When I was elected mayor of Clarkston, Georgia, in 2014, I chose not to take an office in City Hall — the walls were just another barrier between this elected position and the people I wanted to serve. Plus, with no desk to be stuck behind, I get to take my mayoral meetings at places like Refuge Coffee Co.

The bright red coffee truck, the smell of freshly made Ethiopian sambusas, and residents from all over the world eating, drinking, and laughing together: It exemplifies everything that makes our community great. I love spending my office hours there and at all the other businesses around town owned by Americans of all stripes. These great Clarkston companies have employees originally from Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, in addition to nearby Atlanta.

Clarkston has welcomed more than 40,000 refugees from every corner of the world over the last 40-plus years, and their homegrown businesses make our city unique. But more than that, they’ve turned a once-fading community, situated in the suburbs east of Atlanta, into a safer, more prosperous place for everyone. The same thing is happening in other small towns and rural communities where refugees settle, across every state in the union.

Unfortunately, future communities might not be as lucky as ours. President Trump has already reduced the number of refugees resettled in the United States to just 30,000 for 2019, the lowest number in more than 40 years. Now he is considering cutting refugee admissions to zero, effectively shutting down the program. That’s why I was so encouraged when a bipartisan group of 18 senators released a letter in early August calling Trump’s proposal “alarming” and urging the administration to increase the cap rather than make further cuts. They’re right to call for more welcoming refugee policies, and I’ll tell you why.

In the ’70s, many of Clarkston’s residents moved away during the white flight exodus from nearby Atlanta. But the rapid population decline had a silver lining: an abundance of open, affordable housing options. Over the next decade, refugees from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries began arriving, drawn by Clarkston’s access to public transportation and reliable job openings at nearby poultry processing plants. Soon, refugee resettlement agencies took notice and families from across the world found their safe haven here. Our population grew from 5,385 people in 1990 to 12,757 residents last year, making us one of the most densely populated cities in the country. Currently, 52.9% of our overall population is foreign-born.

