Is there really anyone who thinks that allowing entry to 10000 refugees a year is too much? That sounds like a really small number for a country as big as the US. As a comparison, Sweden received over 10000 asylum applications last week. I’m not saying that is a sustainable development but surely the US can do more.
It’s not the number. It’s the principle. The state governors who are objecting are largely Republican and largely deeply Islamophobic (or have constituencies that are). We’ve taken in 3 million or so refugees in the last 50 years so the number itself is not objectionable in any way (other than concerns over vetting).
No, don’t close the borders.
But on the same token, you’re not going to find me also saying that we should likewise ease up on the vetting processes. There needs to be an extremely high premium placed on keeping potential terrorists out of the US & Europe, and exhaustive, time-consuming vetting seems to be the only way to do that.
There’s no easy answer; the best I can surmise is to just throw more manpower/finances at the vetting organizations to speed up the process. Even that might be inadequate, however.
By that rationale we should also ban all French immigrants because more of the people who committed the recent attacks in Paris were born in France than in Syria… but we don’t and we won’t. Because, at the end of the day, excluding people due to nationality is bigotry no matter how prettily you dress it up.
Terrorists come in all flavors and we should screen/vet ALL immigrants entering the nation. Likewise, we should also allow people of all nationalities a chance to pass that screening and enter.
The thing is, there are other ways for terrorists to get in than posing as refugees. The majority of the attackers in the recent murder spree in France weren’t posing as refugees after all…last I heard only one was. And for all we know, he was posing as a refugee to basically sow discord and inflame the refugee situation, not because it was his only option to get into France.
You aren’t going to keep all the terrorists out. And all the people who you let in aren’t going to be saints…some percentage of them are going to do bad things. That’s always been the case. That’s just life. I see no reason to halt or even constrict the process of allowing refugees into western nations, including the US, and in fact were it up to me I’d open it up more in the US. You currently mothballed US military base housing, with a bit of clean up, to bring over large numbers. They would be halfway houses where you could help the refugees out, feed them up and give them medical care, begin integration into US society and, yes, vet them if people feel they should be…as well as start the process of getting them their citizenship and jobs and housing. We could do this. We SHOULD do this. The risks are minimal…IMHO anyway.
There’s all kinds of room in the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, etc.
We’re 182nd in population density, below Zimbabwe and Madagascar!
It just pisses me off. Our nation’s history is built on people coming here from other countries (some unwillingly, true). Suddenly saying certain people who are fleeing for their lives aren’t allowed in is . . . I dunno . . . reprehensible.
You know, that sounds very nice. Unfortunately it’s not necessarily true.
This article makes the point that there are two separate concerns about a mass influx of Syrian refugees. The immediate concern is that terrorists may be sneaking into Europe among the mass of refugees. This is a short-term problem that can be dealt with by background checks and other methods.
The other problem is that the refugees may, in the long term, become a separate underclass within the host country, not integrated into the culture and generally with high crime and high unemployment. It’s entirely reasonable to expect this to happen, because it has already happened to earlier Muslim immigrant groups in Europe. Numerous attempts by European nations have been made to integrate immigrants culturally and improve their economic prospects, without success.
Thousands of young Muslims from Europe have run off to join ISIS or Al Queda. Some have come back to wreck violent mayhem. A lot of these people were born in Europe, the children of immigrants who arrived 20-40 years ago. So what will the children of today’s immigrants be doing 20-40 years from now?
Hillary said 65,000 a couple of months ago. John Kerry says 100,000 next year. I don’t know what would be considered a token figure.
Do they want to come to the US? So far, the US has sent almost three billion dollars for the refugee crisis. What is the plan to resettle these folks in the US? I am not talking just about vetting them to try and pick out the terrorists - do we house them, and for how long? Do they have marketable skills? Do they speak English?
It’s a good thing to say “give me your tired, your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores” and all that, but what do they do after they have been in the country for three months?
This appears to me to be one of those situations which requires a soft heart and a hard head. Politicians, on both sides of the aisle, tend to the opposite of both.
Regards,
Shodan
AIUI, the feds give states enough money to house them for three to six months depending on need. It’s important to remember, though, that we’re not talking about unskilled laborers. Those who flee are often those with the most to lose: professionals, businesspeople, and the like. With language training, most of them should be able to find at least subsistence work fairly quickly. That said, I don’t know if the administration intends to be selective about who it lets in that way and I suspect it won’t be allowed to if it’s a UN-coordinated effort.
That’s not a problem with refugees or immigration per se. That’s a problem with segregation, prejudice, and class immobility. Those will spawn problems regardless of how tough you are toward potential immigrants.
On what do you base this? I haven’t been able to find anything on the educational or vocational background of the refugees.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s true. In fact I was just watching this documentary where this Russian sailor who was immigrating said that he’d always wanted to see Montana…
The UN has hard numbers, but I can only find second hand references. Here’s one cite, though.
What I am saying is that the US resettlement process is a massive bureaucracy, and nobody on Earth has the power to make it budge. The level of vetting has no room to move-- if it did, we’d have done it in other much more pressing cases.
So either the number will change, the resources devoted to this will change, or we have enough people already moving up the queue (or enough young children and other easier cases) that the number is reasonable. The level of vetting will not change.
You are correct, that’s not very definitive.
I can’t imagine that people would complain if ten thousand Syrian engineers or doctors wanted to immigrate to the US - but I suspect Germany or the UK would be equally complacent. But as you mention, the UN would probably not like it for a host country to pick and choose the best-educated from among the refugees.
Regards,
Shodan
The point is that it’s not just the “wretched refuse” that we’ll be getting from Syria, but something approximating a genuine cross-section of its society.
The “young children and other easier cases” you describe - would these “easier cases” include Syrian Christians? In a way similar to the Jews fleeing the Nazis their circumstance seems different than that of a Sunni Syrian. Much easier to establish that a Christian Syrian isn’t connected in some way to ISIS - which is the concern here. It would help move this process along, I’d think, for everyone.
Well, maybe. What stops an ISIS member from claiming to be Christian?
Than the point of any vetting at all if mere claims suffice?
No, the west should not halt immigration. That’s a silly piece of propaganda pushed by right wingers