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Any number of people feel the same way about drug laws or jails as Soros does; few have a billion dollars at their disposal to do something about it. Says his friend Wien: "You must understand he thinks he's been anointed by God to solve insoluble problems. The proof is that he has been so successful at making so much. He therefore thinks he has a responsibility to give money away. He thinks that the drug issue is a serious problem and that he must try and make a difference."
Last fall he was outraged by President Clinton's welfare bill, which deprived legal immigrants of some benefits. As one of the country's most prominent immigrants, Soros felt he must respond. He did so at once, setting up the Emma Lazarus Fund (named for the writer of The New Colossus, the poem excerpted in the inscription on the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor..."), to which he pledged $50 million over three years. Legal immigrants represent only about 6% of those on public aid, he points out, yet they took more than 40% of the cuts in welfare. "I am in sympathy with the need for welfare reform," Soros says, "but I think there is a lie in claiming you can reform welfare by spending less money in the near term, because to create jobs requires investment. To cover up that lie, they cut the benefits to legal immigrants." In almost a year, the fund has had more than 700 applications for grants and has awarded 45 of them, worth about $25 million. Most have gone to organizations that help immigrants gain citizenship.
Soros' concern about the American way of death came from a much more personal experience. His beloved father, who had saved the family from the Nazis, died in 1968, and Soros recalls that he did not even hold his hand. "I refused to face the fact that he was dying. I think it was a tragic mistake on my part. I think our whole society is somehow operating in a state of denial and distortion. We have been told all about sex, but very little about dying."
After his father's death, Soros read Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's seminal books on dying and realized that it is a defining moment in one's own life. As a result, he approached his mother's death very differently. She died quietly at home, surrounded by her family. "She was a believer, and she actually saw the gates of heaven. It was a very touching thing. I was holding her hand, and she described it to me. She got very worried. She didn't want to take me with her. Very touching. I said, 'Don't worry, my feet are on the ground.' That was when she lost consciousness."
After her death, in 1994, Soros gathered at his home a group of professionals concerned with issues of death--for instance, the fact that two-thirds of Americans die painfully, in hospitals or hospices. The group decided to put together an organization and, with stark simplicity, called it the Project on Death in America. Soros wrote it a check for $15 million. "It was an extraordinary experience," says Dr. Kathy Foley, who is PDIA's director as well as a professor of neurology at Cornell University Medical College and an expert on the treatment of pain. "Most of us were used to groveling for money as physicians, and suddenly someone says, 'Here's $15 million. Improve the care of the dying.'"