The United States should let people fleeing violence from the Middle East in to our boarders. These people are fleeing way in their home countries and we, as the leader of the free world should accept them. Three reasons why we should let refugees from the Middle East in is that they are not terrorist, they help a countries economy, and their situation at home will only get worse.
The main gripe against refugees from the Middle East is that they are all terrorist and letting them in will be paramount to the trojan horse attack on the city of Troy. This is an unfounded fear, the process for refugees to get in America is very strict. First refugees must apply to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees whose officials conduct a back-ground check and fingerprinting. The U.N. then decides which country to resettle refugees based on quotas and political convince, refugees cannot choose which country they will be settled in. According to the United Nations of the 2.5 million refugees that are recommended for resettlement less than one percent are referred to the United States.
If a refugee is referred to the United States, the State Department Resettlement Support Center then takes over the case. Refugees are then Interviewed in a location outside of the United States. After this personal data is collected and submit for background checks to the FBI, CIA, National Counter t=Terrorism Center, and the Department of Homeland Security. If the refugee is a Syrian National, they are then put under another special screening process Called the Syrian Enhanced Review. Then if a Refugee jumps through all those hoops they are submitted to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Fraud Detection Service who conduct another interview with the refugee where they are fingerprinted again along with all other biometric marks a person has.
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Then a health screening is done after the medical check refugees are then enrolled in cultural orientation classes all while their information are checked again for known terrorist. Then after all benchmarks are cleared the director of the FBI must personally sign off on all application, of which he can choose to reject for no stated reason. All of that must happen before a refugee can even get close to a plane. This process usually takes 18-24 months once you have been referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which itself can take up to a year.
No terrorist in their right mind would go through this process when it is much easier to visit the United States on a visa. According to Kathleen Newland of the Migration Policy Institute of the more than 784,000 refugees of Middle Eastern origin the United States has let in since 9/11 only three have been arrested for terrorist activities. The ration of terrorist to refugees in the United States is 1 in every 261,000. Of the 231 people charged with terroristic activities on U.S. soil 82 percent have been United State citizens or permanent residents. So, President Trump statements that refugees are terrorist is clearly incorrect.
Accepting refugees into the United States will help grow our economy. According to the World Economic Forum the yield curve is extremely close to a recession. The yield curve shows the difference between interest rates on short and long-term United States government bonds. The Federal Reserve which oversees government bonds have recently as January 2019 raised the short term interest rate, normally this would also cause a climb in the yield in long term bonds but that has not happened due to the new tax bill and the president habit off publicly denouncing the Federal Reserve chairman.
If we were to let in many refugees in this could reverse the effect. According to fivethirtyeight.com the United States spends about 15,000 dollars to resettle a refugee and 4,600 dollars per year on social programs. How ever each refugee on average will pay 6,500 dollars each year in federal taxes. After 5 years each refugee will have generated a return on our investment and every year after that will generate an additional 1,900 dollars for the economy, and this number does not include the amount a refugee might pay in local and state taxes which will generate an even greater return on our investment. The more revenue the United States makes from the refugees we will be able to pay greater dividends on our short and long term bonds.
When a country can pay bonds back it inspires investor confidence and the more investor confidence there is the more, they invest. The more investment there is means that more money is circulating in the economy. So, the more refugees we let in the more money is flowing in the economy. Let’s say in theory that we let in 1.1 million refugees in like Germany did in 2015 we would spend about 16.5 billion dollars up front and pay about 5 billion over the next 5 years. After 3.5 year though we will break even and each year after we will turn a profit of 7.15 billion dollars each year.
The United States is currently just shy of 22 trillion dollars in debt. With the extra 7.15 billion dollars each year it would take us about little less that 31 years to pay back our debts. If we don’t allow refugees in it will be much more difficult to generate the capital, we need to pay off our debts. There will be a point one day in the future when our yearly debt will exceed yearly GDP and we will be incapable of paying back our creditors. Our creditors will then freeze all loans to us and there will be no money to run the federal government.
The final reason why we should let in refugees from the Middle East in is that their situation at home will only get worse in the future. In the Middle East there is a cold war being conducted by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The cold war though is becoming increasingly hot with proxy wars are being fought in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan. There are also political fights between the two being conducted in Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates.
In Yemen the Saudis are blockading the country which is causing a famine, Syria is a mess with the government, Hezbollah, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Russian mercenaries fighting against the rebels, the Kurds. With ISIS fighting all factions and Turkey and Israel trying to advance their own strategical interest in the country. All of this has caused a breakdown in order in the country. In Iraq there is uneasy stalemate between the U.S. and Saudi backed president and the parliament which is backed by Iran that can break out into a civil war at any time. In Libya there are three governments claiming legitimacy and all are fighting each other for control of the oil.
Author Robert Baer puts it best in his book The Devil We Know stating the Pakistan is five separate nations only being held together by the army. If Pakistan where to break up it would lead to tribal violence and cause the break down of social order. The biggest threat to the region though is a war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel. If war where to break out it would pull all the major powers of the region and cause mass number of people to flee their homes as the war would connivingly be fought in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. If we where to reject the people fleeing the conflict area and then send them back we would be in effect signing their death sentence.
Works Cited
- Baer, Robert. The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower. Scribe Publications, 2009.
- “How Does the U.S. Refugee System Work?” Council on Foreign Relations, Council on Foreign Relations, www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-does-us-refugee-system-work.
- Kathryncasteel. “Refugees May Be Good For The Economy.” FiveThirtyEight, FiveThirtyEight, 14 June 2017, fivethirtyeight.com/features/refugees-may-be-good-for-the-economy/.
- LastWeekTonight, director. YouTube. YouTube, YouTube, 28 Sept. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=umqvYhb3wf4.
- Newland, Kathleen. “The U.S. Record Shows Refugees Are Not a Threat.” Migrationpolicy.org, 7 Oct. 2015, www.migrationpolicy.org/news/us-record-shows-refugees-are-not-threat.
