With the influx of Syrian refugees into the western world we have been seeing a lot of backlash by various political groups in both the United States and Europe. So the question remains: is this backlash necessary?
When it comes to the United States and its refugee problem it is a drop in the bucket when considering the whole refugee crisis as a whole. There are an estimated 2 million Syrian refugees displaced by the Syrian civil war. Last year President Obama announced that the US would make preparations to take in 10,000 refugees. That is about .005% of the syrian refugees as a whole and they would make up about 0.00003% of the population of the United States. These refugees aren’t just being admitted to the US without any background check. In fact refugees are probably the most screened migrants coming into the United States post 9/11.
So then I wondered: how many refugees are there in the US already?
According to Refugee Resettlement Watch, 3 million refugees have been admitted to the United States since 1975 with the average being about 98,000 a year. That is more than 9 times the amount of Syrian refugees we are currently looking to accept now. So with all these refugees from destabilized areas that hold anti-American groups we should expect to see a rise of foreign terrorist attacks.
Actually more terrorist attacks in the US are homegrown terrorist. People like TImothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Eric Robert Rudolph were all natural born American citizens before they became terrorist. Groups like the KKK, Army of God and the Animal Liberation Front are all homegrown terrorist groups that have been active in the United States dedicated to changing politics through violence. While some of these groups are not as aggressive as they were in the past, they still share a commonality of being all domestic organizations. Even in the most recent San Bernardino shooting the male shooter was an American born citizen and the female shooter a Pakistani immigrant not a refugee.
Besides the fact that most terrorist attacks in the US are committed by domestic perpetrators this also shows how America has become too complacent in our ideas about immigrants. Whatever happened to idea of making America the city on the hill. A place where all people of all beliefs could come and not only become US citizens but fulfill the supposed American dream conservatives are so fond of. I’d like to end by providing a quote by Ronald Reagan, a man who most conservatives look up to as one of America’s greatest presidents. This came from his statement about the United State’s Immigration and Refugee Policy.
“Our nation is a nation of immigrants. More than any other country, our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands. No free and prosperous nation can by itself accommodate all those who seek a better life or flee persecution. We must share this responsibility with other countries.”
