Look out: The xenophobia boogieman is loose again, dear readers. Rhetoric disparaging refugees as fakers, terrorists and veritable pallbearers of Western civilization can be heard in conservative echo chambers across the country.
Allow me to offer a more thoughtful response: We need to allow more refugees into the United States, not less. Here’s why:
Syria is war-torn and in shambles. Its people are caught in the crossfires of a conflict between an oppressive government headed by Bashar al-Assad, invading Islamic extremists such as the Islamic State and various armed rebel groups.
This exodus of Syrians from their homeland has been going on since the start of the civil war in 2011 but has mostly been absorbed by neighboring countries. Recently though, the number of Syrian refugees has been swelling, spilling into Europe and beyond.
As the richest country on Earth, we have a moral duty to help these destitute people.
Worried about the economic impact of resettling refugees? Let’s go back to the last time the United States accepted a large wave of refugees.
In the early 1990s, a protracted and genocidal civil war between multiple ethnic factions in Bosnia and Herzegovina displaced millions. A majority of the resulting refugees were Muslims who sought sanctuary in Western countries. Sound familiar?
Many of these refugees wound up in St. Louis, Missouri, which today has the largest Bosnian population outside of Europe. According to a 1999 article in the St. Louis Business Journal, the influx of Bosnians helped revitalized the south side of the city, especially Bevo Mill, where most of the refugees concentrated.
According to the article, “Neighborhoods such as the blocks around the landmark Bevo Mill that were heading for ghost-town status now are teeming with new residents and new economic activity.”
Perceiving refugees as pariahs or invaders denies them any value. Instead, we should think of them as investments and new members of the community who have much to offer. Furthermore, the United States, a proverbial melting pot, is better equipped to assimilate Syrian refugees than Europe, where the population tends to be more homogenous.
Last week, Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced that the United States would raise its annual refugee resettlement cap from 70,000 this fiscal year to 85,000 next year and 100,000 in 2017 in order to accommodate the growing influx.
Consider that in 1980, the United States accepted 200,000 refugees, according to Refugee Council USA. There is little doubt that we can up our humanitarian game and accept more.
Those shaking in their boots, worried that terrorists will infiltrate the country under the guise of refugee status should know that the screening process for admittance is thorough—as it should be.
“Refugees have to be screened by the National Counter Terrorism Center, by the F.B.I. Terrorist Screening Center,” White House Press Secretary Josh Ernest said during a briefing last Thursday. “They go through databases that are maintained by D.H.S., the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. There is biographical and biometric information that is collected about these individuals.”
While there have been reports of forged documents, the solution is not to turn away refugees.
Countries able to take in refugees bear the responsibility to improve screening methods because legitimate refugees have an inalienable right to sanctuary. Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”
It might seem easy to cast this off as guilt-ridden bleeding-heart liberal mush. But it isn’t. It is a moral imperative that we must take up. If we balk now, history will not be kind to us. Looking back at the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, Hilary Clinton wrote the following in her memoir “Living History”: “[I] regret deeply the failure of the world, including my husband’s Administration, to act to end the genocide.”
Do not be afraid. Incoming refugees do not threaten baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet—the quote-unquote American way. However, if we skirt away from this crisis for fear of foreigners, the cost will be the erosion of a much more integral American ideal.
Shall we remember what is engraved on the Statue of Liberty?
“Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”