Lok Darjee, a former refugee from Bhutan now a naturalized US citizen and journalist, reflects on his journey and his enduring belief in America’s promise despite its imperfections. He was born in a refugee camp in Nepal after his family was driven from Bhutan during an ethnic cleansing campaign. He resettled in Twin Falls, Idaho, in 2009 after years of waiting in the camp.
A childhood of waiting and hope
Darjee recalls the day in 2009 when a list was posted outside the International Organization for Migration office in the camp. He found his family’s case number: destination Cleveland, Ohio. He ran home shouting “Umerica,” unable to pronounce “America” but feeling the word belonged to him. Two years later, after medical screenings and security interviews, the family flew not to Cleveland but to Twin Falls, Idaho—a small town he had never heard of.
As a journalist over the past two years, Darjee has reported on a Rohingya refugee whose death after being abandoned by US border patrol was ruled a homicide. He has interviewed mothers separated from their children and refugees returned to countries they fled. He watched the refugee program that gave his family a second chance grind almost to a halt while making an exception for a small group of white South Africans.
Loving a country with contradictions
Darjee asks how to love a country whose government sometimes fails to live up to its ideals, and how to continue loving neighbors who welcomed his family but later voted for leaders whose policies might have kept his family out. He answers by distinguishing America’s governing institutions from the ideals that challenge them to become better.
He learned this from two Americas. The first was the small town in Idaho whose residents taught him to drive, change a tire, fill out college applications, and ask someone to prom. Many later voted for Donald Trump, whose immigration policies Darjee now criticizes. He holds these truths together: loving the people who helped raise him while opposing some of their choices. Democracy, he says, asks for both honesty and grace.
The second America he saw through reporting and education: volunteers, teachers, lawyers, bishops, and neighbors who continued opening doors to strangers, alongside government decisions that separated families and turned refugees away. He notes that America has always contained both extraordinary compassion and profound contradiction, from slavery to recent politics of exclusion.
Patriotism as holding contradictions together
Darjee argues that loving America does not require ignoring its flaws; it requires holding them together. That, to him, is the deepest form of patriotism. America transformed a refugee child into a citizen, a journalist, and someone free to criticize his government. That freedom exists because generations insisted the country remain faithful to its constitution and promises.
He writes that the measure of patriotism is not pretending the promise is fulfilled, but continuing the work of fulfilling it. Though some have told him to “go home” because of his accent, skin color, or birthplace, he insists this is his country too. He has chosen to keep talking with those who told him that, because democracy depends on seeing one another as more than political opponents.
A hopeful message for future refugees
As the 75th anniversary of the 1951 refugee convention is marked amid political division, Darjee hopes the US is remembered for its capacity to welcome the stranger, expand belonging, and reach toward ideals beyond grasp. He imagines another child outside a refugee camp office waiting for a list, hoping that when they whisper “America,” even if they cannot pronounce it, they are whispering the name of a country that believes impossible beginnings can become ordinary lives. That is the America he believed in as a boy shouting “Umerica,” and the America he still believes in.
