Most [of the Paris terrorists] had already been flagged as potential security threats. But so had tens of thousands of others — 20,000 in France alone — and the plotters were careful not to stand out or give law enforcement an excuse to arrest them.
I have said before that when a terrorist watchlist gets large enough, it becomes like an odometer that rolls back to zero. If you’re “watching” 20,000 people, you are not really watching anyone. And I think that it is reasonable to suppose that adding Syrian refugees will eventually add to the number of people on a watch list.
One argument that I have seen for allowing Syrian refugees runs as follows: it is easier to enter this country as a tourist than a refugee, therefore allowing refugees does not really add to the threat of terrorism. If you have made such an argument, do you really believe it? Think through your other implicit beliefs.
1. There must not be much point in vetting Syrian refugees to any greater extent than we vet tourists. In that case, “vetting” is pretty much an empty theatrical gesture.
2. There may not be much point in having a Department of Homeland Security. After all, if terrorist attacks are not really preventable, then why are we spending billions of dollars supposedly trying to prevent them?
3. Addimg Syrian refugees does not add to the risk of an intelligence failure, due to resources being diverted to screen refugees or to the refugee population making it easier for terrorists to blend in. This is because (a) there is no such thing as an intelligence failure. Or (b) dealing with Syrian refugees imposes zero marginal costs of intelligence resources.
It may be perfectly legitimate to believe these things, although I do not myself believe them. But if there is a way to believe that adding Syrian refugees adds no risk without believing such things, then I cannot see it.
I think a more reasonable statement in defense of taking in refugees would be that although it adds to the risk of a terrorist attack, the additional risk is small relative to the benefits of allowing refugees.
> the additional risk is small relative to the benefits of allowing refugees
Are there any supporters of letting refugees in around? What are these benefits?
1) Benefits to the refugees. Many people in the US are not strict citizenists and their feelings of care are not drawn exactly at national borders.
2) Economic benefits:
a) Stable tenants for landlords (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-20/why-american-landlords-love-refugee-tenants)
b) Trade, employed refugees benefit their customers and suppliers. Refugees tend to have jobs at a slightly greater rate than natives (http://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/UsRefugeeOutcomes-FINALWEB.pdf)
topcomment — Fundamentally I believe that the refugees deserve a chance to build a new life somewhere else. It’s not a consequentialist argument. Still, lots of Syrian refugees are well-educated middle-class types who would benefit the U.S. I’ve also heard the idea that giving more Syrians and Iraqis another place to go would weaken Assad and ISIS as there would be fewer people to tax or draft into armies. Of course, the US could also subsidize sending them somewhere else.
PS to Arnold — I suspect that most of DOD, CIA, NSA, and dept. of homeland security is a waste of our tax dollars.
“well-educated middle-class types who would benefit the U.S.”
Yeah, I’m gonna call BS on this. Here is a Wash Post article on the state of Syria’s education system:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/03/05/syrias-education-crisis-in-three-charts/
Key point re: what it was like before the civil war started:
According to a 2010 paper sponsored by Stanford University, nearly 40 percent of Syrian youth ages 15 to 24 dropped out of school before the ninth grade. And many Syrian youth, particularly women, faced crippling unemployment rates.
When you consider that these people are going to face the additional problem of a language barrier in the US labor market, I think the idea that a big fraction of Syrian refugees wind up as middle class Americans is pure fantasy.
The vetting is pretty extensive, lasting for months. Just applying as a refugee does to mean you get accepted. Many are rejected. There are many faster ways to get into the country, with a lot less work and uncertainty. Still, the risk would not be zero, just very, very close to zero. Therefore, the potential benefits do not need to be large. Besides those listed above, many of these are people fleeing persecution from ISIS and may be of help in working against them.
Steve
“Might 30 years of broken promises on immigration enforcement contribute to public doubt of Obama assurances about refugee screening?”
“I think a more reasonable statement in defense of taking in refugees would be that although it adds to the risk of a terrorist attack, the additional risk is small relative to the benefits of allowing refugees.
And I believe that’s the most common argument being made for admitting refugees on humanitarian grounds.
#1) I haven’t heard such an argument. The more common claim is that since a refugee is vetted over a period of up to 18 months, first by the UN, then the country considering accepting them, there’s little reason for a would-be terrorist to take that route since they could much more quickly and easily enter the US as students or tourists – as all terrorists who aren’t home grown have done in the past. Evidence, or in this case lack of evidence, for that claim is the fact that no terrorist act has been committed in the US by a refugee – and no, the Tsarnaev brothers were not refugees: They were children when they entered the US as assylees and became radicalized while living in the US.
2.)This may be pretty accurate. After the glaring intelligence failures before 9/11 the solution was to add more large bureaucracies to the mix of bumbling agencies who failed to protect US the lives, liberty, and property of US citizens – arguably, the only legitimate function of government. A Washington Post investigation found, among other things, that: * Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States. There’s no way of knowing how many hundreds of billions of dollars this costs each year, but if that isn’t enough to minimize terrorist activities in the US, there’s no hope of ever doing so.
