1-Today is the #WorldRefugeeDay . I arrived in the United States as a refugee in 1985. I was 19. I only had a backback & knew little English. I came from Iran, a country whose citizens face travel ban under Trump today. America took me in and helped me start a new life.

2-Immediately after my arrival, I received all manner of public assistance. But frankly, I didn’t like depending on others. I found a job in a dental prosthetics office — answering the phones. But, I was quickly fired.

3-As I integrated into the US,  no passage I have ever experienced — not the passage from girlhood into womanhood, or citizen to a stateless person — has continued to awe me like my passage from a teen suspicious of the United States to the patriotic American that I became.

4-Back in Tehran, I was used to the usual narrative about the US by clerics: America had no heart. America’s god was the god of commerce. America worshiped only at the altar of money and did not care for those who had nothing to exchange.

5-But that old narrative crumbled quickly as I adapted to my life in the US.  It was the example of the very life I had led here that rebutted the old narrative. America had not taken me in because I had the “merit” of possessing valuable skills.

6-I was taken in simply as I was. Would the toxic narrative of my adolescence have dissipated had I been granted a visa because I was a gifted computer programmer, or was working on a medical breakthrough, or had some other economically desirable talent? I doubt it.

7-Had I been admitted into the United States under those circumstances, I would have entered into a transaction — the only thing America cared about, according to the mullahs. I would have felt today as I do in a shopping mall, a client with a coveted purse.

8-Those who advocate abolishing a fundamental characteristic of U.S. immigration — welcoming the tired, the poor, the huddled masses  — are neglecting an essential point. When citizenship is purchased with the currency of a marketable skill, it can be cast aside and neglected.

9-The United States did not become the most powerful country in the history of the world only by cherry-picking the best. Museums and art collections are built that way, not nations. America opened its doors even to those of us who were uncertain of our own worth.

10-As a former refugee, I will eternally remain grateful fort he chance to be granted asylum in the US. Meanwhile, I also remain concerned form my countrymen from Iran who are facing the consequences of the travel ban, which is so Unamerican.