Allowing refugees endangers our safety
In November 2015, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) requested that “…federal authorities cease any additional settlements of refugees from Syria in Maryland until the U.S. government can provide appropriate assurances that refugees from Syria pose no threat to public safety.”
Sen. Ben Cardin, Rep. Elijah Cummings, Rep. Chris Van Hollen and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake denounced Hogan’s position in knee-jerk liberal Democrat fashion.
Assurances that Syrian refugees will be thoroughly vetted are not credible because reliable records on tens of thousands of refugees from a war-torn region are non-existent. Even with stringent screening, horrendously bad people inadvertently pass muster and enter the United States.
An example is Beatrice Munyenyezi who entered the United States, claiming she was a Rwandan refugee and was granted U.S. citizenship in 2003. Living in New Hampshire, she received aid from Catholic Charities, an education at the University of New Hampshire and a job as an advocate for refugees.
Federal authorities who allowed Munyenyezi entry had no idea she was a mass murderer. (She failed to put that on her application.) Munyenyezi had been a member of a para-military extremist group who selected people for rape and murder and also beat a 10-year-old boy to death.
It took years of investigation and legal proceedings before the February 2013 jury verdict that Munyenyezi was guilty of lying on her application to become a U.S. citizen.
Munyenyezi is not an isolated case. A long list of monstrous people find haven in the U.S. because they lie to government officials. See www.ice.gov under human rights violators’ news releases such as:
• ICE removes ex-member of Guatemalan special forces linked to 1980s massacre;
• ICE deports former Kosovo Liberation Army soldier accused of persecuting ethnic Serbs during the Kosovo conflict; and
• Pennsylvania man arrested for lying about role in first Liberian civil war.
The reign of terror is over for human rights violators and war criminals who hide in the U.S. and evade justice, while exploiting America’s welfare system. But young, budding America-hating criminals and terrorists from the Middle East are champing at the bit to harm us.
It’s both sad and horrifying that Islamic extremists are annihilating and displacing innocent men, women and children. The United States should help them seek refuge in the Muslim world, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Algeria, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Turkey.
Furthermore, President Obama and Hillary Clinton, both failures in wise and strong foreign policy, made disastrous decisions that created ISIS and crisis in the Middle East. These two bunglers and their ilk are now trying to guilt-trip us into believing that flooding the United States with thousands of unknowns is the right thing to do. Americans with common sense instinctively know this is wrong.
Just as an individual on a descending plane is no help to fellow passengers unless he puts his own oxygen mask on first, neither is America of help to the world unless we ensure our own strength and survival first. Bernadette Smith, Welcome