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America has a long and proud history of providing safe harbor for refugees. We must continue to do so, but in a way that keeps America safe.

You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like.

I feel, in 2015, when we see human beings and children dying to cross the ocean, trying to find safety, something more must be done to help them because refugees are just like me and you.

While the war in Iraq was raging, I spent some time in neighbouring Jordan, meeting with Iraqi refugees who fled their country to try to find some place of safety. I interviewed many families about what had happened to them and what they did as a result.

We're so lucky where we live, but we're so out of touch. Everyone's mindset is made to feel that refugees are a problem, but it's more than that. They're human beings, too. They were forced from their homes.

When I was in Paris, all of the German refugees began to flow in and it was a very sad time.

Under Malcolm Fraser's Liberal governments in the 1970s, large numbers of refugees fleeing Vietnam in wretched boats were taken in without any great fuss.

Migrants all over the world are pushed and pulled across borders by hunger, terror and climate change. It happened to my own family.

I just want to encourage you all... to rethink the resettlement of refugees in this country, especially in the numbers I'm hearing.

I am the face of a refugee. I was once a refugee. I was with my family in exile.