They win by making us afraid in our daily lives, doing ordinary things. And now, out of the fear that they will attack us here at home, we have governors and pandering politicians saying we will not take in any refugees from Syria.
Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress, however, points out that legal authority to admit refugees into the country is given to the president by the Constitution and by the Refugee Act of 1980. It was made even more explicit in 2012 by a SCOTUS decision in Arizona v. United States.
The fact is that Syrian refugees are not our enemy; rather, we have a common enemy in ISIS. Any refugees that are brought to this country are being very carefully vetted. The majority of them are children and women who have been through unimaginable trauma.
In addition, this is not the way a would-be terrorist would choose to try to come into our country. It takes too long, and the vetting would pick them up.
Unfortunately, this fear that a terrorist might sneak in among them is fertile ground for those demagogues who fan the flames of xenophobia. Republican presidential candidates are spouting some of the most uninformed, outright lies about all this. They are abandoning American values. Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz are calling for "Christian refugess" to be admitted, but not Muslims.
Shame on them.
Ralph
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