Keren Blankfeld, who covers immigration and refugee issues for the New York Times, reports on a largely untold story about World War 2 — towards the end of the war, the U.S. invited 982 refugees to a converted military base in upstate New York.

They were the only refugees taken in by the United States during World War II, Blankfeld noted.

The military base was located in Oswego, N.Y.

“As the refugees settled in, some Oswegans regarded the camp with suspicion. Rumors circulated that the group was living in luxury,” writes Blankfeld.

“Interacting with the refugees, seeing their gaunt and frightened figures upon arrival and hearing their stories through the fence, many Oswegans had their eyes opened,” the story noted.

In late 1945, President Harry Truman “issued a directive requiring that existing immigration quotas be designated for war refugees. He specifically directed that Fort Ontario’s ‘guests’ be given visas.”

Early the next year, “groups of the Oswego refugees climbed onto school buses, drove to Niagara Falls and formally registered at the Canadian border. They then returned as official American immigrants, eventually dispersing to 20 states.”

A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that immigrants act more as “job creators” than “job takers” and that non-U.S. born founders play outsized roles in U.S. high-growth entrepreneurship.

“People want to think of immigrants as coming into the economy and maybe not having very many skills and not having a positive impact on the economy,” Benjamin Jones, a professor of strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University involved in the study, told Newsweek, which reported on the study.

He also said that immigrants “start lots of companies at a much higher rate [than U.S.-born counterparts], but those companies actually tend to grow quite a lot.”

It’s been one month since a fire in Denver, Colo., took the lives of Djibril Diol, Adja Diol and their almost three-year-old daughter, Khadija, which authorities said was caused by arson. Hassan Diol and her infant daughter, Hawa Beye, died in the fire as well.

Here is a photo of Djibril and Adja Diol and their daughter:

Police in Denver released these photos of three suspects clad in white masks who they believe set the fire:

There is no doubt in my mind that the perpetrators of this horrific crime targeted the family because they were refugees.

Metro Denver Crime Stoppers (https://www.metrodenvercrimestoppers.com/) is offering a reward of $14,000 for information on the fire.

Samuel Lavi, a refugee from the Congo, has come up with innovative approaches to helping refugee families cope with navigating today’s challenging educational waters due to COVID-19, reports the Associated Press.

With remote classes now underway at the K-8 school for refugee children in Phoenix, Lavi helps students connect from home with loaned iPads so they can learn English before transferring to mainstream schools, the AP noted.

Lavi “created group chats on the WhatsApp messaging app in Swahili and some of the other six languages he knows. To ensure parents who can’t read or write could participate, Lavi taught them to record and share small audio clips.”