The Syrian refugee crisis has forced many countries to accept them based on humanitarian grounds. President Obama made many rounds in prime time television stating that accepting refugees is who we are and rejecting is ‘not who we are’. Countering that argument is that these refugees from Muslim countries cannot be vetted properly and hence pose a grave risk for security of Americans in America.
In order to make it acceptable, the argument for accepting refugees say “there are home grown terrorists such as Timothy McVeigh who were not radicalized and were able to become native born terrorist. Recent Orlando incident in the Pulse night club is supposed to be prime example of home grown terrorism and therefore, singling out Syrian refugees is biased and being racist.
Let’s look at the above argument a bit closely. Once you figure out the flaw in that argument, the examples fail completely.
First, the argument does not provide any basis to say the Syrian refugees won’t be terrorists. All it says is since there are home grown terrorists, we need to accept foreign terrorists and what difference does it make, in the words of Hillary Clinton. Let’s look at another similar example. If one of our family members stole some money from us, would we think, let’s accept a stranger stealing from us since our own family did that. Our counter argument would be that just because one of our family members committed a crime, there is no justification in allowing another person to commit similar crime. Just because our son met with an accident due to reckless driving, doesn’t mean we need to condone someone else’s reckless driving. By that logic, we cannot prosecute or prevent any crime at all.
Same goes to foreign terrorist to be allowed into USA. Well, since no one knows who is a terrorist coming in, how do we presume and ban them? The same thought goes both ways. Since we don’t know, why would we allow them to come in, especially the terrorist organization has claimed already they are going to infiltrate?
When it comes to home grown terrorism, we don’t have a choice but to endure criminal acts committed by citizens. However, we have a choice in letting people in to the country, from the areas where terrorism is a breeding ground. A temporary ban of all refugees is warranted as Mr. Trump called for and it is wise to support such a call for safety and security of all Americans.
