颐和园 发表评论于 2015-11-23 04:51:11
LZ好天真呀。您不知道吗？自由女神塑像下的诗句早被美国移民局改成了“Give me your healthy, your wealthy and your well educated.” 如果LZ已经移民美国，一定明白美国移民局对移民的这些要求的吧。美国确实每年接受难民，不过就像西方其他国家那样，但是，千万别再拿纽约市自由女神像底座上的zuo Emma Lazarus的诗句说事，那早就过时了。当下的时局是，纽约的双子楼被穆斯林炸了，巴黎数百无辜市民被穆斯林扫射身亡。。。
‘The Statue of Liberty Must Be Crying With Shame’
Nicholas Kristof NOV. 21, 2015 NOV. 21, 2015
AS anti-refugee hysteria sweeps many of our political leaders, particularly Republicans, I wonder what they would have told a desperate refugee family fleeing the Middle East. You’ve heard of this family: a carpenter named Joseph, his wife, Mary, and their baby son, Jesus.
According to the Gospel of Matthew, after Jesus’ birth they fled to save Jesus from murderous King Herod (perhaps the 2,000-year-ago equivalent of Bashar al-Assad of Syria?). Fortunately Joseph, Mary and Jesus found de facto asylum in Egypt — thank goodness House Republicans weren’t in charge when Jesus was a
1 of 4 11/23/15 11:55 AM
‘The Statue of Liberty Must Be Crying With Shame’ - The New Yo... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opinion/sunday/the-statue-of-...
refugee!
The vote by the House of Representatives effectively to slam the door on Syrian refugees was the crassest kind of political grandstanding, scapegoating some of the world’s most vulnerable people to score political points. As a woman named Maria Radford tweeted me after the vote, “the Statue of Liberty must be crying with shame.”
Yes, security is a legitimate concern. And, yes, we can’t rule out the possibility that a terrorist will slip in with the refugees. Among refugees admitted to the U.S. since 9/11, there has been about one arrest for terrorism offenses for every 250,000 refugees, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Then again, by my back-of-the-envelope calculations there’s maybe a 100-times greater likelihood that, say, a Floridian will turn out to be a murderer over a 10-year period than that a refugee will attempt terrorism. So if we’re willing to allow Floridians free entry into other states, allowing Syrian refugees shouldn’t be a problem.
Let’s be real: Refugee admission is the most deeply vetted pathway into the United States. Even for Iraqis who worked as translators for our military, risking their lives to keep Americans alive and enjoying strong support of American officers, vetting can take a couple of years.
That’s why the 9/11 attackers didn’t enter the U.S. as refugees, but as students and tourists. If a terrorist group wants to attack America, it won’t wait two years to try to infiltrate as refugees. It’ll send people in as students or tourists, use fake or stolen U.S. or European passports, or just pay a human smuggler to take their terrorists across the border from Mexico or Canada.
In any case, the Paris attackers identified so far were of French and Belgian nationality, not Syrian. One was carrying a Syrian passport, true, but it apparently wasn’t his own and was perhaps meant to create an anti-Syrian backlash.
The Islamic State’s strategy is to create a wedge in the West between Muslims and non-Muslims. Whether that strategy succeeds depends on us: Will we clamp
2 of 4 11/23/15 11:55 AM
‘The Statue of Liberty Must Be Crying With Shame’ - The New Yo... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opinion/sunday/the-statue-of-...
down with the harsh reaction the Islamic State sought?
When we’re fearful we make bad decisions. That was true around World War II, when we denied refuge to European Jews and interned Japanese-Americans. That was true after 9/11, when we invaded Iraq and engaged in torture.
As George Takei, the Japanese-American actor who was interned for four years as a child, wrote in a Facebook post after the Paris attacks: “There no doubt will be those who look upon immigrants and refugees as the enemy as a result of these attacks, because they look like those who perpetrated these attacks, just as peaceful Japanese-Americans were viewed as the enemy after Pearl Harbor. But we must resist the urge to categorize and dehumanize, for it is that very impulse that fueled the insanity and violence perpetrated this evening.”
The demagoguery about refugees leaves me with an ache in the gut because, as I noted in my last column, I am the son of a refugee. Some 65 years ago, my Armenian/Polish/Romanian father was wandering Europe just as the Syrian refugees are today. Because Americans took a chance on him, I’m in a position to write this appeal for similar empathy today.
Sure, some Syrians are terrorists, but some of the people I most admire in the world are Syrian doctors and “White Helmets” who help the victims of violence. House Republicans would block these heroes, would bar even the Yazidi and Christian victims of terrorists.
Republican leaders say they simply want to tighten security to keep America safe. That’s an echo of what American officials claimed in the late 1930s and early 1940s as they blocked the entry of Jewish refugees.
Breckinridge Long, then a senior State Department official in charge of visas, warned that Nazi spies were trying to enter the U.S. as refugees. In the name of security, he established vetting rules so strict that few Jews could pass.
“We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants,” Long boasted in a 1940 memo. His callous security requirements led to the deaths of many tens of thousands of Jews.
3 of 4 11/23/15 11:55 AM
‘The Statue of Liberty Must Be Crying With Shame’ - The New Yo... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opinion/sunday/the-statue-of-...
