What is your image of a refugee? An underfed child sleeping in a cold tent? Or a terrorist with a bomb ready to attack?
This is the essential question driving a heated debate in the United States after the Paris attacks. The US has accepted around 2,000 Syrian refugees since the Syrian civil war started in 2011 and the Obama administration had previously announced plans to accept 10,000 in the next year. While some politicians objected, it was not an especially controversial policy at the time. The Paris attacks, however, have changed that.
In the last few days, more than half of US governors have said they do not want future Syrian refugees resettled in their states. All Republican presidential candidates now oppose bringing in more Syrian refugees, calling for a “pause” at a minimum. Republican candidate Donald Trump said that, if elected president, he would evict all Syrian refugees in the US, and, in keeping with his tendency towards extreme exaggeration, he tweeted that “refugees from Syria are now pouring into our great country”. Even candidates that are generally seen as more moderate spoke out against accepting Syrian refugees. For example, Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said the US should not accept Syrian refugees, because “there’s no background check system in the world that allows us to find” out who might be a Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) fighter.
Politically, the debate mostly has broken down along partisan lines. While some Democrat leaders have also expressed concern about Syrian refugees, the Democrat candidates for president have reaffirmed their support for bringing in more. President Barack Obama has been particularly scathing in his response: “Apparently, they’re scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America as part of our tradition of compassion.”
On a societal level, the divisions are more complex. There is a constituency that fears immigrants of all kinds are overrunning the US and is deeply suspicious of Muslims. For them, the Syrian refugee issue represents a perfect storm of threats. In addition, many Americans simply misunderstand the US refugee process, including the intense screening of each applicant. Two polls taken after the Paris attacks found more than half of Americans now oppose taking in more Syrian refugees and at least part of the fear driving these views is based on the belief that Daesh could easily infiltrate refugees and that the US might face uncontrollable numbers of newcomers.
Some politicians have used the Paris attacks to frighten Americans into believing that Syrian refugees represent an immediate security threat to the US, but the US experience with Syrian refugees is very different from that of Europe.
Obama is only planning to bring in a few thousand refugees to the US — nothing close to the numbers that Europe, let alone Jordan and Turkey, face.
Furthermore, applying for refugee status in the US is a long and complex process that typically takes one to two years and often ends in denial. Other methods of entry would likely appear faster and easier to terrorists, making applying for refugee status the least likely route into the US for Daesh militants. Refugees are fleeing a murderous government and a brutal terrorist organisation. The US State Department has noted that half of the Syrian refugees admitted so far are children and a quarter are adults over 60 years old, with only 2 per cent being single men of combat age.
Still, many Republicans are now arguing that the US should not admit any more refugees unless the screening system absolutely guarantees that no refugee is, or would ever become a terrorist — an impossible standard. Republicans in the House of Representatives are promoting legislation that would require an unfeasible level of certifications that any refugee from Syria or Iraq would not pose a threat.
Obama has threatened to veto the bill if it passes Congress, but debate in the House and Senate over measures to restrict such refugees will continue.
While the wave of hostility towards Syrian refugees after the Paris attacks was sudden and strong, so too is the emerging backlash against it. Some Democratic leaders have issued sharp rebukes and several governors have said they would welcome refugees. Many people from typically liberal demographics have spoken in support of welcoming more Syrian refugees. A few typically conservative groups also have spoken in favour of refugees, including some Catholic and evangelical Christian groups that have long traditions of supporting refugees in the US and abroad.
When debating the issue of refugees, it is important to openly discuss concerns about security and integration. But indulging in generalised, uninformed fear of terrorism at the expense of refugees who desperately need a safe home runs contrary to the American ideal of offering a new start for those fleeing persecution.
The US has a responsibility to help Syrian refugees, due to the country’s humanitarian commitments and Washington’s role as a key actor in the Middle East. The US should help its allies in Europe and the Middle East meet the challenges posed by the wave of refugees, and not only by providing support abroad.
Syrian refugees also bring skills, resilience and a work ethic that can contribute to the US economy and culture, as have so many refugees before them.
The threat of terrorism to the US is real, but refugees are not the source of the threat. Shutting them out would betray core American values in pursuit of a false sense of security.
The current rhetoric that characterises refugees as threatening — especially the rhetoric of some Republican leaders that the US should choose Christian refugees over Muslim ones — plays directly into Daesh’s portrayal of an epic battle of Christians versus Muslims and of the West versus the Middle East. If American politicians truly want to win the battle against such extremism, then taking the moral high ground on the refugee question would be a step in the right direction.
Kerry Boyd Anderson is a writer and political risk consultant with more than 13 years experience as a professional analyst of international security issues and Middle East political and business risks.
