LIBERALS CALL FOR AIRLIFTS OF UP TO 1 MILLION SYRIAN REFUGEES INTO AMERICA
(INTELLIHUB) — Last week the world was shocked after photographs taken on a Turkish beach showed a dead Syrian boy who had apparently drowned while trying to escape his war-torn home country.
The three-year old boy, Aylan Kurdi, died along with his five-year old brother in an obviously horrible tragedy, a tragedy that liberals here in America are now trying to exploit by demanding that the U.S. allow more refugees from Syria into the country.
Within 24 hours of the release of the horrific photographs, liberals at several high traffic websites begun to directly blame the American government as well as the American people as a whole for not allowing more refugees into the country.
These so-called journalists also used the tragedy to take pot shots at the millions of Americans who are against illegal immigration. In other words, liberal propagandists did what they always do, attempt to exploit a tragedy to further their own political and social goals while blaming anyone they disagree with for the tragedy itself.
Vox News, a hard left leaning media company founded by one of President Obama’s “favorite journalists,” led the charge with multiple articles directly attacking any American who believes in a secure border while calling for up to 1 million Syrian refugees to be allowed into country.
The first article, complete with a title that makes clear this is not an actual news article but rather an opinion piece, was written by Amanda Taub and directly blames America for the death of Kurdi while chastising secure border proponents and Trump supporters alike.
The death of any child is devastating. But these children’s stories are particularly painful to read about, because they carry a reproach for readers like us: We let this happen. We left those innocent children to this fate. We knew refugee children were in danger, and did nothing, and this is the result.
And make no mistake: We did know. As the refugee boats have crossed the Mediterranean, photograph after photograph has showed rescue workers cradling tiny babies and toddlers rescued from the water. We knew desperate families were bringing children on these journeys. We knew they would keep coming, because what could drive a parent to bring a child on such a dangerous crossing except fear that staying behind would be worse? And we knew that if we didn’t do more to help them, many of those children would die— and so would their families.
But apparently those children weren’t dead enough to hold our attention. An infant saved from a boat wasn’t good enough for us: We needed to see one dead on a beach, lying alone, face down, in the surf.
The tactics used by Taub in the first part of her article are strikingly similar to those used by gun control proponents after Sandy Hook and includes an emotional appeal as any sane person feels for the death of children.
Taub then goes on to highlight the fact that Germany is doing much more than most countries in regards to the Syrian refugee crisis and specifically notes that the country is transforming massive abandoned stores into emergency shelters, clearly implying that America should be doing the same.
That’s right, with all our own problems including a documented crisis with the illegal immigrants already coming into the country, liberals like Taub want us to transform massive storefronts across the country into shelters for Syrians.
Contrast the United States’ shameful inaction with Germany’s moral leadership in the past few weeks. Germany is receiving such large numbers of refugees so quickly that its government is transforming abandoned big-box stores across the country into emergency refugee shelters that can hold large numbers of people. The influx has provoked xenophobic violence as well as a political backlash against the government for not doing more to keep refugees out, which German leaders have resisted.
The rest of the EU has largely failed to act on the crisis, leaving Germany, along with border countries like Greece and Italy, to handle the problem on its own.
Making sure she doesn’t let the crisis go to waste, Taub adds in an attack on the American right wing for good measure.
And yet not only are we failing to live up to that moral obligation, we are embracing our failure. Donald Trump has ridden an ugly wave of xenophobia to the top of the polls in the GOP primary, proving that not only do many Americans hold anti-immigrant beliefs but they are proud of them, and thrilled to have them validated by a national political figure.
And the Obama administration has failed to show the kind of leadership on this issue that Merkel’s government has, instead remaining content to accept a tiny trickle of people and ignore the rest. Apparently, saving children from drowning at sea violates Obama’s “don’t do stupid shit” foreign policy doctrine.
“The best way the US could help Syrians: open the borders”
Bouncing off Taub’s attack piece on the American people for the Syrian crisis, Vox thenpublished an article by Dylan Matthews that made clear what the left is actually calling for in response to the crisis and, to say the least, it is shocking. In his article Matthews literally declares that allowing up to a million poor refugees would cost little to no money and would possibly actually help the United States.
If we’re actually serious about helping Syrian people — both people who’ve stayed and refugees — it’s not enough to identify an intervention that seems like it could make things better and then declare that it’s the only viable solution. You have to compare it with alternative plans, and see which produces the most good at the least cost.
And it’s very, very hard to argue that the kind of intervention that could have plausibly prevented the bloodshed of the past four years would have done more good, at lower cost, than simply issuing green cards to every Syrian who wants one — or even issuing them to just 1 million, or 500,000 — and providing airlifts to bring people here.
Let’s take immigration to start. The potential benefits to Syrians are enormous. For one thing, we would avoid the huge humanitarian toll associated with existing refugee migration. Many fewer boats would capsize. Many fewer children would drown. Many fewer people would suffocate in the back of trucks.
[…]
Well, flying people in and giving them basic resettlement support would cost money. Not a lot of money, but some. But over time, it would quite possibly pay for itself. It’s uncontroversial among economists that immigration generates economic growth, and even the most immigration-skeptical economists concede that some of those gains go to native-born workers, not just migrants.
High-quality studies that use “natural experiments” — cases where there was a big, unexpected spike in immigration — suggest that the absolute effect of immigration on native workers is neutral or positive.
