Refugee Facts
Hi, everybody. I would like to let you know some facts about something that I am passionate about. The issue of the refugee crisis has been highlighted by the recent executive orders, but I think that if people had the time to investigate the actual facts, they may come away with a different way of thinking. I know that minds are so rarely changed by these sorts of posts, but I beg you to take a few minutes to read this and consider its implications.
I had the pleasure yesterday to sit with some members of a Sudanese congregation that meets at my church. These men were members of what have been come to be known as the “Lost Boys,” and most of them have been in Jacksonville for at least fifteen years and have established themselves as important members of the community, most working several jobs and going to school. All of the men that I spoke with are now American citizens, and are from what is now known as South Sudan, so they don’t have as much fear or worry about the recent travel ban.
There are so many things that they said that I wish I could share with you, but I was particularly interested in a moment when one of them shared the long, involved process that led them to the United States, beginning when they left their homes in 1987 and ending when most of them arrived here in 2000 or 2001. He went into specifics about the process of registering with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees and the many interviews and related steps that they went through before they could be resettled.
I am far from an expert on this subject, but I have had the privilege to learn a little bit about it in the last few years. I attended a community meeting where a representative from World Relief handed out a helpful flyer detailing the refugee resettlement process—it can be found here: http://worldreliefjacksonville.org/sites/default/files/page/files/RefugeeScreeningProcess.pdf. (There is a similarly helpful graphic on the UNHCR site: http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/588a14fc4). The gentlemen from World Relief walked us through the steps one by one in much greater detail than the flyer can give.
What we learned is that we already have “extreme vetting.” If you did not have to go through this process, you wouldn’t. It is rigorous, exhausting, and personally invasive. There is nothing that needs to be “looked into” or “cleared up.”
I do not consider this to be a partisan issue. I have read that people who are concerned about this now are only feigning concern as a means to discredit the current president. I can assure you that I wrote multiple letters to President Obama, UN Ambassador Power, Senators Rubio and Nelson, Congressman Crenshaw, Governor Scott, and Mayor Curry; attended a community meeting; gave my own time, money, and heart; and risked alienating friends and acquaintances with social media posts—all while President Obama was in office.
I was also interested when I came across a study by the very conservative Cato Institute called “Terrorism and Immigration: A Risk Analysis.” (https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/terrorism-immigration-risk-analysis) The study notes that there have been three murders by refugees since 1975, and twenty refugees arrested as terrorists. The murders were by Cuban refugees in the 1970s, who “were admitted before the Refugee Act of 1980 created the modern rigorous refugee-screening procedures currently in place.” The study notes that of more than 3 million refugees admitted between 1975 and 2015, 0.00062% of them were arrested as terrorists, and that “many of the refugees arrested after 9/11 were admitted as children, and in some cases there is doubt over whether their attacks even qualify as terrorism.”
The Cato report concludes thusly: “Foreign-born terrorism on U.S. soil is a low-probability event that imposes high costs on its victims despite relatively small risks and low costs on Americans as a whole. From 1975 through 2015, the average chance of dying in an attack by a foreign-born terrorist on U.S. soil was 1 in 3,609,709 a year. For 30 of those 41 years, no Americans were killed on U.S. soil in terrorist attacks caused by foreigners or immigrants. Foreign-born terrorism is a hazard to American life, liberty, and private property, but it is manageable given the huge economic benefits of immigration and the small costs of terrorism. The United States government should continue to devote resources to screening immigrants and foreigners for terrorism or other threats, but large policy changes like an immigration or tourist moratorium would impose far greater costs than benefits.”
The truth is that facts do not bear out the claims that our refugee resettlement policy is insufficient to protect us. Your opinion may vary, but I passionately believe—as a Christian, as an American, and as a human being—that we would have an obligation to protect these most vulnerable humans even if the risk was substantially higher. I hope that you may consider these facts when you think about your support or opposition to the recent changes in our national policy.
Thank you for reading this.