Syrian Refugee Column Draws Responses

My View by Jim Yacavone

Thanks to Nancy Zimmerman and Paul Klein for their letters to the editor in response to my column about Syrian refugees published a couple of weeks ago. My column questioned whether Obama’s plan to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees is wise in light of the San Bernardino massacre, reports that ISIS fighters have infiltrated the refugees and what we have learned about our government’s unreliable process for vetting the refugees. 
Both of them argued in favor of accepting the refugees. Klein noted that America is a land of immigrants. I don’t need to be reminded of that. With a last name like Yacavone, you can be sure that I come from immigrant stock.

Contrary to what their letters suggest, I did not advocate that the U.S. stop accepting all Muslim refugees or even all Syrian refugees. Rather, I believe that accepting 10,000 extra refugees from the recent mass exodus from Syria is foolishly dangerous.

Since the Syrian civil war began about three and a half years ago the U.S. has accepted approximately 2,100 Syrian refugees. This September, in response to the refugee crisis in Europe, the administration announced it would increase this number significantly in the next budget year. According to CNN, Obama “ordered his administration to ‘scale up’ the number of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States in the coming year” and directed “his team to prepare for at least 10,000 in the next fiscal year.”

I submit that these additional refugees pose a particularized credible threat to the U.S.

ISIS has vowed to bring terror to the U.S. homeland. Reputable news organizations have reported that ISIS fighters have infiltrated the estimated one million Syrian refugees entering Europe. Lebanon's education minister has warned that as many as 1 in 50 Syrian refugees could be ISIS terrorists. It is still uncertain whether Syrian refugees participated in the Paris attacks. We learned recently that the FBI has over 900 ISIS investigations nationwide so apparently someone in the federal government believes the ISIS threat is real and not imagined.

Mr. Klein notes that prior waves of immigrants to this country were not perfect and yet we accepted them. There is a fundamental distinction between those immigrants and the additional Syrian refugees that Obama wants to bring into this country. Never before have we known that a particular group of immigrants may contain scores of individuals who oppose our way of life and are willing to commit random acts of mass terror. The Statue of Liberty welcomes tired, poor, huddled masses. I don’t believe it welcomes terrorists.

The female terrorist in the San Bernardino massacre entered the U.S. from Pakistan on a fiancée visa issued by the State Department. I wrote that the State Department said that its vetting process for visa applicants was just as rigorous as the process that will be used to vet Syrian refugees. This was reported in the days after the San Bernardino attack. The State Department has now backtracked on that statement though it still defends its vetting process as being thorough.

Regardless, it is clear that our government cannot safely vet immigrants from a ravaged and war torn country where records are sparse or non-existent. Until we can be comfortably assured there are no ISIS terrorists among the refugees the risk of admitting these refugees is unacceptable.

I feel compassion for the Syrian refugees. However, as I said in my earlier column, I have greater compassion for the San Bernardino victims and for any future Americans who may suffer harm at the hands of terrorists imported through Obama’s Syrian refugee plan.