The results of the poll illustrated above by the useful Twitter account @HistOpinion were published in the pages of Fortune magazine in July 1938. Fewer than 5 percent of Americans surveyed at the time believed that the United States should raise its immigration quotas or encourage political refugees fleeing fascist states in Europe — the vast majority of whom were Jewish — to voyage across the Atlantic. Two-thirds of the respondents agreed with the proposition that “we should try to keep them out.”
To be sure, the United States was emerging from the Great Depression, hardly a climate in which ordinary folks would welcome immigrants and economic competition. The events of Kristallnacht — a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in areas controlled by the Nazis — had yet to take place. And the poll’s use of the term “political refugees” could have conjured in the minds of the American public images of communists, anarchists and other perceived ideological threats.
But look at the next chart, also tweeted by @HistOpinion. Two-thirds of Americans polled by Gallup’s American Institute of Public Opinion in January 1939 — well after the events of Kristallnacht — said they would not take in 10,000 German Jewish refugee children.
[A couple of caveats: Polling in this period, including Gallup surveys, was not as scientifically rigorous as it later became. Also, respondents may not necessarily have had a particular bias against Jewish refugees. A separate portion of Gallup respondents were asked a nearly identical question which did not describe refugees as Jewish. Support for accepting refugees was slightly lower than when they were described as mostly Jewish.]
As WorldViews detailed earlier this year, most Western countries regarded the plight of Jewish refugees with skepticism or unveiled bigotry (and sympathy followed only wider knowledge of the monstrous slaughters of the Holocaust):
No matter the alarming rhetoric of [Adolf] Hitler’s fascist state — and the growing acts of violence against Jews and others — popular sentiment in Western Europe and the United States was largely indifferent to the plight of German Jews.
“Of all the groups in the 20th century,” write the authors of the 1999 book “Refugees in an Age of Genocide,” “refugees from Nazism are now widely and popularly perceived as ‘genuine,’ but at the time German, Austrian and Czechoslovakian Jews were treated with ambivalence and outright hostility as well as sympathy.”
It’s worth remembering this mood when thinking about the current moment, in which the United States is once more in the throes of a debate over letting in refugees. Ever since Friday’s terror attacks in Paris, the Republicans, led by their presidential candidates, have sounded the alarm over the threat of jihadist infiltration from Syria — even though it now appears that every single identified assailant in the Paris siege was a European national.
Hindsight is generally 20/20. As long as we see all Muslims as “other” these similar types of opinions will be held. Today, Jews seem unremarkable, routine, and non-“other.” What made us change over 70 years? TV, movies, assimilation? Probably all of the above. When I was a young adult there was a country club over in Loudoun County that wouldn’t allow blacks or Jews. When I was growing up in Albemarle County, Catholics were seen as semi-“other.”
How will the world judge us when the Syrian Civil War is over? I believe we will be judged by our degree of compassion and humanitarianism. When people say, “it isn’t worth the risk,” we have to remember that we aren’t the only ones taking a risk. those refugees have been homeless and fleeing, some for as long as 5 years, when the conflict began. there are close to 8 million displaced persons, at least half the Syrian population.
Yes, there is a risk that a terrorist or two might infiltrate and gain entrance to this country by posing as a refugee. There is also the possibility that a terrorist might over-stay a visa or slip across the Canadian border. One could also swim across from Mexico or get smuggled in by a coyote. One could wash ashore and disguise himself as a Cuban refugee.
We need to remain vigilant. We know the danger is out there. Becoming isolationist or quaking in fear over refugees doesn’t make us a stronger nation. We need to find a way to shelter the refugees and at the same time beef up our own security.
Only in America….
I don’t agree with the Post’s effort to put the two refugee eras into a comparison. I doubt if anyone was afraid that the Jewish orphans of 1938-1939 might form terrorist sleeper cells and try to kill us en masse.
As far as the current situation goes, I opt for maximum protection of our own people and to Hell with what others may think about how we go about it. I would not bet the lives of Americans on a mere possibility of the terrorists not taking advantage of such an opportunity or on our counterterrorism services always pitching shutouts. We have had too many losses and near misses over the years both before and after 9/11 to let our defenses down to a point that we risk bringing even more of the fight to our home ground.
I think you have a legitimate concern. I don’t necessarily agree with you but I think you have expressed what many people are probably thinking.
A part of me agrees….about 10% of me. I am afraid I would have to go with some sort of very regulated entry into this country and I would NEVER agree to a religious test. Now THAT is un-American.
This is a false equivalency guilt trip attempt. Pure unmitigated propaganda.
The current fake refugees are not the victims of genocide or persecution. Jewish refugees were families. These “refugees” are military aged men. Jews were not known to be terrorists. Muslims have a bad tendency to be associated with such actions. No Jews were actually terrorists mixed in with the refugees. Terrorists have been found among the refugees. Shipments of arms listed as food for refugee camps have been intercepted in Greeze.
The Washington Post is aiding and abetting the enemy as a fifth column and should be ashamed.
We have no need to shelter these “refugees.” If you want to shelter refugees, demand that ONLY women and children be allowed in. Concentrate on Christians and minority Muslim faiths.
NO men.
Cargo, You are simply wrong. Yes, those people are displaced people because of civil war.