Yes, security was a legitimate concern then, as it is now, but security must be leavened with common sense and a bit of heart.
To seek to help desperate refugees in a secure way is not nai?vete?. It’s not sentimentality. It’s humanity.
I invite you to sign up for my free, twice-weekly newsletter. When you do, you’ll receive an email about my columns as they’re published and other occasional commentary. Sign up here.I also invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter (@NickKristof).
A version of this op-ed appears in print on November 22, 2015, on page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘The Statue of Liberty Must Be Crying’ .
? 2015 The New York Times Company
4 of 4 11/23/15 11:55 AM
颐和园 发表评论于
LZ好天真呀。您不知道吗？自由女神塑像下的诗句早被美国移民局改成了“Give me your healthy, your wealthy and your well educated.” 如果LZ已经移民美国，一定明白美国移民局对移民的这些要求的吧。美国确实每年接受难民，不过就像西方其他国家那样，但是，千万别再拿纽约市自由女神像底座上的zuo Emma Lazarus的诗句说事，那早就过时了。当下的时局是，纽约的双子楼被穆斯林炸了，巴黎数百无辜市民被穆斯林扫射身亡。。。
After the attacks on Paris, many politicians--including (so far) the governors of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Michigan, and Texas--have called for stopping refugee flows to the United States from the Middle East, claiming that the refugee process poses a major threat to America's security. Here are six reasons why ending U.S. refugee resettlement is a senseless and reactionary approach:
1. The Paris attackers were not refugees: Assuming that the user of a fake Syrian passport found near the body of an attacker belonged to the attacker, which isn't clear, he exploited the flow of people into Europe, but he was not a refugee. He did not receive refugee designation from the United Nations or vetting from intelligence agencies. He was never approved for refugee status in any country. To become a refugee in the United States, you undergo a multi-stage vetting process and only after receiving U.N. designation by trained officers in the field. The U.S. can vet refugees prior to admission, which means we can weed out terrorists and those most likely to become involved in terrorism, accepting only the most vulnerable. Europe cannot do the same. What happened in Paris is not applicable to the U.S. refugee process.
2. U.S. refugees don't become terrorists: The history of the U.S. refugee program demonstrates that the lengthy and extensive vetting that all refugees must undergo is an effective deterrent for terrorists. Since 1980, the U.S. has invited in millions of refugees, including hundreds of thousands from the Middle East. Not one has committed an act of terrorism in the U.S. Traditional law enforcement and security screening processes have a proven record of handling the threat from refugees.
3. Other migration channels are easier to exploit than the U.S. refugee process: The previous point can also be made another way. Non-refugees have carried out all terrorist attacks over the past 35 years. That means they used other means to arrive in the U.S. All of the 9/11 hijackers used student or tourist visas. These visas are much easier and faster to obtain than refugee status, which takes up to two years and requires a multi-stage vetting process and U.N. referral. Refugee status is the single most difficult way to come to the U.S. It makes no sense for a terrorist to try to use the resettlement process for an attack.
4. ISIS sees Syrian refugees as traitors: According to ISIS, Syrian Muslim refugees are traitors to the radical Islamic cause. "It is correct for Muslims to leave the lands of the infidel for the lands of Islam, but not vice versa," one ISIS video said in September. Here are several other examples of similar condemnation from this year. Nearly 90 percent of displaced Syrians in Turkey have no sympathy for ISIS at all, even though ISIS is fighting the person, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who most refugees see as their main enemy. Kurdish and Christian refugees see ISIS as their main foe. Some have speculated that the attacker in Paris intentionally left the fake Syrian passport near his body to help turn the West against Syrian refugees. Turning away Syrian refugees plays into ISIS's hands.
5. Turning away allies will make us less safe: Callous disregard for the fate of refugees--our potential allies in the war against ISIS--will drive them back into the hands of the person they are fleeing: Bashar al-Assad, the hated Syrian dictator. This will lead some refugees to see ISIS as their only remaining ally and safeguard against Assad. The evidence in the academic literature is that keeping refugees penned-up in camps near the zone of conflict increases terrorism in those areas, but resettling them outside of those areas does not. During the Cold War, we used refugee resettlement to gain foreign policy assets, spies, allies, and spokesmen to refute the enemy's propaganda. In the fight against ISIS, allies gained from aiding refugees will be as important as any weapon we have.
6. America should demonstrate moral courage: During World War II, the U.S. turned away Jews due to security concerns. We sent shiploads back to the camps because we were scared that Nazi spies could hide in their midst (which was not an entirely unfounded concern). The lesson of the Holocaust, as I noted here, is that we must deal with threats without rejecting our ethical obligations. We must not send those fleeing persecution back to their persecutors. The definition of moral courage is to resist allowing fear to overwhelm our humanity.
Update: No, the Boston bombers were not refugees. They came over as the very young children of an asylee, which is a completely different vetting process.
Too naive. What makes you trust the government so much that they will do a good job screening refugees? Did the government never mess up? After all, they have bodyguards I don't.
仇恨言论罪只是迫害多数民族的，面对伊斯兰教的仇恨言论，整个西方都一直是装聋作哑，任由阿訇毛拉在自己头上拉屎。一旦有人说这样不行，他们就会对回人说：“I disgree with what you say, but I will defend to death your right to curse everyone, your right to kill everybody, including me.”
