In a humorous take on the mean spirited attitudes displayed by many in the GOP and their supporters, Susie Day, a regular commentator on the Monthly Review blog, wrote a satirical piece on the sudden outbreak of what she calls HEV or Human Ego-deficiency Virus, which seems to have infected the German public and policy makers who’ve already taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and is expecting over 800,000 asylum seekers to enter the country this year alone. Day sardonically remarks, "What the hell, Deutschland? Once, you wanted to take over the world; now you want to take IN the world?”
But seriously folks, this election cycle in the US is now seen by the usual suspects as an opportunity to stir up hate and jingoism ironically against those who are themselves victims of the very terrorism that we ourselves fear and who are fleeing as a result. It is very clear that Germany is doing the heavy lifting on the solution to the refugee crisis so why is Obama getting all this flak over a proposed 10,000 asylum seekers? According to the NYT, White House Press Secretary Josh Ernest has stated that Obama "...would not allow any lessening in the intense background and medical checks that can take as much as two years to complete.” But despite this fact, a barrage of brainless paranoia and racist hate is emanating from GOP candidates and others just as the election campaign for 2016 is picking up more steam. Peter King, the New York House Rep who, along with Michelle Bachmann, wanted to hold an outrageous investigation into Obama’s alleged plot to impose Sharia Law on the United States during Obama’s first term, has now responded to Obama’s asylum proposal by saying, “Our enemy now is Islamic terrorism, and these people are coming from a country filled with Islamic terrorists...We don’t want another Boston Marathon bombing situation.”
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
But the real venom has come from the actual GOP candidates themselves. According to a recent Slate article, Jim Newell recounts some of the hateful madness which deserves to be quoted at length;
What the candidates were in near unanimity about was the need to stop President Obama’s plan to resettle an additional 10,000 refugees over the next year. Though Donald Trump earned some mockery in early October when he suggested that Syrian refugees could represent an ISIS “Trojan Horse,” such a view has quickly come to dominate the Republican field. Cruz and Bush represent different factions of the party but agree that only Christians displaced by the conflict should be allowed to resettle in the United States. Ben Carson called the administration’s decision to accept the refugees a “suspension of intellect.” Sen. Rand Paul said that he wouldn’t have “invite[d] the refugees in the first place.” Sen. Marco Rubio: also not big on accepting refugees.
Newell further points out that fourteen governors (thirteen of them Republicans) vowed to refuse admittance of any Syrian refugees to their states (which they are not constitutionally authorized to do) and many GOP candidates including Carson called for defunding any federal program that uses funds to settle asylum seekers from Syria in the US. Democrats, on the other hand, seem to favor admitting Syrian refugees by a margin of seven to one.
The Republican hysteria seems highly misplaced as the vetting process for asylum seekers in the US is one of the most rigorous in the world. A McClatchy report describes the screening process for refugees in detail beginning with the necessity of a referral from the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) which has recently submitted a list of 18,000 names to the US Department of State for consideration. The report details the screening process;
The State Department says Syrian refugees are subjected to the most intensive screening of any group, given the murkiness of the civil war they’re fleeing. Unlike in Iraq, where U.S. officials had access to the former government’s files and their own intelligence records, such background materials are much scarcer for Syria. Most details about the Syrian screening process are classified. In general, cases begin with a referral from the U.N. office in the country where the applicant is living, primarily neighboring countries such as Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. Support workers then collect biographic and other information from applicants to present to officers from the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services division, who determine whether the cases meet the criteria for refugee status based on five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Once cases meet the criteria, the next step is an extensive, multiagency security screening that involves the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and other agencies. Refugees also must undergo a health screening for communicable diseases such as tuberculosis – the TB test alone can be a two-month process. And finally, there is mandatory cultural orientation, typically a three-day course about how to adapt to life in the United States.
Though refugees are eligible for some federal assistance, most aid will come from private organizations experienced in dealing with refugees issues.
According to a
CNN report, the screening process for refugees is rigorous taking up to eighteen months but in the case of Syrian refugees could take longer due to security concerns. CNN has detailed the process as such;
Several federal agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are involved in the process, which Deputy State Department Spokesman Mark Toner recently called, "the most stringent security process for anyone entering the United States."
Biographical and biometric data about applicants is used as part of the screening process to ensure that the actual identities being presented are accurate and legitimate. The CNN report also notes that a federally funded Refugee Support Center in the US vets all asylum applicants. They do this by “...gather[ing] information about the candidate to prepare for an intensive screening process, which includes an interview, a medical evaluation and an interagency security screening process aimed at ensuring the refugee does not pose a threat to the United States."
A Time for Compassion
It must be recalled that the Syrian refugees are natural enemies of ISIS and all jihadist groups which have terrorized, hounded and extorted these people and their families for the past two years. To smear them as terrorists only adds needlessly to their horrible suffering. A recent
PolitiFact report which reviewed Florida governor Jeb Bush’s remark that processing a refugee applicant into the US can take about a year confirms that, in the words of US humanitarian worker Lavinia Limon “optimistic.” According to Limon,
"The process for refugees is the most extensive security screening we have for visitors. It’s easier to come in as a tourist, a student, a businessman." She noted that in some cases up to three years to complete the process to gain legal asylum in the US is reasonable to expect for Syrian refugees. Limon stresses that months of security checks take place before an asylum candidate even enters the US by both the UN and US federal agencies.
One analyst from Amnesty International who is an expert and consultant on Syrian refugees for that organization, Gregory Mock, notes that the vetting process in the US is much tougher than it is in France whose laws oblige the government to grant citizenship to those from former colonies of the French empire. Mock believes that it is comparatively difficult for a terrorist to enter the US and is “99.9% sure” that the terrorists that entered France would never make it to the US. It is time to stop rubbing salt into the wounds of desperate refugees and do our part to relieve the global burden of accepting those fleeing terror and ultimate certain death. Compassion is the only decent policy but one which eludes so many of our Republican Party members.