I wasn't going to post about this, but I just cannot keep silent on this topic any longer. Every day I scroll through Facebook and I begin to fear, distrust, and even hate some of the people I once thought of as friends. I cannot stand the absurdity of this whole situation any longer.
Let me start at the beginning. There was an attack on Paris orchestrated by terrorists under the orders of ISIS. Not one of the attackers was a refugee from Syria, but due to a fake passport, it was originally believed that at least one was. He may have followed the same path as the refugees, but he was obviously planted there by ISIS, and his passport did not stand up to any level of scrutiny.
What has upset me most is the people now calling for an immediate end of acceptance of any new refugees from the Middle East. These people are calling for the US to turn away those who are fleeing their war torn homes. The United States is not a European nation, and thus can be a lot more stringent about its screening process for refugees. In fact, since 1980, not one refugee admitted to the US has committed an act of terror. We admit around 70,000 refugees each year. That means that in the last thirty five years, nearly 2.5 million refugees have settled in the United States, and a resounding none of them has committed an act of terror since settling here. Let's stop worrying about terrorists among the refugees.
Seriously, these are human beings who deserve all the love and compassion we claim to want to give to any homeless person. All I am asking for is to allow them to enter the country and be taken in by those people and groups willing to care for them until they are able to be assimilated by our economy. If history is any indicator, our economy can handle a flood of refugees like the Cuban flood in the Mid-Twentieth Century. Since I bring up the Cuban refugee flood, I might also point out that back then, Americans understood that we should take refugees from Cuba, even given the potential theat of communists insurgents.
Now, moving on to the other point that I'm honestly tired of seeing on Facebook, the gist of which is "we need to feed and house all of our veterans before we give any help to a bunch of brown people." I barely even know where to start with this. There are numerous programs in place to assist veterans on all stages. A quick Google search is enough to verify this. There's even an initiative in place at the US Department of Veterans Affairs to end homeless for all veterans. We're already doing that through the government and through various charities, so the argument that we need to "take care of our own first" is basically garbage. Anyone making this argument is just attempting to justify their xenophobia, and it's disgusting.
Finally, I am outraged by comments made this week by Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio that basically call for everyone to forget all the important strides we've taken since the first leak by Edward Snowden and go back to allowing NSA to unabashedly spy on American citizens. I try to avoid the whole "outrage" thing because very few things that people get worked up over are truly outrageous, but in this case I feel justified. These two men are calling for the government to completely stomp on every person's right to privacy. Every one of us has the right to live free of government spying and meddling. The argument about having nothing to hide holds no water, either. Even though I have nothing to hide, I don't want random government employees to be able to access my call records, emails, etc, basically on a whim. My correspondence with my friends and family is no one's business but those people I choose to correspond with, and if I wanted to make it the government's business, I would post it openly online as I am doing here. Edward Snowden basically gave up his life here to bring about the meager changes that were able to get passed through Congress. Let's not take that back now just because of a tragedy that no one could have foreseen and the program probably wouldn't have helped with, anyhow.
We are all human beings, and refugees just need to be shown a little compassion. They're not terrorists and I'm not asking you to do anything but let them come and let those of us willing to care for them take them in. Put aside your xenophobia, your hatred of Muslims, or whatever it is that is making you push these downtrodden people away, and allow those of us who are willing open our hearts to them.
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