharia law.”

Now, my mother is far too polite to have been one to set him straight. But I’m not.

Now that parties as disparate as the pope and Donald Trump have called for taking in these refugees, who are at the heart of the worst refugee crisis since World War II, I think it is time to set the record straight and banish this ignorant fear-mongering from our conversations.

You see, my mother immigrated to the United States from Syria in 1971, a graduate of one of the best medical schools in the Middle East at the time, Damascus University. She hit the ground running, so to speak, beginning a lifetime career of seeing patients and saving lives here in the U.S.

She went on to become the first fellow in gastroenterology on the Howard University Medical Service, training at both Walter Reed and DC General Hospital. In 1977 she proudly became a U.S. citizen.

She moved to rural Tennessee with my father (also a physician) and went into private practice, beginning a multi-specialty clinic that is still around to this day, nearly 40 years later.

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During that time, she has seen thousands of patients, many of whom have been with her since the beginning of her practice. Some of them she has been seeing since they were children, as she has practiced primary care since she came to Tennessee, along with her gastroenterology specialty. In fact she was the first gastroenterologist to practice in Waverly — my hometown — introducing screening colonoscopies and a level of care not previously available.

For her elderly patients, she prides herself on keeping them healthy, independent and out of nursing homes. This takes attention to detail, excellent clinical skills, tireless persistence and the compassion to advocate for her patients in an increasingly complicated and bewildering health care system.

Also during the past four decades, my mother gave birth to three daughters — with maternity leave accumulating to a total of about a week for all three deliveries combined. From my luxurious perspective of today — a luxury I am allowed because of her — I really can’t imagine how she did it. Somehow, between full-time patient care and child care responsibilities, she made it all work.

And, boy, did she make it work. The ultimate female role model in our lives, she made sure that her daughters had access to the best education available, and that we were meeting our full potential while being generous to others. And now she can count among us a cardiologist and two very successful, nationally known attorneys.

My mother is exceptional, but she is not an exception. Throughout our nation’s history, immigrants from all backgrounds have built this great country through their hard work, commitment to family and dedication to society. The immigrant work ethic is legendary. Some of our nation’s largest and most well-known cities, stars on the global map, would not be what they are without it.

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My mother herself is a prime example of this work ethic, and every life she has touched has been the better for it. Her patients are not numbers or “volume,” but rather friends and neighbors. My mother has made a positive difference in so many lives, and has given back to society in so many ways.

And in 1971, she was a Syrian immigrant.

Yasmine S. Ali, MD, MSCI, FACC, FACP, is a practicing cardiologist and medical writer in Nashville.