Stopping in the other day at our local refugee resettlement office, I saw familiar faces in the lobby—a pair of young men I’d just met in class, very new. In the workroom I ran off more lesson materials, as I’ve often done. Like there’s still a tomorrow. Then out through the lobby I went, again passing the men, one of whom now had a baby in his arms, adorable, and made my way through the still icy parking lot to my car.

Now that the flights to the U.S. have stopped, the office’s orientation sessions and English classes, held at a downtown church, will shut down. Quota cutting, you understand, is nothing new. Programs have ground to a standstill before. Uncertainty is a constant. Still, for anyone mired, stranded, menaced, it’s torture.

In recent weeks, what a bubbling pot of newcomers—Congo born, Sudan, South Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Uganda. (The other day, represented in class were 12 languages.) What grace and dignity in those faces. Soon the children will be in school, the adults in jobs, some working their bones off in poultry processing plants. Maybe they’re feeling lucky, at the moment. Or maybe they’re too exhausted to feel. Maybe that part—feeling—is what’s bogging down the rest of us, awash in guilt.