President’s border action is off target if he wants to eradicate terror on home soil
Reducing immigration and fighting terrorism are what Donald Trump was elected to do. If he had backed down after winning, his critics would call him a hypocrite. Now that he’s doing what he promised, they call him a monster. Signing an executive order to reduce refugee numbers on Holocaust Memorial Day was certainly shameless. But will it actually improve US security? The experts say no.
It’s important to be precise about what Trump’s order actually does. It’s not a blanket Muslim ban. It’s a temporary ban on migration from seven terror-prone countries lasting 90 days and a suspension of the US Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days, until improved vetting can be put in place. The number of refugees permitted into the country in 2017 is to be capped at half the current rate.
The legality of this is already being questioned, but it may still prove popular. During the election, support for a total ban on Muslim migration – which, again, this is not – ran at around half the country and threequarters of Republicans. It doesn’t help that social media is full of stories of rape and violence following the mass exodus of Syrians to northern Europe, as well as reports of terrorists using refugee routes to enter the EU and attack its citizens. Muslims are an almost invisible community in the US, and the lobby defending their reputation is small.
But just because Americans are worried about something doesn’t make it correct. The facts belie any belief that the US has a refugee problem: it just doesn’t take that many people. For instance, America only took around 12,000 Syrians in 2016. Figures released in the middle of that year found that the vast majority of them were women and children. Over half were infants. The vetting is rigorous. Only a tiny percentage of refugees make it through an initial screening, and they are then screened by several security departments in a process that can take up to two years.
Of course, there have been acts of terror on US soil, and politically correct politicians have infuriated many voters by refusing to call the attackers what they are: Islamists. But ‘All the lethal acts of jihadist terrorism in the States since 9/11 have been carried out by US citizens or legal residents’ what they’re overwhelmingly not is refugees. As Peter Bergen, CNN’s national security analyst, wrote after the executive order was signed: “All the lethal acts of jihadist terrorism in the States since 9/11 have been carried out by American citizens or legal residents, and none of them have been the work of Syrian refugees.”
Around a quarter of all attacks have been perpetrated by converts to Islam. Ergo, the link between migration and terrorism is weak, which makes a refugee ban look arbitrary and cruel.
The list of countries affected is pretty random, too. Why are Afghanistan and Pakistan not on it? The argument goes that the targeted nations have either governments that back terror or powerful terrorist groups that hold territory there. But that’s actually a solid reason to take refugees from those nations – that is, the refugees are obviously fleeing persecution.
This controversial policy is a true test of Trumpism. It’s probably what his voters voted for, but will they be able to stomach the consequences? Stories are already emerging of families broken up and desperate people left stranded. We shall find out how tough-minded the new Republican coalition truly is.