Do you think you can’t fake being Christian? I think your suggestion is horrible. I would rather offer rescue no one than to slap a religious test on it.
The point of the 1938 comparison is that even in a situation where the possibility of terrorists being embedded in a refugee flow was virtually non-existent, the bulk of the American population opposed giving refuge to men, women and children fleeing something as evil as Hitler’s policies and conquests. If Americans in 1938 were that unwelcoming, it is no surprise that the collective impulse now is hostility. The point of the 1938 comparison is that America is not a particularly welcoming country to large influxes of unfamiliar peoples. Nor is any other country. There is a natural human instinct to view these things with fear and suspicion, even before politicians start fanning that natural instinct for their own gain. it was then and is now a rather easy matter, particularly for politicians, to harness up that exclusionary instinct to keep people out. That we now have a situation where there is indeed at least a theoretical possibility of terrorists’ infiltrating the refugee flow makes that long-standing instinct even more intense, and more easily manipulated by politicians.
As for Kelly’s comments, the numbers of refugees from Darfur and Cambodia were quite small by comparison to what we are seeing today. Part of that is geographic. Cambodian refugees tended to stay in Southeast Asia. I know a few who did come here, but the numbers were minute compared to what leaves Syria in a largely land-based trek out as far as Europe. The American role in this is to try to relieve some of the pressure on Western Europe by showing some solidarity with the issues that those countries are facing as a result of the numbers of people fleeing Syria and surrounding areas. American policy has been to try to disperse refugees as widely as possible urging countries throughout the Americas to take refugees. The motivation is to minimize the social impacts on any one country. Of course, to have any credibility with such a policy, the United States has to be willing to take some number of refugees itself. Thus far, that willingness, even at the level of the Administration, has been minimal compared to European efforts.
I question your theory, Kelly, that this administration’s policy toward immigration is significantly distinct from what any other administration’s policy in a similar situation might be or that the motivation is based on creating domestic voting blocs. What “expansion of voting rights” measures are you referring to? Has this administration (or any previous one) advocated that non-citizens be given the franchise? I certainly don’t recall that. It would have raised quite a stir if it had happened.
I did not realize my comments showed up already. I was trying out the new edit feature and then deleted the comment, because I wanted to mention the issue of geography and could not get it to save.
One does have to question the Administration’s unwillingness to compromise, given the proven security risk. There has to be some motivation beyond the moral arguments being put forth publicly.
After thinking about it, the motive seems pretty clear. Voting rights do not have to be expanded, because refugees are being accepted into the country legally. In fact, refugees are automatically put on a fast track for citizenship. Once refuge is granted, refugees have to apply for a green card after being in the US for one year and can then apply for citizenship only four years later. They are immediately eligible for government benefits and there is no requirement that they be able to support themselves independently to get a green card.
So these people can be turned into reliable Democratic voters after being in the US for only five years. This also explains why the Administration fought so hard to categorize as refugees the “children” and young adults that flowed from Guatamala, Honduras, and El Salvador in 2014.
These people can be re-located anywhere in the US that the Administration chooses. Will they be settled in purple states where only a few thousand votes might make a difference?
The Administration can invoke our moral duty and the need to share the burden with Europe as Scout suggests, but its single-minded drive to take in people that pose a security risk suggests there must be an ulterior motive.
I don’t think voting rights has anything to do with this issue. Who is to say they would become Democrats, even if they became citizens down the road?
I have no doubt that any efforts to bring refugees into this country would be for humanitarian reasons. Most of them appear to be homeless on displaced.
Moon,
The reason many on the right are cynical regarding the motives of this administration re:voting, is Democrat strategists (as well as a few GOP ones too) have been crowing about how the “demographic shift” brought on by increased legal and illegal immigration will “Doom the aging, white, christian GOP to a permanent minority party”. Considering that the stated goal of this administration remains “the fundamental transformation of the nation”, and a lot of “fundamental transformation” has occurred (healthcare, marriage, socioeconomic) during the last seven years, while you may disagree with those who see these actions as less compassionate and more agenda-driven, you should at least know why many see it this way.
But the likelihood of it happening that way…not so much. When the Republicans are in or want in, the reverse can be said. There is much crowing and admonition about returning the country to the good old days. In fact, a lot of what the various Tea parties touted was about that.
I basically stopped listening. I believe the refugee issues are real. There are displaced people–more than any time since WWII.
If these groups don’t see that they are tools of both groups, then doh. I will go on record as saying I don’t think any one group is better or worse than the other. As I sit here in PWC wondering why we have 7 or 8 state senators representing PWC I have to think Republican. They are who is ultimately responsible for the gerrymandering.
I cry a pox on each of the houses!
I think Cargo is pointing out that the bulk of the refugees do not appear to be from groups currently being persecuted by ISIS, such as the Yazidi or Assyrian Christians. I’d also add Alawites, who are persecuted due to their associations with the Assad regime. Also, the reports that many of the refugees are unaccompanied “military-aged” males rather than old men, women and children (ie. vulnerable populations) is fueling further skepticism and generating reasonable questions.
