When it seemed that one of the Paris bombers was carrying a Syrian refugee passport, many conservatives in the U.S. called for a halt to allowing Syrians into the country. However, France and international authorities now agree that this passport was a fake (especially since the “same” passport was used at a border just a few days ago.) It is unknown whether the suicide bomber had actually used the fake passport to enter France, or if he just had it on him so it could be “discovered” upon his death, but either way, we know he wasn’t a Syrian refugee himself.
ISIS’ goals are to establish themselves as the recognized Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Yet as they’ve been gaining ground in Syria, millions of Syrians have attempted to leave the country. For ISIS to have any power (and people to rule), they have to stop the mass migration. ISIS’ current plans therefore hinge on convincing other countries to stop accepting Syrian refugees.
France understands this – one of the first actions of President Hollande after the attack on his country was to increase the number of Syrian refugees France would accept from 24,000 to 30,000. He gets that the more Syrian refugees the world takes in, the weaker ISIS becomes.
But couldn’t a terrorist pretend to be a refugee and ride the wave? Possible, but very, very unlikely. A person can’t just call themselves a “refugee” and be granted access into our country; the U.S. actually has one of the strictest and most exclusive refugee acceptance programs in the world. If coming from Syria, the process takes 2-3 years and a great deal of research and security clearance checks by the FBI, Homeland Security, the State Department, and the Department of Defense, in addition to approval from the U.N. Only a small percentage of applicants are accepted, and half of those are children.
Because of this fact, it would make absolutely no sense for an ISIS terrorist to try and enter the U.S. through our refugee program. Why would you wait three years for a process that had so little chance of success? Even if you did want to falsely claim refugee status and could pass the initial U.N. background check, you could much more easily apply as a refugee in one of the European countries that can finish the process in months, not years, and then simply fly over to the U.S. on a legal visa. So our refusal to accept refugees through our rigorous screening process really only means that we’re rejecting families who have the absolute lowest possible likelihood of being extremists.
The smart move in dealing with terrorists is to figure out what they want us to do, and then do exactly the opposite. Since ISIS clearly wants to stop nations from accepting Syrian refugees, why would we want our national policy to play into their hands? The knee-jerk reactions of Trump, Jindal, and others are undoubtedly being celebrated by ISIS. Despite the rhetoric, Republican governors and congressmen have now become, quite literally, the puppets of Islamic terrorists.