Pelosi's Pacific Heights needs refugees

Pacific Heights is one of San Francisco's most expensive neighborhoods.  It boasts dramatic views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands, and the blue waters of San Francisco Bay.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison is one of its more prominent and distinguished residents, as is House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

For all its attractiveness as a neighborhood with its boutique shops and upscale restaurants, Pacific Heights lacks two vital ingredients to make it a truly great American neighborhood — economic and cultural diversity.

That's why President Donald Trump's plan to resettle "refugees" in sanctuary cities should be embraced by Pacific Heights' residents.

By inviting the refugees now stranded at the border, Pacific Heights would not only strengthen the sinew of its community, but also contribute to alleviating the humanitarian crisis at the border.

Our strength is our diversity, and Pacific Heights lacks that strength.  It is culturally homogenous in a city that is diverse.

In San Francisco, earning  $117,000 a year or less makes you a low-income earner.  Placing refugees in Pacific Heights, where housing and other costs are truly astronomical, would require the compassion and economic assistance of its residents.  The former they have long signaled, and the latter they are more than able to do.

Nancy Pelosi lives in a walled mansion on a large expanse of land with majestic views.  Her mansion could easily house thirty or forty refugee families, and she is hardly there.  The expansive grounds could house dozens of refugee families in tents.

Imagine refugee children who survived the arduous and life-threatening journey from Central America playing on Pelosi's lawn while breathing the clean and invigorating air from off the San Francisco coastlin­­e.  Imagine alleviating the humanitarian crisis by creating additional tent cities in Pacific Heights' splendid parks.

Pelosi, through her holdings in local restaurants and vineyards, is reputed to be one of the largest employers of illegal labor in Northern California.  Consequently, the people she would compassionately house might be able to find work in her network of businesses, especially her fabled vineyard on the banks of the Napa River.

Pelosi also owns a second mansion in the Wine Country north of San Francisco.  This too is walled and could hold dozens of refugee families.

Neither Pelosi herself nor the community of Pacific Heights can solve the refugee problem, but they could set a standard that other wealthy and pro-sanctuary communities could easily emulate.

Just a few miles away from Pacific Heights, my liberal acquaintances "Ann" and "Christopher" live in a complex that is more difficult to enter than the Central Intelligence Agency.  They both support the sanctuary status of San Francisco and think the border wall, but not their complex's barrier, is immoral.  Ann is a big DACA-supporter, although she has been seen adroitly ignoring and bypassing the homeless who proliferate in her neighborhood and sleep on her streets.  Her compassion obviously has its limits.

Their complex boasts extensive patios between the stacks of apartments.  These could host a dozen or more tents and port-a-potties that could alleviate the cage-like situations at the border they lament as deplorable.  Although these facilities would constitute an eyesore and block the light and view Ann and Christopher currently enjoy, creating a tent community for refugees would demonstrate the concern and compassion that people like Ann and Christopher love to remind the rest of us that they possess.

Real compassion in Western civilization derives from the biblical sense of the term and means to share in the suffering and emotions of others.  When Jesus saw his friends weeping at the grave of Lazarus, He wept with them and acted.  Compassion means to suffer with and to be motivated to take immediate action to alleviate the suffering of others.

So let the virtue-signaling liberals in sanctuary cities who incessantly lecture us on their commitment to taking in everyone, liberals who find the rest of us insensitive and heartless, let them manifest in deed the compassion they so relentlessly embrace in word.  Let them fulfill the biblical imperative to suffer with and take immediate action.

And they will be rewarded for this in knowing that their upscale white communities can find new strength in the economic and cultural diversity that the refugees will provide.  I am looking forward to the sprouting of tent cities in Pacific Heights and elsewhere in the upscale parts of San Francisco.  Diversity is truly a community's strength.

Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati and a distinguished fellow with the Hyam Salomon Center.

If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com