When you consider intelligence failures preceded both World Trade attacks, the other 9/11 attacks, multiple attacks abroad, and the Boston bombing, doubting our governments ability to “vet” and monitor these people once they are on US soil, is not an unreasonable position to hold.
As far as compassion goes, it cannot surpass our nation’s material resources. As you frequently point out, many American citizens are still struggling to recover from the Great Recession, and we are often served up media stories regarding the increase in homeless families, homeless veterans, people living hand-to-mouth, day-to-day, paycheck to paycheck, EBT deposit to EBT deposit. We are also told we need to provide refuge to unaccompanied minors from Latin America, and figure out a way to provide for millions of illegal aliens, and their “Dreamer” children.
I am sure that those ladies who horde cats are doing it out of compassion too.
Let me defend the dreamers. Those are young people who have behaved and done well in school. No hand outs ther…just an opportunity to be admitted to college.
I have not seen any indication that there are hordes of young military age men in the great sea of refugees.
Congresswoman Barbara Comstock:
“Regarding Syrian refugees, leaders from the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the Department of Homeland Security have told the House Homeland Security Committee that they do not have the necessary ‘on-the-ground intelligence’ to ‘thoroughly’ vet Syrian refugees. Recent reports indicate that ISIS leaders have said they want to exploit the refugee crisis to get into countries in Europe and the West. In addition, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said last month, ‘It is true that we are not going to know a whole lot about the Syrians that come forth in this process.’ It is also reported that thousands of Europeans and dozens of Americans have gone to fight and train in Syria. They now must be better tracked, identified, and rooted out with coordinated intelligence efforts as they seek to make their way into Western democracies and engage in terrorist actions.
“The Administration’s policies and practices do not inspire confidence that they could or would implement proper vetting procedures for Syrian refugees that ensure the safety of the American people. Therefore, the Administration’s policies on Syrian refugees should be suspended and a full review of the program and its security risks should be undertaken along with aggressive congressional oversight. These recent attacks also bring to light the need to reinvigorate our national security tracking tools and abilities to defeat terrorism.
“We are a welcoming nation, and people from many nations seek safety here. But the safety and security of the American people must be our number one priority. The Obama Administration and our allies can provide safe zones in Syria which can provide aid to the Syrian refugees while keeping the American people safe. Contrary to the president’s statements, ISIS is not ‘JV’, ISIS is not ‘contained’, and the attacks on France are more than a ‘setback’. As French President Hollande said, ‘This is an act of war’. As terrorists around the world continue to expand networks and upgrade their capabilities, the United States and our allies must upgrade our capabilities and strengthen our resolve to annihilate these networks bent on destroying our way of life.”
@Moon-howler
“As I sit here in PWC wondering why we have 7 or 8 state senators representing PWC I have to think Republican. ”
Um…Moon…The VA Senate lines were drawn by the party that controlled the VA Senate at the time the lines were drawn. It wasn’t the Republicans who gerrymandered the PWC senate districts. It was the Democrats, specifically Senator George Barker (D) who drew the current VA Senate districts. Now, if you want to gripe about the HOD lines, you’d be on firm ground, but as HOD districts are much smaller, it is more common that a county be represented by multiple delegates.
Truth cannot flow from a false premise.
My apologies to the R’s for blaming them for the Senate. I hate the HOD lines also.
“I basically stopped listening. I believe the refugee issues are real. There are displaced people–more than any time since WWII.”
Really? More than at the close of the Chinese Communist revolution? More than during the Korean War? More than were displaced with the fall of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in 1975? More than during the multiple mid-east wars in and around Israel? More than during the civil war in Lebanon? More than during the wars in the Balkans?
I think you need to check your facts. “Refugee” issues have always existed, as conflict between tribes, kingdoms and nation-states have always existed. What make this crisis different? ISIS and other terror groups want to kill us, here. Not just military targets. They want to kill civilians.
More displaced people in Europe than any time since WWII. I wasn’t thinking Asian.
ISIS wants to kill these refugees also. They don’t seem to really care muych who they kill.
I guess all this paranoia regarding radical Islamists using refugee and other immigration programs is just irrational…my favorite is #4 for obvious reasons:
1. Syrian-American Aims for Military Base or Prison
Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, a Syrian immigrant who became a U.S. citizen, was charged with planning to go to a Texas military base and kill American soldiers execution style, or commit a crime at a prison. He reportedly trained with a terrorist group in Syria and said he wanted to “attack a military facility or a prison in the United States,” the New York Times reported.
The indictment said, “Mohamud talked about doing something big in the United States. He wanted to go to a military base in Texas and kill three or four American soldiers execution style.”
He allegedly trained with terrorists in Syria, but a cleric in Syria told Mohamud he should return to the United States and “carry out an act of terrorism,” according to the indictment.
2. New York Bomb Plot
Two Pakistani immigrants who received U.S citizenship were sentenced to decades-long prison sentences for plotting to detonate a bomb in New York. Raees Qazi and Sheheryar Qazi pleaded guilty in March and were sentenced in June to 35 years and 20 years respectively.
3. Chattanooga Attack
A Kuwaiti immigrant brought here by his family at a young age who became a citizen, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, carried out an attack this summer at a military recruiting center that killed four military personnel in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July. He was killed the day of the shooting.
