When President Obama and John Kerry suggest taking 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016, 90 percent of them Muslim and many of them jihadist sympathizers– really, it’s not that hard to say not today; not ever. Just say no. In fact, say HELL NO!
Why is there even a debate on the matter?
Yes, the flood of refugees fleeing Syria is a humanitarian tragedy of historic proportions. However, these are not refugees from a terrible hurricane, a volcano eruption, or a tsunami tidal wave. These 4,000,000 are refugees from a civil war made intractable and horrific by an Islamist insurrection called the Islamic State, or ISIS. The refugees are a product of the same war that victimized 3,000 Americans on that beautiful September morning in 2001.
Unlike the Vietnam boat people or Cuban refugees after Castro came to power, the U.S. has no moral responsibility for the chaos in Syria. In fact, just the opposite is the case.
Is it really such a novel idea that refugees from a Middle East civil war should be resettled in the Middle East, not Europe and America?
And there is another fundamental question our politicians are not asking. Let’s ask if it meets a test never applied by President Obama but occasionally enters the conversation among patriots and some Republicans: Is it in America’s best interests — from both the economic and national security standpoint?
The blunt truth is that taking 10,000 Syrian refugees is not only a bad idea, it is such an obviously bad idea that it ought to serve as a litmus test for foreign policy sanity among the 17 Republican candidates for president.
The leading candidate, Donald Trump, at first flunked the test this week. Trump said, “You have to” take some of the Syrian refugees if we are asking Europe to take a million. He later modified it to say we should ask the Arab Gulf States and Russia and China to do more. “From a humanitarian standpoint, I’d love to help, but we have our own problems. We have so many problems that we have to solve,” Trump said on Fox News Wednesday.
Other Republicans, though are open to allowing thousands of refugees.
- Maybe our Republican candidates do not know that the United States already has over one million Muslims and is home to the largest expatriate Muslim population on the planet.
- Maybe they do not know that 9 out of 10 legal immigrants from Africa, East Asia, Latin America and the Middle East ALREADY reside in the United States.
- Maybe they do not know that letting wealthy Arab countries off the hook in not accepting refugees is the best way to guarantee a continuing flood of Muslim refugees over the coming century.
In fact, the list of elementary things our would-be leaders do not know about the real world outside Manhattan is astounding—and a little frightening.
Let’s just list the five most obvious reasons why taking 10,000 ADDITIONAL Syrian refugees is not only not very smart, it’s borderline criminal.
- The 10,000 Syrians Obama is proposing to accommodate would be on top of the 70,000 refugees we are already slated to take in 2016 – along with tens of thousands of “Asylees.” It’s not as though we aren’t already doing our part in accommodating world migration. In fact, we do more than any other nation.
- Are Syrians being moved to the front of the line among the millions of displaced persons across the globe? Why? Why are they more deserving than Africans fleeing tribal butchery, Coptic Christians driven from their homes in Egypt and Libya, Ukrainians fleeing Russian Reconquista, or Venezuelans escaping Marxist militarism?
- Why are we allowing Saudi Arabia and several other wealthy Middle East nations to take in ZERO refugees? Why are Syrian, Iraqi and Libyan refugees not being resettled in wealthy neighboring countries instead of Europe and the US?
- With over 50 percent of our present immigrant population on welfare, does a country with a $19 trillion debt really need to add to that fiscal burden?
Finally, and most important of all, what about the national security implications? We know that ISIS is actively placing jihadists among the hundreds of thousands of Syrian migrants.
- It is imperative to ask — how many additional thousand Islamist jihadists are we prepared to accept after the UN refugee agency fails to screen them out?
- The FBI has said that it does not have the tools or the manpower to screen the refugees. Asking them to do so is insane.
The Republican majority in Congress couldn’t find a way to stop the Iran nuclear deal after discarding the constitutional requirement for a two-thirds Senate vote on treaties. If they can’t say no to 10,000 jihadist-infiltrated refugees, they should just resign, close up shop and go home. If Congress rolls over on this one, let’s stop pretending we have a representative form of government.
This Syrian refugee issue is really a no-brainer. It doesn’t take brains, it takes a spine. Are there Republican candidates out there who can bring one to the White House?
Tom Tancredo is the founder of the Rocky Mountain Foundation and founder and co-chairman of Team America PAC.
Tom represented Colorado’s sixth congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009, and he is a former presidential candidate.
He is the author of In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America’s Border and Security.
