After reading all the debate about the immigration/refugee issue, I decided to do some of my own research. The result? I found out how complex this subject is. My intent is to provide a good foundation on which to begin building an informed opinion. It's certainly not the final word, but hopefully it's a good start.
Here, as best as I have been able to ascertain, are the facts. I am not attempting to persuade as much as to inform. There a lot of links; my summaries don't do justice, so I encourage you to click and read. When I sent out some early drafts, readers kept pointing toward more and more relevant information that I missed. I suspect that will continue. Feel free to comment or add helpful links in the comment section if you can help to bring greater clarity to this issue. I have no problem updating this post to reflect a growing understanding of a complex issue.
Refugees
According to unrefugees.org, "A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so."
Unlike Europe, our problems do not come from refugees. Perhaps because it takes
three years through a grueling vetting process to get in instead of the three months for a visa, embedding operatives in the refugee system is a really low priority on ISIS’s
list. There is not agreement on effective the vetting process is.
The Heritage Foundation sees it as extensive but not perfect;
Human Rights First likes it, as
does USA Today;
Fox News, The Washington Times, and
even CNN have questioned the safety of the process.
Since 1975, 20 refugees out of 3.2 million have been arrested for either planning or carrying out acts of terrorism. Only three Americans were killed - and that was by Cuban refugees in the 1970's. However, there are some discrepant numbers based on how one describes terrorism.
The Independent has reported that "a State Department spokesperson said of the nearly 785,000 refugees admitted through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program since 9/11, 'only about a dozen — a tiny fraction of one percent of admitted refugees — have been arrested or removed from the U.S. due to terrorism concerns that existed prior to their resettlement in the U.S. None of them were Syrian.'"
No refugees from the countries identified in Obama and Trump's directives are responsible for an American death (though some tried). As the
Cato Institute has noted, the chance of an American being killed in a terrorist attack committed by a refugee was 1 in 3.64 billion a year.