Abdulazeez was reportedly not in the U.S. database of suspected terrorists, but law enforcement believed he might have traveled to the Middle East in recent years.
4. Social Media Backing
In June, Ali Shukri Amin, a Sudanese immigrant who became a U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty to providing material support for the Islamic State. Recruited online, Amin, a resident of Manassas, Virginia, was a high school student who ran a pro-Islamic State Twitter account.
5. Bosnian Conspiracies
A Bosnian refugee couple was charged with donating money, supplies and smuggled arms to terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq. In February, the couple, Ramiz Zijad Hodzic and Sedina Unkic Hodzic, pleaded not guilty in federal court in St. Louis.
They were among six Bosnian immigrants living in Missouri, Illinois and New York who were charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate. The Justice Department accused the couple of using Facebook, PayPal, Western Union and the U.S. Postal Service to coordinate the shipping of money and military equipment.
6. Machine Gun for Travel
In a case of three men prosecutors say were plotting to help the Islamic State, a Kazakhstani immigrant with lawful permanent resident status, Akhror Saidakhmetov, allegedly planned to buy a machine gun to shoot FBI and other law enforcement agents if they tried to prevent him from traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State.
He allegedly conspired with two citizens of Uzbekistan, Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev and Abror Habibov. Federal prosecutors said the three men pledged their allegiance to the Islamic State on Internet forums.
7. Propane Tank Bomb Plot
A Saudi Arabian immigrant with U.S. citizenship allegedly swore allegiance to the Islamic State and allegedly planned to explode a propane tank bomb in the United States, according to prosecutors.
During a sting operation at the home of Noelle Velentzas, 27, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, in New York, officers found three gas tanks, a pressure cooker, fertilizer, handwritten notes on recipes for bomb making and jihadist literature.
Siddiqui was born in Saudi Arabia but had U.S. citizenship. Federal prosecutors said she had a close relationship with Samir Khan, an American who actually became an al Qaeda leader in Yemen.
8. University and Court House
In April, El Mehdi Semlali Fathi, a Moroccan national who had come to the United States on student visa, which had since expired, was charged in Bridgeport, Connecticut, with plotting to blow up buildings at an unnamed university outside the state of Connecticut and a federal courthouse in Connecticut.
The FBI secretly recorded him talking about pliers, a cutter and wires in his home that he said were the materials for a bomb.
“Fathi stated in the recording that he would use airplanes, possibly toy planes to execute the bombing,” Special Agent Anabela Sharp said, according to ABC News. “Specifically, Fathi stated that he was going to use a plane, a remote-controlled hobby-type airplane, to deliver the bomb.”
9. Lying to the FBI
An Iraqi immigrant, Bilal Abood, who received U.S. citizenship, was arrested in May in Texas by the FBI for lying to federal agents about pledging allegiance to the Islamic State and his travels to Syria.
The FBI examined his computer and found that in June he wrote on Twitter, “I pledge obedience to the Caliphate Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”
10. Raising Funds to Join the Islamic State
An Uzbek man in New York, Dilkhayot Kasimov, was charged in April with trying to encourage other Uzbekis to engage in terrorism and to raise money for terrorist groups abroad.
A government informant said that Kasimov sought to encourage others to join the Islamic State, and others involved purchased tickets to travel to Turkey. From there, they planned to slip into Syria and enlist, according to prosecutors. They raised $1,600 from several people.
@Steve Thomas
“When you consider intelligence failures preceded both World Trade attacks, the other 9/11 attacks, multiple attacks abroad, and the Boston bombing, doubting our government’s ability to ‘vet’ and monitor these people once they are on US soil, is not an unreasonable position to hold.”
Intelligence failures are the core of many of our problems. Intelligence missed the events mentioned above, and provided terrible guidance prior to the Iraq War. Hearing Democrats drone on about Bush’s blunder by intervening in Iraq, then saying they support Hillary, has become very tiring. Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, John Kerry, Harry Reid and the other of the 29 Democrats in the Senate who voted for the Iraq War resolution in 2002 (58% of the 50 Democrats in the Senate at the time) all saw the same erroneous intelligence about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s intentions and came to the conclusion that intervention was in the national security interests of the United States.
I dismiss claims by Obama and Sanders that they knew better than anyone else about what was actually going on in Iraq. Their “no” votes on the resolution, which turned out in fact to be correct, were based on their broader philosophy of U.S. non-intervention around the world rather than any superior insight into the Iraq situation. They are like the roulette wheel gambler who always bets red. They will be right about half of the time just by luck.
Claiming a conspiracy existed in the intelligence community to doctor the analysis to give George W. Bush what he wanted is quite disingenuous. The Director of Central Intelligence at the time, and the point man on the Iraq intelligence, was George Tenet. Tenet had held the position since July 1997 after being nominated by President Clinton. Hardly a Republican stooge.
A couple of lessons come out of this. First, if you dislike Bush because of the Iraq War, you must include Hillary in the same category. She saw the same intelligence and came to the same conclusion. Second, intelligence failures are bi-partisan and we need to be wary anytime the government is telling us Saddam has weapons of mass destruction or that they can effectively sort out all of the legitimate Syrian refugees from the embedded ISIS terrorists.