Like Morgan Price, I think this enormous drain of resources is mostly wasted.
3.) Or (c) As explained in #2 above, there are already so many resources being used ineffectively that diverting some of them to vetting Syrian refugees wouldn’t make any difference.
Our experience with Somali refugees suggests risks https://t.co/8F7TeG6fUY. “250 Americans have attempted to join ISIS, and 1 in 4 of them is from Minnesota, many of them former refugees.
David
Thanks for the link. This article appears to address the issue of young people already in the US, becoming radicalized and leaving to join radical groups in other countries, not terrorists entering the US as refugees. It would seem that these (mostly) US citizens have chosen not to martyr themselves in the US, but to fight perceived enemies elsewhere.
Yes, I believe #1 and #2, quite strongly. On #3, I think the premise is wrong. First, are the same people vetting the refugees and doing intelligence? I’m not sure these are in competition. And second, there are already large populations in this country where a terrorist could blend in.
3a should be restated as “because there are so few intelligence successes” and 3b should be “because vetting refugees who’ve been waiting for months is almost certainly pointless.”
Suppose … we take two Syrian refugee kids and their families into the use. Sidi. let’s also suppose, winds up in an area where Moslem’s are rare, but the people about him as he grows up are unconcerned. His family gets some welfare until his mom and dad get employment, but no one around him is bothered by that. When there are enough other Moslems about, he attends a local mosque. He attends local schools, graduates from high school, dates some Christian and Jewish girls as he matures, gets into a decent college, winds up in a decent job. The world doesn’t end.
Mohammed, on the other end, winds up in a place where local folks really really don’t like immigrants, and in particular don’t like non-Christians. His parents don’t find much in the way of jobs. His school teachers and classmates make fun of his accent and hair style from the start. He’s continually told that he can’t appreciate how Americans do things because he’s a F****ing Raghead. He doesn’t get into college. He doesn’t find much in the way of employment himself. The other Moslems he encounters are equally unhappy. When his family moves to a major city, he finally gets to attend a mosque, where he’s surrounded by other unhappy immigrants. Mohammed eventually decides he wants to get back at the people who made his life so miserable all along.
It’s all Obama’s fault, isn’t it? And the fact that the f***ing sand-n*****rs just don’t deserve to live in a place as good and wonderful as the USA.
So yeah, let’s not admit Syrian refugees. Science has spoken!
Do you work for MSNBC?
The idea that young men only commit acts of terrorism because people were mean to them or they couldn’t find jobs doesn’t fit the facts:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-threat-from-minnesota-men/article/1070597
Jeff R:
Fair enough — people can commit themselves ideologically to a cause for the slimmest of reasons. Other hand, it would be as silly to claim that pure thought made them all into terrorists as to claim that upbringing and youthful experiences were the only causes for extremism.
And the argument about reactions to experience applies more to young children than to their possibly already radicalized older siblings and parents.
So I should have made those concessions, but I wanted to make a particular point and the post seemed long enough already. Okay?
Fair enough, but I would ask you to consider that immigrant groups of various stripes (the Chinese, Irish, Jews, Italians, etc) faced more open and uglier forms of discrimination over the years than anyone who comes to the US these days, often with the full approval of the law, and this did not trigger any sort of indiscriminate violence on the part of the individuals subject to it, so what’s so special about Middle Easterners that they can’t handle some disparaging remarks and a thin labor market? What level of discrimination would justify a violent response, in your opinion? Are Arabs or Somalis in this country really subject to that level of discrimination?
Furthermore, I would ask you to look at the sectarian and ethnic violence that seems to be all too common these days in places like Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Libya, Afghanistan, whether it be Sunni vs. Shia, Kurds vs. Arabs, Kurds vs. Turks, Alawites vs. Arabs, Pashtuns vs. Tajiks, Christians vs. Muslims, ad infinitum, and consider just how much violence can realistically be attributed to the fact that western countries just haven’t shown enough hospitality to Middle Eastern emigres? If certain groups of people tend to be involved in a disproportionate number of violent conflicts, one of which happens to be with your group, why would you assume that the fault is yours?
Fair point. I’d suggest — I’m not claiming this as a definite answer! — that the world has changed considerably in the past century, and we pay more attention to some types of violence than others. There are fewer accounts of anti-Jewish pogroms in Czarist Russia today, fewer mentions of Dutch police in Sumatra shooting rebellious Indonesians, fewer riots aimed at Belgians in the Congo, etc. Have Poles and Ukrainians become better behaved? Have news reporters gotten lazier? Or has the world changed to make some kinds of violence less common, while increasing other violence? It’s complicated.
As for the Moslem-vs-Moslem and Moslem-vs-infidel violence you’re pointing to, I suspect there’s always been more of it going on than we bothered to notice previously. Up to 1978 or so, for example, very few people outside of the Middle East noticed or much cared that the Shah of Iran kept a secret police organization busy. Did the nature of Iranians change? Or did Western notions of newsworthiness change?
