But it is nonetheless remarkable that this change was made over the objection of the current and former defense establishment: 27 retired generals and admirals (who can take political positions) recently wrote to Trump in a plea to protect this vital program and ensure that the next refugee admissions goal is commensurate with global resettlement needs. Not simply because it was the right thing to do it was also in Americas own interests: When America turns its back on refugees it creates further cycles of instability and insecurity in critical regions, increasing pressure on military action.

The administrations stated reason for the cut? President Trump is prioritizing the safety and security of the American people by making sure we do not admit more people than we can vet.

Thats hard to believe.

True, the migrant crisis on our southern border has placed a substantial strain on our immigration courts. But refugees require neither the vetting nor the court resources that asylum seekers do: refugees by definition apply for such status when they are located outside both their home country and the United States. By the time they arrive here, their applications have already been processed and approved unlike those persons who arrive at our border without prior application.

To understand the true purpose for this cut, we need look no further than the words of Stephen Miller, the architect behind Trumps systematic dismantling of our immigration laws. As former Trump aide Cliff Sims recounts in the West Wing tell-all Team of Vipers, Miller told him that he would be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched Americas soil.

Thats easier to believe.

Miller had already earned himself a rebuke from his former rabbi: In a forceful sermon last year on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels reminded Miller that the quintessential experience of the Jewish people is both the slavery in and the exodus from ancient Egypt. We are all refugees, Mr. Miller.

A year later, as we mark the beginning of another Jewish new year, it is apparent that Miller has continued to ignore this lesson. That alone would be bad enough but the sad irony is that Millers own family resettled in the United States after themselves fleeing religious persecution in Eastern Europe.

Having escaped from Romania in 1981, and after three months of legal limbo in Zurich, Athens, and Rome, my parents were able to secure the assistance of a United States-based agency dedicated to helping Jews emigrate from behind the Iron Curtain. And so on March 25, 1982, my parents boarded a Pan Am flight from Rome to JFK Airport with nothing in hand but two suitcases and an infant. Upon arrival on American soil, an immigration officer stamped our visas with those four remarkable words: ADMITTED AS A REFUGEE.

We settled in Boston the most European of American cities, we were advised first in Brighton, and later into a 1,200 square-foot-palace in Newton, just in time for the start of kindergarten. I eventually married a girl from Brookline; our two sons now attend Newton schools. A copy of my visa rests on my office wall, an all-caps reminder of the impossible-to-repay debt to my parents and to this country.

Hundreds of years before our arrival to these shores, John Winthrop delivered another sermon before his own arrival. In one of the earliest articulations of what would become known as American exceptionalism, Winthrop, who would eventually become the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, famously commanded his shipmates aboard the Arbella that we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. That sermon was titled A Model of Christian Charity; an engraving of that quote graces the Boston Common today.

Presidents of both parties have since echoed Winthrops words: President-elect John F. Kennedy invoked them in his valedictory to the Commonwealth as he set off to lead the nation through the stormy years that lie ahead. President Ronald Reagan described Winthrops city in his farewell address as a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace... . And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

And then-Senator Barack Obama reflected upon UMass Bostons 2006 graduating class: I look out at a sea of faces that are African-American and Hispanic-American and Asian-American and Arab-American. I see students that have come here from over 100 different countries, believing like those first settlers that they too could find a home in this city on a hill that they too could find success in this unlikeliest of places.

As the administrations latest cut is still raw, such high-minded rhetoric serves as a welcome reminder of what true moral leadership looks like: neither parochial nor partisan, but rather humane and human. Americans deserve it; the worlds refugees need it.

Dan Krockmalnic is the general counsel of Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC.

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No refugees need apply - The Boston Globe