What is the refugee crisis teaching us about ourselves as people and a country?
There’s an old quote, often attributed to Winston Churchill, among others, that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Perhaps a more accurate version comes in a cartoon recently distributed. The caption: “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Yet those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.”
Such is the case as we watch the refugee crisis unfolding in Syria and neighboring countries. After decades of western intervention, the region is a mess. The US war on Iraq launched groups like ISIS on the world and it seems all of the major world powers are fighting on just about every side of the ongoing Syrian civil war.
That conflict has created some four million refugees. The responses we’ve seen from much of the world, and from parts of the US, contrast starkly with that of a segment of the American right.
Germany has agreed accepted almost a quarter of a million asylum seekers from Syria, a response so generous that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was considered for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Almost 45,000 have already been granted asylum.
But on a per capita basis, Sweden and Denmark have been even more generous. And France, even after recent terrorist attacks on the country, is planning to accept 30,000 over the next two years.
In comparison, the US response has been minimal. Fewer than 2,000 have been granted asylum this year. As refugee organizations put forward the number 65,000 as the target Americans should shoot for, the Democratic candidates discussed whether and how we could take in that number and the importance of vetting them before they enter.
And while nothing is foolproof, the vetting process already in place is substantial. It takes multiple stages and anywhere from one to three years before refugees are even admitted into the country. (Go to factcheck.org for a brief description of the process.)
Indeed, the risk of admitting refugees, while not zero, is minimal. Most are women and children, and they are by and large fleeing the extremist organizations wreaking havoc on the region, not part of them. Of the nearly 800,000 refugees admitted since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a total of three have been arrested on terrorism charges.
So far, President Obama has been conservative, only agreeing to allow 10,000 refugees.
But even that number is generating pushback from the right. Already governors of 30 states, almost all of them Republicans, are saying they don’t want the refugees. Some are even saying they’ll refuse them entry, an action for which they have no constitutional authority.
The mayor of Roanoke, VA has gone so far as to positively invoke one of the worst moments of American history, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II as justification for refusing refugees.
The World War II reference proved prophetic as Republican presidential candidates are falling over themselves to repeat the mistakes of that era. Virtually all of them oppose settling refugees in the US, a position foreign policy experts say is providing a great recruiting tool for ISIS.
Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz propose only allowing Christian refugees, a discriminatory position that likely violates our constitution.
Others cite unknown risks, for which they provide no evidence. A couple go further. Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, eager to show their Christian compassion, openly accuse the refugees of being terrorists.
Then there’s Donald Trump who never found an issue he couldn’t demagogue. Like his plans to build a wall along the border and make Mexico pay for it, he states that even if President Obama allows in refugees, he’ll send them back. How he’d do that, legally or logistically, he does not state, just as he doesn’t state how he’d accomplish any of his proposals.
Then, Trump goes further, suggesting that we shut down mosques, build a database to track American Muslims and opening the door to mandatory identification cards and registration based on religion.
The parallels with Nazi Germany are as obvious as they are scary. This has been noted by Americans of a variety of backgrounds, including Jews who experienced this firsthand. It has also been noted that as many as two thirds of Americans opposed allowing increased Jewish immigration as the holocaust was unfolding. Those refugees included Albert Einstein, who did come to the US, and Anne Frank, who wasn’t permitted to.
What makes it worse this time is that most Americans polled then didn’t know the extent of Nazi barbarity. We know the crisis taking place in Syria and what’s more, much of it is of our own making.
Yet too many of us just don’t care.
—Another version of this piece appears in the Porterville Recorder on November 25th, 2015.
Image: takver/flickr