Little kids are awesome. Case in point, 6-year-old Alex recently tugged at the heartstrings of more than 7 million social media users when he asked President Obama to bring a 5-year-old Syrian boy to live with this family.
Omran Daqneesh was injured during an airstrike in Aleppo, Syria. After hearing about the young child’s devastating life, Alex reached out to the President of the United States.
“Can you please go get him” so Omran can become part of his family, Alex begged in his letter to the POTUS.
“We will give him a family and he will be our brother,” Alex wrote. “Catherine, my little sister, will be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him. In my school, I have a friend from Syria, Omar, and I will introduce him to Omar. We can all play together.”
Alex explains in his letter than the President can park on the street or in his driveway when he brings Omran to live in the family’s home.
The boy said he’ll be waiting with flowers, flags and balloons. He also promised to share toys with the Syrian child and to study math and language with him.
In response, Obama wrote on the White House’s Facebook page:
“Those are the words of a six-year-old boy — a young child who has not learned to be cynical or suspicious or fearful of other people because of where they come from, how they look, or how they pray.”
“We should all be more like Alex. Imagine what the world would look like if we were. Imagine the suffering we could ease and the lives we could save.”
President Obama read Alex’s letter earlier this week when he spoke at the Leaders Summit on Refugees that took place alongside the U.N. General Assembly.
Obama said that politicians are sometimes overly focused on maintaining their positions — “and maybe sometimes we forget that the only rationale for doing it is to help that little boy.”
The Obama administration posted the young man’s video and then announced a plan to increase the number of international refugees admitted into the U.S.
Here’s the full transcript from Alex’s letter:
“Dear President Obama,
“Remember the boy who was picked up by the ambulance in Syria? Can you please go get him and bring him to [my home]? Park in the driveway or on the street and we will be waiting for you guys with flags, flowers, and balloons. We will give him a family and he will be our brother. Catherine, my little sister, will be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him. In my school, I have a friend from Syria, Omar, and I will introduce him to Omar. We can all play together. We can invite him to birthday parties and he will teach us another language. We can teach him English too, just like my friend Aoto from Japan.
“Please tell him that his brother will be Alex who is a very kind boy, just like him. Since he won’t bring toys and doesn’t have toys Catherine will share her big blue stripy white bunny. And I will share my bike and I will teach him how to ride it. I will teach him additions and subtractions in math. And he [can] smell Catherine’s lip gloss penguin which is green. She doesn’t let anyone touch it.
“Thank you very much! I can’t wait for you to come!
“Alex
“6 years old”
