Do you believe our Constitutional rights are an inherently good thing or not? If they are, then we should also extend those rights to refugees. If they’re not, then we shouldn’t be paying a price for them. Either way, this argument is inconsistent.
Why do we have a government and a constitution? "In order to “…establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence , promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity…” Not to everyone in the world but only to Americans. This is for practical reasons. It costs money and resources to give protection to all American’s constitutional rights. Those resources are not inexhaustible. If you give the benefits of citizenship to non-citizens then there is no point of citizenship.
I believe we should take the chance with helping refugees even if a few of them are dangerous.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!*
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- Offer invalid in Syria.
Saving people from the civil war definitely is worth some risk, but the question is how much risk? For everyone hundred thousand refugees we may have an extra 10 americans die in a terrorist attack. The actual number might be much more or much less than one hundred thousand but there is a tradeoff. That is what the younger Trump was making explicit in the skittles analogy.
There are both benefits and costs to accepting refugees. On that we can definitely agree.
I don’t think any reasonable person can believe that saving tens of thousands of people from living hell isn’t worth losing ten Americans over. And that’s part of why I don’t think this is really just about fear of terrorism. It’s about fear of foreigners.
I think they’re so dangerous that we should implement a long screening process before allowing them in. Perhaps start off with the UN spending around six months deciding if they qualify as refugees and doing basic checks. Then once the names come to the US, we should spend a year or two to run their names, biographical information, and fingerprints through federal databases, cross referencing the regular checks with any classified information specific to Syria, interviewing them, and medically screening them for infectious diseases, and all of that should happen before they get to American soil. I don’t think people would be complaining about them if we had a process like that.
Oh, wait, that’s how they’re screened now, and how it’s worked the whole time the program has been in effect.
In the US immigrants have pretty low crime rates. In much of Europe they have higher, sometimes much higher crime rates. How much this has to do with difference in law vs differences in who immigrants are, I have no idea.
Victims of criminals who are terrified of the cops (which is the case for a lot of immigrants in many countries, legal or not, and that fear remains even after they’re naturalized) do not.
Victims of criminals who try to talk to appropriate authorities and get called “stupid fucking Hispanic whore” as a response to “is there something I can do”… probably don’t even enter the reporting statistics.
Another possible factor in crime reporting in Europe vs the US is how police is perceived, both by immigrants and locals. Our cops work real, real hard to project a “friendly” image; we know that one of the reasons for people who are being exploited to not report it is fear of ending up in jail or deported, so there’s frequent campaigns to the tune of “if you’re being exploited and you report it, we’ll do our best to help you; we will not prosecute you or deport you”. Compare with the US, where even the guys checking passports and visas at the airport tend to behave like a bear-fighting bull with a toothache and there are constant messages about “do not provoke the cops”.
Oh they are very dangerous:
Some have degrees and be better educated than native born people with a wider range of experiences
Most will end up fully productive members of society within 2-10 years. Paying taxes and everything.
Because they often have supports from churches and sponsors only a small number end up on government assistance. Generally only until they get their feet under them.
Many are willing to the jobs that native born people snub and say “that’s beneath me…ill just take welfare for now”
And let not forget the wonderful diversity they add to the culture (started by immigrants and refugees anyway)
They have better background checks than most people in the host country. And they are very grateful to that country for providing a safe home for their family.
Can’t you just hear the sarcasm
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