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Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha (above) isn't just an expert on the impact of tainted water on families' health, which earned the Flint pediatrician national acclaim as an early alarm-raiser in September 2015.
She's also an example of the value immigrants contribute to America. Dr. Hanna-Attisha came to Royal Oak from Iraq with her parents in 1980, a background that gives the Hurley Medical Center doctor standing to comment on President Trump's stance toward her countrymen and some other foreigners.
She speaks out passionately and movingly in the Sunday Review section of The New York Times under the headline "Will We Lose the Doctor Who Would Stop the Next Flint?"
As a first-generation Iraqi immigrant, and as a doctor whose job is to train other doctors, many of them immigrants themselves, I fear that the American dream is corroding.
I worry about the impact of President Trump’s travel ban, for the moment blocked by court order, and how the Republican Congress will handle immigration issues. . . .
As an immigrant who holds a medical degree, I’m in good company. The organization that accredits graduate medical training programs says that there are more than 10,000 licensed physicians in the United States who graduated from medical school in the seven countries the president listed in his travel ban. . . .
In 1980, my family arrived here full of hope, trading a future of war, fascism and oppression for one of peace, freedom and opportunity. . . . It is through these everyday-grateful immigrant eyes that I first saw our country as a 4-year-old and still see it today. . . .
My family and millions just like us are intertwined in the fabric of America. My mom taught English to recent immigrants, while my dad worked for General Motors as an engineer for 31 years, designing custom alloys. Together, they instilled in me and my brother an ethic of social justice and service-oriented work while providing us with a better life. The American dream was our reality.
She starkly frames the potential impact of a stricter entry policy:
I can’t help wondering if, with new limits on immigration, we are losing the next pediatrician who will expose a future public health disaster.
Hanna-Attisha graduated from Royal Oak's Kimball High School. Her husband, Elliott Attisha, is a pediatrician in Detroit.
