Rejecting Refugees is a Terrible Idea

Republicans believe the US should reject refugees because a few of them may be terrorists. OK. Actually let's go on; why stop there?

They should also reject Christian refugees because a few of them may be sympathizers of the hateful homophobic Westboro Baptist Church. They should also reject Buddhist refugees because some of them may be violent Islamophobic Buddhists like some of those in Myanmar, Sri Lanka and many other Asian countries. They should also reject all gun owners because some of them may be potential mass killers. They should also reject anyone with mental health issues because some of them could be killers, you never know. Actually they should also reject all veterans because who knows what PTSD can do to them. They should also reject Mexican immigrants because hey, a few of them are probably rapists and drug dealers according to Trump anyway.

My point is this: rejecting a mass of people and having them pay for the acts of a very, very small minority (The percentage of refugees who are terrorists are probably much smaller that all of the other possibilities mentioned in this post) is incomprehensibly cruel. The refugees are, after all, fleeing the very same hazards that the rest of us deeply fear. Instead of painting them all with the same brush, a vigilant and meticulous background check is much more effective and humane. The irony and hypocrisy is also unmistakable. Many decades ago, countless Germans immigrated to the US to escape the Nazi regime, including Albert Einstein. Should the US have rejected them because they could potentially be Nazi officers? Ted Cruz's father immigrated from Communist Cuba. Surely his own dad should have been rejected entry then because he could've been a hard-line Communist?

The Western world also has the responsibility, I believe, to take in refugees because it is their very actions over the past several decades that lead to this current virtually deadlocked quagmire, chief among those in my opinion is their arbitrary remapping of virtually the entire Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, grouping populations so fundamentally different they were never going to coexist peacefully. Not to mention, they also separated people like the Kurds into different countries, separating families and communities in the process. These arbitrary divisions have led to endless conflicts, the emergence of militant governments, radicalization of the increasingly desperate population and ultimately the rise of extremist groups. I'm simplifying here of course but it is not far from the truth. The failed and shortsighted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also did nothing to help the region's cause, creating a vacuum of power that allowed ISIS to emerge. Let’s not forget that the US also once supported and armed the Mujahideen who many believe is the father of modern Al-Qaeda and ISIS although the jury is still out on this matter.

The fact is almost all ISIS victims are Muslims and they deserve help. Rejecting them and marginalizing them even further create more tensions, hatred, sense of belligerency and desperation; in other words, the perfect recipe for the formidable ISIS global recruitment team. ISIS knows how much bigotry and ignorance there is out there and they are exploiting this to the very end. A case in point: Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged mastermind of the Paris attack last Friday came from Molenbeek, a very marginalized Arab neighborhood in Brussels, plagued by poverty, unemployment and inadequate housing. In fact, almost all of the alleged perpetrators grew up in poverty (including two more from Molenbeek) and all but one of them were European nationals, NOT refugees. Muslims generally live in the poorer areas of most European countries.

And let's face it, given ISIS' intellectual, physical and financial prowess, they can almost certainly go anywhere if they wanted to anyway. There is no doubt to me that rejecting refugees is a futile and counterproductive way to counter the ISIS threat.

ISIS is a formidable threat and there are no easy solutions. But the undignified road the Republicans are heading towards will backfire. I lived in the US for 4 years and understand very well that the US is historically and fundamentally a country that indiscriminately assists people and gives them a chance for a better life. While this has not always been true, the fact is few, if any, countries have accepted more refugees in modern history than the US.

President Barack Obama summed it up best when he said "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."