Breitbart reported yesterday that bureaucrats in the State Department brought in 500 refugees the day before President Trump was to order a temporary ban on refugees from certain countries.
The article quotes a Reuters article:
The temporary ban on refugees will be one of several executive orders on immigration President Trump will sign on Wednesday, Reuters reports. “Another order will block visas being issued to anyone from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, said the aides and experts, who asked not to be identified.”
Two hundred and twenty-six of the 500 refugees resettled in the United States on Tuesday, or 44 percent, came from six of those seven countries, according to the State Department’s interactive website, as reported at 11:00 p.m. eastern on Tuesday: Syria (81), Iran (51), Iraq (46), Somalia (43), Sudan (4), and Yemen (1). No refugees from Libya were resettled in the United States on Tuesday.
From the beginning of FY 2016 on October 1, 2015 until January 24, 2017, a total of 115,879 refugees have been resettled in the United States, according to the State Department’s interactive website.
Fifty-two thousand and sixty-nine of those refugees, or 45 percent, came from those seven countries: Syria (17,341), Iraq (14,613), Somalia (12,914), Iran (5,278), Sudan (1,887), Yemen (32), and Libya (4).
I need to point out a few things about this temporary ban. It does not ban those religious minorities escaping persecution. They are an exception. The ban will be in place until more aggressive vetting is possible.
It is also noteworthy that the group most at risk in the Middle East and Africa right now is Christians. Unfortunately, a very small number of the refugees that have been brought to America are Christians. Christians would fit into the American culture much more easily than Muslims. It makes much more sense to set up a Muslim safe zone somewhere in the Middle East to encourage people to got back to their countries when the danger is past. If the danger does not pass, we need to ask ourselves what is wrong and how to fix it.
The city where I live had a very unfortunate experience with legal refugees a few years ago. In 2015, a Burmese refugee killed three children ages 1, 5, and 12, with a machete. We need to be very careful about who we let into the country. I don’t know if better vetting could have prevented this tragedy, but I do know that I would hate to see more incidents like this one.