“I dismiss claims by Obama and Sanders that they knew better than anyone else about what was actually going on in Iraq. Their “no” votes on the resolution, which turned out in fact to be correct, were based on their broader philosophy of U.S. non-intervention around the world rather than any superior insight into the Iraq situation.”
Obama cast a “No” for the Iraq War? I didn’t know the Illinois Senate actually voted to go to war in Iraq?
As to your broader points, I do agree. R’s and D’s may hold elected office, but elections rarely change the “apparatus”. You can change the paint-job, add some things, but that doesn’t change the make and model of the car.
@Steve Thomas
Sorry, I should have said “opposed” rather than voted. He makes a big deal about having opposed the resolution at the time. You are correct that Obama was in the Illinois Senate at the time and did not see the intelligence. However, that reinforces the point that his views were based on ideology rather than facts. It’s a busy day and I tried to knock that comment out quickly.
Here’s another example of why those saying “Hold on a minute….let’s not rush into this refugee thing too quickly” are just a bunch of paranoid Islamaphobic racists with no compassion: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3322649/The-enemy-Nearly-SEVENTY-arrested-America-ISIS-plots-include-refugees-given-safe-haven-turned-terror.html
I mean, we need to be “reasonable”, and we have to do “SOMETHING”…wait…what’s that? Charlie Sheen is HIV positive? That’s TERRIBLE….now what was all that about refugees? Oh yeah…we need to SOMETHING!
I- Ignorance (keep the public as ignorant as possible regarding what is really going on)
D- Distraction (if they start to catch on, distract them with sensational, yet meaningless stories)
G-Guilt (If that doesn’t work, accuse them of lacking compassion, shame them with claims “its for the children, and if all else fails, call them a racist.
I’ll credit Hillary for making a decision based on facts, even if those “facts” turned out later to be wrong and led her and the others who supported the war at the time to make a bad decision.
@Maximus Meridius
Maximus,
No foul. I’ve heard Obama say he opposed the Iraq War himself, and the voters were/are none the wiser. Of course, that didn’t stop him from his own efforts at “regime change”, in Egypt, Libya, and Syria…and look how well that’s been working. Take a look at those two posts above that contain stories of refugees and recent naturalized citizens engaging in terrorist activities, and note that there are a couple of former nationalities conspicuously absent…Iraqi and Afghani. Wonder why that is?
I see Hillary as the ultimate political opportunist, always calculating what the “popular” thing would be.
@Steve Thomas
My main point regarding laying of blame for the Iraq War decisions is the inconsistency between Democrats blaming all of the current problems in the Middle East on George Bush’s “blunder” of invading Iraq and then posing Hillary as a foreign policy genius. Obama has blamed Bush since day one for everything that goes wrong for him. Nonetheless, he selected Hillary Clinton, who supported Bush’s Iraq policy, as his Secretary of State. Obama’s position is intellectually dishonest and unsustainable by the facts. Either Bush and the 29 Democratic senators, including Hillary, who supported the Resolution all made a mistake based on bad intelligence, or Hillary should be viewed as equally as incompetent as Obama paints Bush. As Steve’s other posts illustrate clearly, Obama’s record of foreign policy blunders overshadows the Bush Administration’s.
@Maximus Meridius
Agree with your analysis.
Bad decisions tend to compound. Which is why we, when faced with this wave of refugees, should proceed with an abundance of caution, or not at all. As we used to say in the Corp: “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.” If our intelligence was flawed then, it is nonexistent now.
How many refugees are the Russians taking?
@Steve Thomas
“How many refugees are the Russians taking?”
None, of which I am aware. Add to that list Iran, most other Arab and Muslim nations, China, or I suppose I need to go through most of the roster of U.N. members here. Obama has been saying that it’s not the job of the U.S. to intervene in the situation. He says it’s the job of the other Middle East nations. If so, it’s also their job to deal with the refugee situation. Again, intellectual dishonesty and inconsistency compounding on intellectual dishonesty and inconsistency.
European citizens planned and executed the Paris attacks, not refugees.
“We respect our mothers, our sisters and daughters. Fighting brutality against women and children is not the expression of a specific culture; it is the acceptance of our common humanity — a commitment shared by people of goodwill on every continent.
These words were spoken by first lady Laura Bush, 14 years ago this week at the outset of the invasion in Afghanistan.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/11/18/so-much-for-the-west-saving-muslim-women-from-terrorism/
Those calling for slamming the door on women and children fleeing tyrants should recall the words of First Lady Bush from not so many years ago.
@Starryflights
“European citizens planned and executed the Paris attacks, not refugees.”
[sighs]…”refugees” or other legitimate asylum seekers are not the threat. ISIS terrorists infiltrating the west POSING as refugees is.
And just to screw up your chi…How do you think Western Europe (and to a lesser degree, Canada, the US, and Australia) ended up with so many radicalized Muslims, most of which are either naturalized or 1st-generation citizens of the countries within which they are conducting terrorist actions? It’s because of the “pie-in-the-sky” thinking of elitist-eggheads who think they have all the answers, and are later shown to be products of the rookery of foolishness. They were faced with a declining birth-rate, and needed liberal immigration policies to ensure a population capable of supporting a society based on socialism, and now are facing the consequences of this short-sighted thinking.
