Three Media Lies About Syrian Refugees
They’re not refugees.
November 20, 2015
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
Thirty governors have come out against Obama’s policy of dumping Syrian migrants in their states. Some want more thorough vetting. Others have issued executive orders barring any further resettlement.
In response to these common sense measures, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton put on faces of mock moral outrage and the media is frantically spinning new lies about the migrants and national security.
But it’s time we told the truth about what is really going on and exposed their three biggest lies.
1 .The “Refugees” Are Not Fleeing Persecution, They’re Welfare Migrants
Syria is in the middle of a religious war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
But Sunni Muslims fleeing religious persecution can choose one of the many Sunni states in the region. Most Syrians have ended up in Jordan and Turkey, which are both Sunni countries. The Sunni Muslim countries are certainly not persecuting their fellow Sunnis. And neither country is run by ISIS.
Likewise Shiite Muslims can find sanctuary in Shiite Iran or parts of Lebanon.
The only authentic refugees are Christians and Yazidis who do not have a country to call their own in the region. Only these non-Muslim peoples can be considered refugees fleeing religious persecution.
Sunni Muslims stopped being persecuted refugees the moment they set foot in Jordan or Turkey. Talk of resettling them in the United States or Europe has nothing to do with “persecution.” It’s economic migration. And economic migration in this case is a euphemism for welfare migration.
Muslims are not fleeing to Europe because of religious persecution, but for economic reasons. They specifically seek out countries such as Germany and Sweden with generous welfare states.
The media loves offering false analogies to Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. But the Jews were a stateless people then. They had no country of their own go to. Muslims have more countries than nearly every other religion on the planet. They choose to go to the wealthiest Western countries, rejecting Slovenia and Bulgaria for Germany and Sweden, because they want money and they want easy money.
Syrian Muslims are not refugees. They’re migrants. Only Christians and other non-Muslims are refugees.
While Muslims have easy access to UN refugee camps in Muslim countries, Christians have trouble surviving there. But by outsourcing our immigration to the UN’s refugee infrastructure, we abandon Christian refugees and instead take in Muslim welfare migrants. And that is truly shameful.
There is no reason for us to provide special privileges for Muslim economic migrants. A Gallup poll showed that 138 million people would like to move to America. We can’t even begin to accommodate a fraction of that number. We already take in far more immigrants every year than we can afford.
It’s time for our leaders to put our country and our people first.
2. Taking in “Refugees” Helps ISIS
A media meme spread after the Paris attacks is that ISIS wants us to hate “refugees”. And if we take them in, we’ll somehow be dealing ISIS a blow.
This is wrong in every way possible.
ISIS not only embeds its terrorists as refugees in Europe, but it
depends on European Muslims for recruits. Thousands of European Muslims
have already left to join ISIS. Even those Syrian migrants that may be
opposed to the group will have children that will provide a recruiting
reserve for ISIS or other groups like it. Without the refugees and
children of refugees in Europe from previous generations, ISIS might not
even have enough fighters. And the refugees make it easier for ISIS to
attack Europe.
Even those Syrians who will never support ISIS and whose children will never support it aid ISIS just by leaving the country. The large numbers of military age men are in part fleeing to avoid being drafted to fight ISIS. Potential ISIS opponents who leave Syria for permanent resettlement in Europe or America make it easier for the Islamic State to consolidate its control over the country.
Every time Europe or America takes in a military age Syrian as a refugee, they are helping ISIS by aiding deserters from the Syrian military, the Free Syrian Army and other groups that are fighting ISIS.
During WW2, we weren’t encouraging British soldiers to run away and move to America. So why are human rights activists helping ISIS by encouraging Syrian deserters to flee the fight against ISIS?
3. Vetting Syrian Migrants is Impossible
Ask a politician how the “refugees” will be vetted and he’ll start talking about the number of government agencies involved, how many months it lasts and all the different types of checks.
