Syrian, go home
President Obama wants the United States to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees next year — but in the wake of last week’s Paris attacks, and reports that one of the terrorists may have had a valid Syrian passport with a stamp from Greece, more than half of the country’s governors, a mostly Republican group, are opposed. They fear a jihadi will embed with fleeing refugees. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted, “Security comes first.”
The governors’ protests are wrong-headed — not only because they lack the legal authority and manpower to stop refugees from crossing over their state lines. If the Islamic State wants to orchestrate a terrorist attack on the homeland, it likely would bypass the two-year refugee application process and instead smuggle its suicide killers over the porous American border. Or send in radicalized recruits posing as tourists with their European passports — like the four French and one Belgian dead Paris attackers who have been identified. Or Islamic State, also known as ISIS and Daesh, could concentrate on subverting young men living in the United States — think of the foiled New York subway suicide bomber Najibullah Zazi or the murderous Boston Marathon bombers.
When you consider more than 4 million Syrians have fled their homeland, to have just 10,000 refugees is a bargain. (Yes, I know, if only 1 percent are terrorist moles, America is less safe. I still think Islamic State can find faster ways to send its thugs here.)
Another social media refrain: Let Islamic countries take Syrian refugees. That’s already happening in countries with large Muslim populations. As Amnesty International reports, Turkey has nearly 2 million, Lebanon has 1.2 million and Jordan has 650,000 Syrian refugees.
The European Union has absorbed a tidal wave of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, as well as migrants from Afghanistan and Africa who see the Syrian crisis as an opportunity to ride into a welcoming welfare state before those nations reach the tipping point and start closing their gates. Germany expects to absorb 1.5 million asylum seekers by the end of the year. Even while reeling from these attacks, French President Francois Hollande renewed his country’s pledge to accept 30,000 refugees by the end of next year.
Hollande must know there will be negative consequences for France’s generosity. Muslim immigrant families have not assimilated well. The French
banlieues — suburban communities, where unemployment for youth can reach as high as 40 percent — and Belgium’s Molenbeek neighborhood have become breeding grounds for crime and havens for radical Islam.
In the United States, Muslim immigrants stand a greater chance of finding jobs and becoming part of the social fabric.
Even still, I take issue with Obama’s quickness to mock those who suggest that the United States welcome only Christian refugees from Syria. “It’s not who we are,” quoth Obama. “We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.” Apparently the president hasn’t noticed that Islamic State targets Christians, beheads Christians and rapes Christians. As a persecuted group, Christians should be a priority.
On the other end of the spectrum, presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has pledged to introduce a bill to ban Muslim Syrian refugees from entering the country. I don’t think such legislation would serve, as Obama argues, as a recruitment tool for Islamic State. I, for one, simply want no part of it.