Just because we are afraid of a threat against us, doesn’t make it okay for us to forget our morals and our humanity.
You may have heard recently that the House of Representatives passed a bill to impose more in depth screening of Syrian and Iraqi refugees attempting to enter the United States, due to the fact that one of the bombers in the Paris attacks was found with a Syrian passport after having entered France through Greece. The bill is now on its way to the Senate, where a few Democratic Senators have said it is sure to be vetoed, though we can’t be certain.
The New York Times quotes President Obama as saying, “Slamming the door in the face of refugees would betray our deepest values. That’s not who we are. And it’s not what we’re going to do…That somehow they pose a more significant threat than all the tourists who pour into the United States every single day just doesn’t jibe with reality.” He has promised to veto the bill if it manages to make it passed the Senate, but doing so would anger many high ranking American politicians and authorities, not to mention a large section of the general public. There have been an overwhelming amount of state Governors speaking out, saying that they are not on board to allow the entrance of Syrian refugees into their states, in fact some reports say that more than half of the Governors have turned their back on refugees.
What I have to say on this issue is this:
We cannot, as a country, base massive decisions like this on a feeling of fear, and we certainly have no right to turn away thousands when refugees are the main reason that we, as a country, exist as a world power.
The Statue of Liberty has carved on a plaque: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” It’s the moral that our country was founded on, and how many of us would actually be in the US now if the older generations of our families hadn’t been allowed into the country as refugees? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 was supposed to guarantee a “…right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution,” yet we are denying this from Syrians and Iraqis. We scoff at Americans for turning away refugees during WWII, and here we are repeating ourselves, because we consider it okay to place the importance of our peace of mind on a higher level than the safety of families running for their lives from the very people we too are scared of.
Realistically, the process of being able to enter the US as a refugee can take anywhere from a year to 18 months, or even longer. A terrorist making threats now isn’t going to wait that long to enter the US when he/she could get in immediately through any number of illegal options, including through the Mexican border. Turning away refugees may keep a small number of intended wrong-doers out of the country, but it will mainly just risk the lives of thousands of innocents. As long as we are vetting the identities of those trying to enter the country, there is no reason to turn anyone away because of the country they are coming from or the religion they are practicing. Statistically speaking, the majority of Europe’s terrorists are European, what is to say an ISIS member won’t just find a radical American, or European who can fly into the US as a tourist, to do their job for them?
If money seems like a good enough reason to risk the lives of innocents, consider the fact that Germany has said they may be willing to take in a million refugees by the end of the year. I think we can handle 10,000, especially considering the fact that the work force numbers are dropping in comparison to the number of retires that will need to be paid Social Security and Medicare; we can use more workers to help support the cost of these taxes.
There are many ways to look at this situation, and I’m sure there are many more excuses than I have acknowledged for why people don’t want to allow these refugees into our country, but the bottom line is that most of these excuses are extremely selfish, and none of them are worth risking the lives of thousands.
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