It sounds impressive, but it’s meaningless paperwork. Bureaucrats will move piles of paper around that say things like, “We have no information.” More “layers of screening” will mean more pieces of paper.
The only people we can effectively vet are already in our system. The passports carried by migrants are often fake. Even Syrians will carry fake passports to hide their identities. Iraqis, Afghans and even Africans have shown up claiming to be Syrians. And the Syrian refugees themselves say they can’t always tell which of them is fake. If they can’t tell, how will some government employee from Milwaukee?
We have held terrorists at Guantanamo Bay for a decade without ever learning their real names. If we can’t put a name to a single terrorist from a functioning country after a decade, how can we possibly be sure who the tens of thousands of migrants showing up from non-functioning countries are?
We can’t.
Biometric information may work for terrorists who were once in our custody, but it’ll be completely useless for terrorists that neither we nor our allies have ever encountered before.
Syria is a non-functioning state and a state sponsor of terror. We can’t rely on it and that means we have to rely on information from UNHCR. The UN refugee agency is incompetent and overloaded. Its employees are corrupt and have a history of selling refugee cards to the highest bidder.
It’s UNHCR that decides who qualifies for resettlement and any vetting we do afterward is cosmetic.
And even if we have the information that a refugee is really a terrorist, there’s no reason to think that it will get to the right people at the right time. We put the ringleader of the World Trade Center bombing back on the street even though he had a fake passport because he was applying for political asylum. We ignored warnings about the Boston Marathon bombers and some of the 9/11 hijackers.
Our system doesn’t work right much of the time. It’s why you see news stories about reporters carrying weapons past the TSA. It’s why most of the Muslim terrorist attacks in America happened.
Even if we have the right information, there is no guarantee that it would stop a terrorist.
The only way to be absolutely sure is not to allow any potential terrorists into the country. It’s a much safer bet than assuming that the same system that failed to stop the World Trade Center bombing, 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing and other terrorist attacks will work exactly when we need it to.
Migrants arriving from terror states are unsafe at any degree of vetting. Our system has failed before and will fail again. We owe it to our children and our loved ones to protect them from the next attack.
And our leaders owe it to us to stop lying about the risks of Muslim migration to our families and our future.
Thirty governors have come out against Obama’s policy of dumping Syrian migrants in their states. Some want more thorough vetting. Others have issued executive orders barring any further resettlement.
In response to these common sense measures, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton put on faces of mock moral outrage and the media is frantically spinning new lies about the migrants and national security.
But it’s time we told the truth about what is really going on and exposed their three biggest lies.
1 .The “Refugees” Are Not Fleeing Persecution, They’re Welfare Migrants
Syria is in the middle of a religious war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
But Sunni Muslims fleeing religious persecution can choose one of the many Sunni states in the region. Most Syrians have ended up in Jordan and Turkey, which are both Sunni countries. The Sunni Muslim countries are certainly not persecuting their fellow Sunnis. And neither country is run by ISIS.
Likewise Shiite Muslims can find sanctuary in Shiite Iran or parts of Lebanon.
The only authentic refugees are Christians and Yazidis who do not have a country to call their own in the region. Only these non-Muslim peoples can be considered refugees fleeing religious persecution.
Sunni Muslims stopped being persecuted refugees the moment they set foot in Jordan or Turkey. Talk of resettling them in the United States or Europe has nothing to do with “persecution.” It’s economic migration. And economic migration in this case is a euphemism for welfare migration.
Muslims are not fleeing to Europe because of religious persecution, but for economic reasons. They specifically seek out countries such as Germany and Sweden with generous welfare states.
The media loves offering false analogies to Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. But the Jews were a stateless people then. They had no country of their own go to. Muslims have more countries than nearly every other religion on the planet. They choose to go to the wealthiest Western countries, rejecting Slovenia and Bulgaria for Germany and Sweden, because they want money and they want easy money.
