Immigration. Refugees. It's two of the most controversial topics in the United States right now, as President Donald Trump goes to court to defend a series of executive orders seeking to halt refugees and immigrants from coming from seven Muslim-majority countries. With all the confusion and "alternative facts" floating around, I thought I would look into the refugee screening process and the immigration executive orders and set the record straight. I make the argument that these executive orders, rather than making the country safer from outside threats like terrorism, actually puts our country more at risk.
Starting with the refugee screening process, the United States has one of the most strict refugee screening processes in the world. After undergoing preliminary screening, asylum cases first arrive for initial processing by one of the State Department's nine Resettlement Support Centers (RSCs). The RSCs do additional background checks and collect more information. Then, multiple United States security or intelligence organizations (such as the Department of Homeland Security) review the RSC case info when conducting multiple interviews and even further screening for any red flags. This includes biometric testing, cultural testing, and more. Considering all the resources the United States has at is disposal, including help from allied country intelligence organizations, it is extremely rare that anything serious will be missed by the screening process. All in all, this process takes roughly 12-24 months. (For further details, see the links below.)
So, to give some further perspective, the chances of being killed by a refugee in a terrorist attack amount roughly to a 1 in 3.6 billion chance/year. This implies that the bigger danger perhaps would come from so-called "home-grown" terrorists, or United States citizens that are radicalized. The measures that President Trump is putting into place, including an indefinite ban on acceptance of Syrian refugees and a temporary ban on people coming from seven Muslim majority countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen), minus those that are United States permanent residents, might not actually make the country safer than it already is.
The toxic anti-immigrant and refugee rhetoric during the 2016 presidential election and these restrictive (perhaps isolationist) immigration and refugee policies goes contrary to our country's very foundations in being welcoming towards immigrants and others escaping persecution. Also, these policies only serve to feed into the narratives of terrorist groups like ISIS use to recruit further members. Lastly, while these measures are being debated on their legality, there is the potential for these measures, meant to provide security, lead us onto a slippery slope where the rights of some groups are trampled on for the short-term benefit of the others.
And that, that is not democratic. It's not who we are as a country.
https://www.state.gov/j/prm/ra/admissions
Infographic, resettlement process (State Department)
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/30/politics/immigration-stats-by-the-numbers-trnd/ (Immigration/Refugee Stats)
No comments:
Post a Comment