Long devoid of immigrants and subject to political xenophobia, North Carolina has recently become an immigrant state. And a refugee state: in fiscal year 2016, the final year before Donald Trump clamped down on refugee admissions, North Carolina was among the top-ten states resettling people fleeing from persecution. North Carolina is also a military state, having sent thousands of soldiers, Marines, and airmen abroad to do the fighting of a nation confronting Islamist terror. Those two strands of our identity should join in an effort to welcome refugees from the collapsing Afghan state.

The tragedy facing the people of Afghanistan is unspeakable. In the 1990s, Afghanistan under Taliban control was a totalitarian nightmare on the level of brutality seldom seen since the days of the Khmer Rouge and, before that, Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Third Reich. Women were stoned to death before jeering crowds in stadiums once used for soccer. Music and television were illegal. Every woman, regardless of religious conviction, was required to cloak herself in what amounted to a tent. And tragically, in the wake of U.S. withdrawal from the country, all of these horrors are fated to come back.

The United States of America has been at its best the safety valve for people fleeing the horrors of totalitarianism. In the wake of the Vietnam War, our country welcomed 130,000 South Vietnamese refugees despite right-wing opposition. Some of them came to North Carolina. In recent years, people fleeing the Burmese junta came and settled in little Carrboro, N.C. We have not always done right by the world’s most desperate, but we have answered the call often enough to consider welcoming refugees a central task of our state and national governments.

To date, most refugees in North Carolina have come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a desperately poor and violent state that drove people away and into the welcoming arms of Americans. Today, it is imperative that North Carolinians and their government step up and welcome refugees from Afghanistan into our state. This will not come without controversy. Over 99% of Afghans are Muslim, and our state has recently seen terrible expressions of Islamophobia. But there are also Muslim members of the General Assembly and the Durham City Council. We’ve come a long way from the days when only Protestants were authorized to hold office in the state.

Few Americans know the sacrifices of the Afghan people better than North Carolina soldiers who went forth from Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune to fight in that nation. We should do right by their sacrifice, and the sacrifice of our men and women at arms, in this most dire moment for the people of Afghanistan. The first priority should be Afghans who worked with the American military. But it should not end with them. All Afghans deserve a home free from the vile behavior of the Taliban monsters now conquering their country. Let the Lady of Plenty, and the Lady of Liberty, who adorn our State seal, welcome them into their awaiting arms.