Syrian Muslims are not refugees. They’re migrants. Only Christians and other non-Muslims are refugees.
While Muslims have easy access to UN refugee camps in Muslim countries, Christians have trouble surviving there. But by outsourcing our immigration to the UN’s refugee infrastructure, we abandon Christian refugees and instead take in Muslim welfare migrants. And that is truly shameful.
There is no reason for us to provide special privileges for Muslim economic migrants. A Gallup poll showed that 138 million people would like to move to America. We can’t even begin to accommodate a fraction of that number. We already take in far more immigrants every year than we can afford.
It’s time for our leaders to put our country and our people first.
2. Taking in “Refugees” Helps ISIS
A media meme spread after the Paris attacks is that ISIS wants us to hate “refugees”. And if we take them in, we’ll somehow be dealing ISIS a blow.
This is wrong in every way possible.
Even those Syrians who will never support ISIS and whose children will never support it aid ISIS just by leaving the country. The large numbers of military age men are in part fleeing to avoid being drafted to fight ISIS. Potential ISIS opponents who leave Syria for permanent resettlement in Europe or America make it easier for the Islamic State to consolidate its control over the country.
Every time Europe or America takes in a military age Syrian as a refugee, they are helping ISIS by aiding deserters from the Syrian military, the Free Syrian Army and other groups that are fighting ISIS.
During WW2, we weren’t encouraging British soldiers to run away and move to America. So why are human rights activists helping ISIS by encouraging Syrian deserters to flee the fight against ISIS?
3. Vetting Syrian Migrants is Impossible
Ask a politician how the “refugees” will be vetted and he’ll start talking about the number of government agencies involved, how many months it lasts and all the different types of checks.
It sounds impressive, but it’s meaningless paperwork. Bureaucrats will move piles of paper around that say things like, “We have no information.” More “layers of screening” will mean more pieces of paper.
The only people we can effectively vet are already in our system. The passports carried by migrants are often fake. Even Syrians will carry fake passports to hide their identities. Iraqis, Afghans and even Africans have shown up claiming to be Syrians. And the Syrian refugees themselves say they can’t always tell which of them is fake. If they can’t tell, how will some government employee from Milwaukee?
We have held terrorists at Guantanamo Bay for a decade without ever learning their real names. If we can’t put a name to a single terrorist from a functioning country after a decade, how can we possibly be sure who the tens of thousands of migrants showing up from non-functioning countries are?
We can’t.
Biometric information may work for terrorists who were once in our custody, but it’ll be completely useless for terrorists that neither we nor our allies have ever encountered before.
Syria is a non-functioning state and a state sponsor of terror. We can’t rely on it and that means we have to rely on information from UNHCR. The UN refugee agency is incompetent and overloaded. Its employees are corrupt and have a history of selling refugee cards to the highest bidder.
It’s UNHCR that decides who qualifies for resettlement and any vetting we do afterward is cosmetic.
And even if we have the information that a refugee is really a terrorist, there’s no reason to think that it will get to the right people at the right time. We put the ringleader of the World Trade Center bombing back on the street even though he had a fake passport because he was applying for political asylum. We ignored warnings about the Boston Marathon bombers and some of the 9/11 hijackers.
Our system doesn’t work right much of the time. It’s why you see news stories about reporters carrying weapons past the TSA. It’s why most of the Muslim terrorist attacks in America happened.
Even if we have the right information, there is no guarantee that it would stop a terrorist.
The only way to be absolutely sure is not to allow any potential terrorists into the country. It’s a much safer bet than assuming that the same system that failed to stop the World Trade Center bombing, 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing and other terrorist attacks will work exactly when we need it to.
Migrants arriving from terror states are unsafe at any degree of vetting. Our system has failed before and will fail again. We owe it to our children and our loved ones to protect them from the next attack.
And our leaders owe it to us to stop lying about the risks of Muslim migration to our families and our future.
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