@Starryflights
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/11/18/syrians-with-stolen-passports-caught-before-trying-to-enter-us-police-say/
@Steve Thomas
Police in Honduras caught five Syrians with stolen passports who were trying to make their way to the United States, a police spokesman in Tegucigalpa told Reuters Wednesday.
The Syrians had no apparent link to the attackers in Paris, police said. The stolen passports were reportedly Greek.
At least one suspect in Friday’s massacre had reportedly entered Europe with a fake Syrian passport.
The suspects in Honduras were in police custody. They were trying to arrive in the U.S. by land, presumably by traveling through Mexico, the spokesman added.
Now why would Syrians be caught in Honduras with stolen Greek passports, trying to enter the US illegally?
How do you enter the United States from Honduras?
@Moon-howler
“How do you enter the United States from Honduras?”
The same way so many Hondurans other central Americans illegally enter the US: travel to Mexico. Hire a Coyote. Cross the border.
I find it odd that Honduran authorities would know they were headed to the United States. They sure don’t seem to know much of anything else.
R
I regret to inform you that altruism is often not the basis for presidential decision making. There is always a political dimension to their choices.
And rarely do we have a case that illustrates this more clearly than the issue of taking in Syrian refugees. It certainly is not in the best interest of national security to bring them in. James Comey, the Director of the FBI, says the FBI database does not have enough information to properly vet potential refugees. Numerous democrats have asked Obama to consider a pause in accepting refugees. Alternatives that reduce the security risk such as air dropping supplies or creating a no-fly zone have been rejected. These facts suggest that there is another motivation that makes him so hell-bent on bringing in these refugees.
My hypothesis is that his motivation is to “transform” the electorate through massive immigration/influx of refugees. I cannot prove this, but there are facts that support this idea. We know that minorities overwhelmingly support the Democrats; we know that people receiving government assistance tend to support democratic candidates; we know that those whose religion is other than Christianity and Judaism support Democrats; finally, we know that naturalized Asian Americans overwhelmingly support Democrats. Most of the Syrian refugees fall in some, if not all, of these categories.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/01/the_republican_party_s_tough_immigration_policies_are_encouraging_immigrants.html
I had to look all this up, but Obama’s political staff would be keenly aware of these voting trends. As he nears the end of his presidency, it would greatly improve his legacy to win back some of the House and Senate seats that were lost during his Administration. These refugees are likely to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and could easily alter future elections in purple states.
Chicken/egg
Why do minorities tend to support democrats rather than republicans? Listen to Donald Trump or Ted Cruz for about 5 minutes to get your answer. Most people don’t vote for people in a party who diminish them. It’s pretty much the reason I switched.
@Steve Thomas Isis terrorists posed as refugees to infiltrate France, even though these terrorists are French citizens, carry French passports and can come and go at will. Your theory makes no sense.
The threat of home-grown citizens becoming radicalized and joining Isis is very real and should not be downplayed. They should be distinguished from refugees who are mostly women and children seeking asylum. Americans should be willing to host refugees in a way that we weren’t towards Jews fleeing the Nazis in the 1930s.
ISIS said that they will infiltrate jihadi terrorists via the refugee migration. Not wise to toss that off as an idle boast. It looks like we have seen at least one and possibly two of those in the Paris attacks. Who here can assure us that there are no more in place or in the pipeline?
You never count on anything in the terrorism business. I can tell you from direct experience that these killer bastards can often be like “zombies.” Even though you are confident that you have things well in hand, they often come back at you. You never make the mistake of saying that the game is over until you know for sure that it is.
@Starry flights
If it’s actually happening, it isn’t a theory: the AP reported yesterday that two Syrian individuals were apprehended in Honduras. They were traveling in forged Greek passports. The authorities reported that the two planned to enter the US illegally via the southern border.
Also, yesterday I posted two articles in this thread. You should read them. Look at the number of individuals who have come to the US as “refugees” and were later charged of convicted of terror-related activities. There was even a Sudanese “refugee” who was living in Manassas sentenced to federal prison for working for and with ISIS.
Terrorists never use the refugee resettlement program to infiltrate the US, and the government performs a complete vetting. These are mostly widows and orphans and those who are making noise are just heartless nativists lacking compassion: http://abcnews.go.com/International/terrorists-refugee-program-settle-us/story?id=35252500
My sense is that Kelly is mistaken that immigrant populations tend to align themselves politically with liberal Democratic causes or thinking. The two most widely despised recent immigrant groups, Hispanics and Muslims, have a lot of cultural traits that make them natural conservatives (as we use these terms in modern American political parlance, albeit quite sloppily). They tend to be religious, have very strong family values, are wedded to cultural traditions of long standing, and have had, in a great many cases, traumatic exposures to abuses of government excess.
I have no idea where Kelly’s notion comes from that “those whose religion is other than Christianity or Judaism support Democrats.” It would be at least as valid to say that “Christians and Jews tend to support Democrats” The fact is that political allegiances in America do not break on religious lines.
@Scout
I looked up voting trends from several different research papers and polls. These are not notions, but rather are statistics. There is indeed a paper that broke out voting patterns in the US by religion and showed statistics separately for Judaism, Christianity, and “other”. You are welcome to search for statistics that contradict what I found, but please stick to facts, not some breezy set of assertions.