Consider how absurd the above paragraphs are for just one second. In the liberal mind, literal airlifts of a million people into our country, complete with massive storefronts converted to emergency shelters would cost “not a lot of money, but some.” (In between the nonsense quoted above, Matthews details studies conducted by left leaning economists that claim immigration is always a good thing. The fact is there have been numerous studies that have shown different conclusions then those cited by Matthews.)
To summarize, liberals in the media are blaming America for the horrific deaths of migrants attempting to flee Syria while demanding the United States allow up to one million of said refugees into the country. Considering this one would expect that the rich Muslim nations are already doing as much as they can and liberals here in America just want us to do our fair share right? Wrong. Dead wrong.
"Damn it, open the door to #Syria refugees you apathetic bums"
Rich Arab countries to European Union pic.twitter.com/hSaLdgAnYM— Saad (@SaadAbedine) September 1, 2015
While ignored in both the quoted Vox articles above, the fact is the top five richest Muslim nations have all denied refugees from Syria, citing terrorism fears as the reason.
Breitbart’s Donna Rachel Edmunds details this inconvenient fact that has been purposefully ignored by those calling for more refugees to be allowed into the U.S.
Five of the wealthiest Muslim countries have taken no Syrian refugees in at all, arguing that doing so would open them up to the risk of terrorism. Although the oil rich countries have handed over aid money, Britain has donated more than Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar combined.
[…]
Twenty-five years ago, hundreds of thousands of Kuwaitis fleeing Saddam Hussein’s invasion were given refuge. According to Arabian expert Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi: “in Abu Dhabi, the government rented out entire apartment blocks and gave them to families for free.”
Instead the countries, all of which are within the Top 50 list of wealthiest nations by GDP, have opted to donate aid to those affected by the crisis. According to the Daily Mail, the UAE has funded a refugee camp in Jordan giving shelter to tens of thousands of Syrians, while Saudi Arabia and Qatar have donated funds, food, shelter and clothing to Syrians in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.
Total donations from the Gulf States are believe to total £589 million, less than a quarter of America’s £2.8 billion, and a fraction of the £65 billion they spent on defence in 2012 alone. The UK has handed over £920 million so far, but the Prime Minister yesterday pledged to increase that figure to £1 billion. He also promised to take in thousands more refugees.
So America and its people are to blame for the deaths of Syrian children trying to flee their country despite the fact that we have already donated more money and allowed more refugees into the country than any of the top Muslim countries throughout the world?
Another shocking outcome of letting in so many refugees from Syria was also completely ignored in both Vox articles and that is the threat of ISIS type terrorists coming into the country with them. Worries over terrorists getting in through the refugee program were already being ignored by the left and worried about by the right before the horrific death of Aylan Kurdi shocked the world.
A late July 2015 report by Fox News detailed these fears while making clear that worrying about terrorists getting into the country does not mean that anyone thinks a vast majority of the refugees are terrorists.
With the influx comes mounting concerns over whether the Obama administration can properly vet them, and keep out those with terror ties seeking to exploit the system. Lawmakers are worried that not only is Syria the headquarters of the Islamic State, but that the country’s state of chaos makes screening refugees that much harder.
“I agree that the vast majority of Syrian refugees do not have ties to terror groups,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who chairs the Homeland Security Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee, said at a recent hearing. “However, we have been reviewing the current security vetting procedures for a number of months, and I have a number of concerns, not the least of which is the lack of on-the-ground intelligence necessary to identify terror links.”
[…]
King noted heightened terror alerts involving ISIS recruitment and active terror plots here. “The U.S. has seen the danger of flawed refugee vetting, as well as the potential for refugees to be radicalized once they are in the U.S.,” he said, pointing to the Boston Marathon bombers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who settled here from Dagestan and Kyrgyzstan.
[…]
At the same June hearing, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, noted he sent a series of letters to the White House this year warning against accelerating the acceptance of Syrian refugees. McCaul said the White House “was vague” when he asked about current screening procedures.
“Terrorists have made it known they want to manipulate the refugee program to sneak operatives to the West,” he said, using the example of two Iraqi Al Qaeda members discovered in 2009 living in Bowling Green, Ky., where they were brought as refugees.
David Inserra, policy analyst for homeland security and cybersecurity issues at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said people have a right to be concerned.
“Whenever you are looking at folks coming from a war-torn region and there are groups there — whether it be IS, [Al Qaeda], al Nusra — it can be difficult to do the background checks, to find out if they are who they say they are,” he told FoxNews.com. “However, there are things we can do, and the U.S. agencies working on these cases work with various other international partners and organizations to do the proper checks. But it is a challenge.”
Clearly, allowing the under 2,000 refugees from Syria that have already entered the country has come with its challenges and risks, one can only imagine what 1 million more would do.
It is important to note that most Americans undoubtedly feel for the refugees and rightfully so. That does not mean that we should be bullied by the left into allowing 1 million of them into the country while totally ignoring the actual cost, the possible terror threat, and the fact that rich Muslim nations are doing next to nothing.
About the Author:
Alex Thomas is a reporter and opinion journalist who has worked in the alternative media for over three years. His work has been featured on numerous news outlets including Infowars and RT. You can contact him here. Alex is an exclusive weapon of Intellihub.
