For the past few months, I’ve been on a very personal journey.

To meet refugees and their children, get to know them and photograph them, tell their stories. It is a personal, not really political journey for me. My grandmother was a refugee, she fled her homeland and was never able to return, and that is the definition of a refugee.

A refugee, generally speaking, is a displaced person who has been forced to cross national boundaries and who cannot return safely. Such a person is usually called an asylum seeker, and the refugee world of today is very different from my grandmother’s world.

There have always been people in America who wanted to keep refugees out, deny them rights, or persecute them. There have always been people in America who have welcomed refugees and seen them – and immigrants as well – as part of our very cherished and unique heritage.

Today, the idea of the refugee is under siege and the subject of great, and perhaps appropriate, debate.

Today, in our world, the number of forcibly displaced persons, according to the United Nations, is 21.3 million million.  The number of forcibly displaced persons under U.N. care in 2015 was 65.3 million, it is believed to be much higher today.

No single country can absorb them all, or even a significant portion of them. America is having the kind of wrenching debate it ought to be having. What kind of country are we?

Immigrants can come from anywhere, but most refugees today come from Africa, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and Northern Africa, some from the Americas. Refugees are not especially frightening to many Americans, they evoke the understandable fear of massive invasions of people with foreign cultures. Many people, especially those who have suffered from loss of meaningful work,  believe refugees and immigrants will take their jobs. Still other thers believe many are coming to hurt us or to drain our social services and benefits.

It is, in many ways, a difficult and uncertain world.

These fears are episodic in the world, and global.

They are transforming the politics of many countries, including ours. As the descendant of refugees, I feel a special kinship with them. They go to the very heart of my idea of America, to the love of my country.

I understand and respect the fact that so many people here see them differently than I do. My goal is personal, to talk to them, photograph them, visit them in their homes, speak for them, tell the truth about them.

I’m sure there are some troubled and dangerous refugees, as there are troubled and disturbed people from every ethnic and racial demographic, including white people born in the United States.

I’m not pursuing this to argue about it or to change anybody’s mind, just to explore the refugee and immigrant world and hopefully, capture the tenor of their real, not imagined lives. It’s just something I need to do now.

RISSE, the refugee and immigrant support center in Albany, has graciously agreed to let me in. I appreciate that, it took me months to find a way into this story. The refugee children I am meeting are a threat to no one, and have suffered enough.

We’ve already begun to help the RISSE refugees. Some are going to the Great Escape Adventure Park, all of the kids there now have art and creativity kits from the artist Rachel Barlow, we are going to help the soccer team pay its fees and field the right uniforms. One student shows promise as an artist, if he wants to pursue art, we will figure out how to help him.

In this so far, I have been joined by the Army of Good. Kimberly in Minnesota has graciously paid for the entire soccer team to go to the Great Adventure, someone else has sent $300 for soccer uniforms.

For me, it’s not about politics or arguments, it’s really it’s the most personal of choices.

The country is defining its soul on this issue, really, and there are strong arguments to be made all around. These refugees, these children, are here, and I believe they deserve our compassion and care and my support. They are not pawns or figures in any great political struggle they are in American and figuring out how to live here.

For now, that is a position I am happy to be in. I hope I can share it for you in a way that is uplifting, and not divisive, and if you see it differently, or disagree, you are very welcome to come along. I do not hate those who think differently than I do.