“Other” covers a lot of turf, including antheists and agnostics.
@Moon-howler
Fine. I expected that you would not agree.
Here’s the thing. Everyone recognizes the plight and suffering of the refugees. But do you not recognize the security risk of allowing refugees, which ISIS has pledged to infiltrate, to come in the US? If you do recognize the risk, how do you justify placing greater emphasis on the welfare of the refugees than the safety and security of American citizens, especially when there are alternatives?
The alternative that I would recommend would be for the UN to establish safe zones within Syria for refugees. Granted this involves boots on the ground, but that is much better than risking an act of terror that could result in hundreds of US civilian casualties.
Those people have just risked life and limb getting away from Syria. I feel that’s a naïve suggestion.
Of course I realize that there is a risk just putting people in the general population without follow up or screening. I am not stupid nor do I live in a cave.
You are aware that ISIS is already here?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/isis-suspects/?hpid=hp_no-name_graphic-story-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Congress should be talking about a safe environment for refugees, not how to shut them out completely. As citizens of the world, we need to be involved. It’s really not stepping up to the plate if you close your doors when the crisis is ongoing.
There are all sorts of things that can be done including the reservation notion. No, it isn’t great but it beats dying in a ditch from the elements or starvation.
@Scout
Scout,
I would agree that the broad brush doesn’t always cover. Cubans have tended to vote Republican in Florida. But looking at “cultural traits” rather than socioeconomic ones doesn’t really bear out. Look at the African-American community. Culturally, they tend to be socially more conservative, but as a group have voted Democrat. There are generational aspects too. 50 years ago, African-Americans were overwhelmingly Republican, shifting more Democrat ever since.
Southern Democrats also became Republicans right about the same time.
Some of the most intelligent people rationalize some of the worst behaviors towards others based on the notion of “security” and trying to keep a nation “safe” when really they are driven by their fears. As an American I have faith in our country to deal with an influx of refugees in a competent manner. As a spiritual person I have faith that if I die tomorrow in a terrorist attack at my grocery store it is not the end of my world or the people’s around me. The same people who fear refugees don’t think anything of driving down 66 or 95, sometimes over the posted speed limit, which is statistically so much more dangerous. I find that incredible, but have to chalk it up to the inability of the human mind to process very small or very large probabilities.
I keep hearing about the risk of just one terrorist gaining entry. I wish those same congressmen were as vigilante about just one freaking nut case getting their hands on a semi automatic rifle.
Starry is right also about the visa problem. Congress needs to fix it.
Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian refugee
The destruction of Syria due to a civil war conflict and the rise of ISIS has led to an impassioned debate as to whether the United States should act as a world leader by allowing Syrian refugees to immigrate into the country. All the usual arguments are being made by political conservatives against such a move: What if they’re untrustable? What if they’re incompatible with our way of life? What if they take our jobs? But perhaps the more relevant question may be this: what if one of them ends up fathering the guy who creates Apple? Because that’s precisely what happened the last time we allowed Syrian refugees into the country.
Few people are aware of this because he had the name and physical appearance of a white man, but Steve Jobs was half Syrian. His father, Abdulfattah Jandali, fled to America in 1954 as a political refugee. He worked hard. He drove a taxi. He fell in love with an American woman. She got pregnant. Her conservative father forced them to break up, and the baby was given up. It’s why Steve Jobs was raised by adoptive parents, and why his last name is Jobs instead of Jandali. But he was very much the son of an Arab refugee.
The story of Steve Jobs and his father is a striking reminder of two things. Most immigrants who come to America end up contributing to our society in ways big and small, some bigger than others. And the only real villains in such stories are the conservatives who allow racist paranoia to cause them to act out against immigrants in ways which are simply un-American.
http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/steve-jobs-was-the-son-of-a-syrian-refugee/23033/
Those of you reading this on your Apple device can thank the son of a Syrian refuge.
Thanks for sharing, Starry.
@Moon-howler
I am not wrong. There are some legitimate refugees. But the ones making out of Turkey are not those. They are majority military aged men.
You don’t have to fake being Christian. Just look for those that are being attacked by the rest of the Muslim “refugees.”
@Starryflights
No one cares about the ancestry of Jobs. In 1954, the Muslim world had not yet gone insane. It is not the nation from which they come. It is the ideology and the statement by the enemy that they ARE sending terrorists via refugees.
If I had 1000 M&Ms….and I poisoned just one……would you eat a handful?
That’s getting a little old. You are aware that ISIS is here, in the US, as we speak?
If I had one psychotic killer, would you still allow everyone to buy guns?
I have not see Christians attacked by the muslim refugees. In fact, I can’t tell what the religion is of a lot of them.
I don’t think you can prove your assertions.
Steve Jobs had a father who was a Syrian immigrant in 1954? What does that have to do with anything in 2015? Talk about some media joker leaving the reservation!
Take a look at the biography of Steve Jobs’ Syrian birth father, John Jandali; and you will hardly find someone who qualifies as a 1954 “political refugee”……..much less any equivalency whatsoever to the current refugee problem. I swear, some of these so-called “journalists” ought to have their licenses revoked— if there were licenses.
