Small Georgia Town Welcomes Thousands of Refugees With Open Arms
The Fourth of July celebration in the small town of Clarkston, Georgia is much more meaningful this year, all because of the large numbers of refugees who are now part of its community.
Today reported that 31.8 percent of the 13,000 residents in the small town came from different parts of the world. Most of them escaped their home countries to seek a better life.
One of the refugees who will participate in the town's Independence Day celebration is 29-year-old Maryam Ahmad Jan, as single mother who ran away from Afghanistan with her son and daughter in February this year.
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Speaking with the publication with the help of an interpreter, Jan revealed that she now feels confident that she and her children will have a better future in the US soil.
"Compared to the past, living in America is much different," the young mother stated. "I see smiles on their faces. I see lots of changes in my daily life. I see them happy, and I'm extremely happy," she added.
The town's mayor Ted Terry is confident that people from different backgrounds and nationalities, and who can speak 60 different languages, can live harmoniously in the small 1.4 square miles area.
According to Terry, the town's small size and population make a perfect environment for refugees to acclimatize well in the US since everything can be accessed easily. The town is also home to several mosques, Christian churches, Buddhist temples, as well as restaurants featuring cuisines from different cultures.
Clarkston's refugee-friendly atmosphere is a far cry from the situation at the US-Mexico border, where young children were being separated from their parents due to the Trump administration's family separation policy. But celebrities and other rallyists all over the country are fighting to reunite the immigrant children with their parents who remain separated despite the order of a federal district court judge to stop the policy on June 26.
