WASHINGTON – A Syrian refugee whose plight was featured on a popular New York photo blog will be a guest of honor Tuesday at President Obama’s final State of the Union speech.

Refaai Hamo will be seated with First Lady Michelle Obama in her balcony box along with two dozen other guests –many of whom highlight the president’s political push for acceptance and tolerance of others.

Hamo lost seven family members, including his wife and one daughter, when a Syrian missile hit his house. He fled to Turkey with nothing and is unable to get treatment for stomach cancer because he doesn’t have insurance.

Hamo, a scientist, was photographed in Turkey, for Humans of New York.

“We survived but we’re dead physiologically,” Hamo told the website last year. “Everything ended for us that day. That was our destiny.”

Hamo received refugee status and moved to Troy, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, with his three daughters and son on December 18.

“Welcome to your new home,” President Obama wrote on Facebook in response to the story and called Hamo an “inspiration.” “You’re part of what makes America great.”

In another political statement, Obama will leave one guest box empty — as a symbol of the victims of gun violence, according to the guest list released by the White House Sunday.

Other guests include Oscar Vazquez, an Army veteran who immigrated to the US from Mexico as a child and who have benefit from the Dream Act; Naveed Shah, a Muslim U.S. Army veteran who immigrated as child from Saudi Arabia; Ryan Reyes, whose partner Larry “Daniel” Kaufman was a killed in San Bernardino attacks; Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Staff Sgt. Spencer Stone, a hero in thwarting a Paris train attack.

The White House has pledged a “non-traditional” State of the Union that will that will focus less on policy and more the future of democracy that is open to all and “not the select few,” Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told ABC’s “This Week.”