How so? What makes John Jandali different from todays Syrians?
Yes, indeed, it would seem from recent FBI statements that we already do have ISIS in America — certainly lone wolves or perhaps small groups through radical influence via the web and possibly the even more dangerous thing in the form of sleeper cells. Makes no sense, then, to risk bringing in more of them via a war refugee vetting system which is very, very flawed, to the point of being too often a mere flip of the coin.
Wolve, I have already stated from the git go that I have mixed emotions over this issue. On the one hand, we need to clearly distinguish between war refugees and ISIS terrorists. I understand that lines can become blurred, which is the reason that I have mixed feelngs.
I don’t think one terrorist is going to destroy America any more than I think one crazed lunatic with an AK-47 and 200 rounds is going to destroy America. Both can be stopped. I do with we paid as much attention to stopping the American crazed lunatic as we do to stopping the terrorist. Truthfully, I don’t see the difference. Dead is dead. Terror can come from within.
I think you don’t know a darned thing about terrorists or terrorism. To somehow equate concern for the physical safety of one’s compatriots with being “driven by fears” is to denigrate the intentions and performance of everyone who has the job of standing as your protector against those who would do harm to you and yours.
@Steve: African Americans voted Republican when we were the Party of Lincoln. In my early days of association with the Republican Party, we were quite clearly identified among ourselves and in the African American community as the Party that had the most sympathy for the burdens and inequality imposed on the Black community. That we lost the African American vote is a direct result of our allowing the Dixiecrat wing of the old Democratic Party not only to call themselves Republicans, but to treat them as if they were welcome. Had that not happened, most African Americans would still vote Republican.
@ Kelly – it’s purely anecdotal, but most Democrats I know or know about are Christians. I think it’s utter nonsense to assume that Hispanics or Muslims are natural Democrats or natural liberals. However, if I were a Hispanic or Muslim voter, whether native born or immigrant, I’d be very wary of voting for anyone in a Party that seems to tolerate as much negative rhetoric about “my kind” as does the present Republican apparatus.
Good point. I have always felt like this country and culture now has an overabundance of homegrown or imported whacked out nuts who commit all sorts of mayhem, much of it murderous. We have work to do, if we can ever get off our collective behinds and ignore the NFL and the Kardashians long enough to do it.
So, I ask, why are we even discussing possibly importing even more of that without demanding the strictest of protective security conditions —and I mean real conditions, not the political bs we are seeing from some quarters? That attitude is not “anti-refugee.” It is pro-keeping Americans alive. My thoughts at times while still in harness were that those who claimed we were only “fear mongering” when advising precautions should not bother to call us when the crud hit their personal fan. But, then, we always went anyway…..sometimes too late to help, unfortunately, because the killers cannot always be stopped.
His father was a self-made millionaire in Syria. John went to school at the American University of Beirut at a time when Beirut was still the Paris of the Levant. He called those 3.5 years the happiest of his life. He was a student activist for Pan-Arabism, which was hardly a cause for fear of repression.
After graduation from AU of Beirut, John told his father he wanted to study law. But his father, a real family boss, told him that there were already too many lawyers in Damascus and that John should study something else. So John went off to Columbia in NYC for a year and then to the University of Wisconsin to pick up an MA and PhD in…heck, I think poly sci or something. Wisconsin is where he met and impregnated Steve Jobs’ American (German heritage) birth mother. As far as I can understand it, neither family favored a Muslim-Christian marriage; so Steve was given away to adoptive parents. Steve never met John Jandali until years later, when the birth father was living in Sacramento.
That might be the stuff of a soap opera script; but I wouldn’t say that it sounds like a refugee leaving Syria in 1954 with the ISIS butchers hot on his tail. Some of these so-called “journalists” these days beat their drums with any crappy old connections in order to enhance their cases.
I guess the Syrians who are escaping nowadays might have been wealthy also. Some of them at least appear to be middle class, although our welcome mat shouldn’t have anything to do with affluence.
I still, especially after listening to all the political rhetoric on Cspan this morning, like the victims are being further punished.
@Wolve
I am not trying to denigrate people who are trying to protect us, in fact I trust them to do their job. I do not believe that keeping out all refugees as a way to protect us is not a reasonable response. I believe it is a knee-jerk fearful one, where people are so at a loss to try to control something that scares them that they turn to idiotic solutions like that. People hate feeling out of control, don’t they?
Was it a knee-jerk reaction when Obama halted the Iraqi Refugee program for 6 months, after it was discovered that two individuals who were settled in KY had committed acts of terror in Iraq, prior to being permitted to come into the U.S. or was that being prudent in the face of a possible threat?
http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/18/the-obama-administration-stopped-processing-iraq-refugee-requests-for-6-months-in-2011/
@steve Thomas. Yes it was a knee jerk reaction and I think Obama was wrong.
Fair enough. So it was wrong to halt the program for review after discovering two men, responsible for killing and injuring countless US servicemen and innocent Iraqi civilians with IEDs where brought to US soil, and settled amongst the citizenry? And they were arrested in the US while trying to obtain and export stinger missiles and other weapons to Al Queda in Iraq, to continue their terror activities, but halting the program was wrong, in your judgement? Just want to be clear on this.