And another example of things overlooked:
There’s an interesting post at Marginal Revolution today (html=http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/11/which-group-has-committed-the-most-terrorist-acts-on-us-soil.htm)
claiming the most dangerous terrorist groups in the USA, based on the number of incidents, are anti-Castro Cuban exiles and the Jewish Defense League. Is this such a danger that we need to discriminate against Cuban immigrants and Jews? (Perhaps not; the two groups are responsible for 202 out of 567 incidents in the US in a 40 year period, with about 8 deaths. Is that enough to change Federal policy?)
l
#2 is over broad. The implication is that we cannot prevent terror attacks *by screening who enters the country*, not that we can’t prevent terror attacks full stop. Even if you think no group should be screened more than tourists, the department of homeland security can still follow up on tips, run sting operations, monitor human and signals intelligence, etc, both on people
living abroad and people living here. They just wouldn’t pay particular attention to border crossings.
Your statement is like saying “well, if you think it won’t make us any safer to let American states restrict border crossings from state to state, you must think we should disolve all state law enforcement agencies.”
When people say we should bring in refugees are they saying they want this 18 month vetting process for firmal refugee labeling, or are they really expressing a desire to fast track more refugee immigration?
Roughly speaking, most years there are about 120,000 refugees that get resettled throughout the world. About 60-90,000 of them are accepted by the US, through that vetting process. During Republican administrations, during Democratic administrations.
So adding 10,000 Syrians to the pile isn’t all that big a deal in reality, and there’s no particular point in changing procedures just for them. Mostly, people getting vetted are processed in a couple of days, then released with instructions to check back in with the INS at three month intervals, and eventually they get their green cards. It ain’t confinement in a Nazi-style concentration camp, in other words.
But it’s great fun to shout about., isn’t it?
First, you didnt understand the question.
And when one organized terror attack comes from the much higher pribability source the bombs start dropping and before you can blink hundreds of thousands of people are dead.
Well, Andrew, perhaps you should ask better questions.
No, that’s not the problem. You didn’t take the time to understand Arnold’s supposition either. Maybe I’ll get around to explaining it later, if I feel like trying something pointless.
1. I generally ask pretty good quesions. 2. This time, my question is THE question.
Read Handle’s comment on the previous post for a primer. The vagaries of terminology and moving goal posts are by design because this is mostly an election season political triangulation exercise.
You don’t believe those things Arnold? All three are obviously true.
I believe them too. But then what you are left with is if you want to reduce probability of terorrism then all you have left is to prioritize letting in lower risks before you let in higher risks, not going the other way around.
Why are Syrian refugees more deserving than anyone else? Because there are more of them? That’s an odd standard, but it turns out it is the standard as Obama wants to increase Syrian refugees precisely due to pressure from other countries that don’t want all of them. But that also means that helping them may mean pressuring and bribing those countries to take them rather than migrating them to the United States.
We still haven’t gotten to any cold-heartedness whatsoever.
Doesn’t any form of access has roughly the same risk? Once you are here, you are in a free society and can go where you please. Having significantly different standards for different access modes doesn’t make much sense from a national security perspective.
I think the point being missed here is the corrosive effect of debating these issues on a group by group basis. It is perfectly fine to discuss an overall policy approach to filtering access to our country, but when we fall into the trap of discussing particular identity groups instead of certain types of risk profiles, identity politics pollute the discussion.
(2) may very well be true, but I doubt we have good data on it due to reasons of classified information.
But yes, the main case for letting in Syrian refugees is humanitarian, but that’s not going to carry any water with a hardcore citizenist who values one American life more than the lives of thousands of Syrians.
It seems reasonable to want to block permanent immigration of completely peaceful refugees who bring families that are prone to radicalization and terror in the second or third generation. The Paris attackers were mostly sons of peaceful Muslim immigrants. France should want to keep out some of those types.
And beyond active terrorists, the people who openly cheer and celebrate terrorism, like the people who should “Alahu Akhbar” in a moment of silence for Paris victims. French people have every logical justification to want to exclude people who do that from living in France.
This strikes me as similar to child adoption. There are many children in need who desperately want and would benefit from an upper class household taking the child in as one of their own, but there are large costs for the host family.
I do indeed think treating everyone (including groups of higher probability risks like Syrians) like terrorists really doesn’t work. So what is required is human infiltration and not the FBI fabricate and entrap variety. And the magical costs of this type of work are going to be astronomical. So, until we have that and until we stop wetting our panties over terrorism I’d rather treat small groups where we know the terrorists are like terrorists rather than treating large groups like terrorists because we let the small group mix into the big group.
Errata: Marginal not magical (although we are talking about government accounting here which is worse than movie accounting), and apologies for the panties cracke to women who are probably tougher and willing to bear more risks than some of our leaders on both sides, the ones who would reject orphans as well as the ones willing to be brave and compassionate with other peoples’ blood and treasure.