Letter: Disheartened by Refugee Reaction

lettertotheeditor

To the Editor:

How jarring it was to read the December 24 issue of Greenwich Sentinel on the day when most Americans are celebrating Christmas, the holiday associated with the expression, “Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men.” The paper was filled with articles about the good deeds of Greenwich residents and the spirit of Christmas. Twice on page six I read the words, He [Santa Claus] exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist…”

Then on page seven I read three letters written in response to John Blankley’s column of the previous week, “The Idea of America Demands that We Accept Refugees.” I was disheartened to see the strident expression of xenophobia, hate and lack of compassion expressed by their authors. The first talked proudly of “fighting Islam.” No, Mr. Dawson, we are not fighting Islam. As President George W. Bush said on many occasions, “We do not fight Islam, we fight against evil.”

Like many of those opposed to refugees from Syria, who have been subjected to unthinkable violence, Dawson claims the resettlement process is “largely unvetted.” In fact, the screening process for admitting refugees is the most stringent the U.S. uses for letting any foreign national enter the country. Refugee resettlement takes 18 to 24 months or longer, includes multiple reviews by multiple agencies including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Syrians are subject to additional screening called the Syria Enhanced Review process.

Ms. Levy, the second letter-writer and a refugee from Cuba, displays a notable level of hypocrisy by quoting Emma Lazarus: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breath free” while also declaring the U.S. should focus on accepting immigrants “who graduate from our colleges and universities” (emphasis mine). She goes on to advocate that asylum seekers should “show prior efforts to learn English and to learn about the American Constitution.”

Tell us, Ms. Levy, which group did your family fall into when you arrived at our shores from Cuba, “leaving behind everything” as you recounted in the Faces of Philanthropy profile of yourself? Ms. Levy is proud to carry on the charitable Jewish tradition of tikkun olam (literally, “repair the world”), as am I. But is it not a little ironic that Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939 landed in Cuba, only to be turned away by the United States for fear of them being Communists and anarchists. About one-quarter of them were later murdered by the Germans.

Letter-writer Carl Higbie, self-proclaimed protector of the American Dream, declares that the Syrian Refugee crisis is “less a crisis for the migrants” and “more of a crisis for the non-Islamic host nations they are migrating too [sic].” Perhaps Mr. Higbie is too comfortable in the safety of his Old Greenwich home to realize the Syrian conflict has killed some 100,000 civilians and displaced half the country’s population, 4 million of whom have fled the country to places where some are receiving less than half a dollar a day for food assistance.

Higbie goes on to suggest that 10 percent of Muslims, 160 million, are willing to bring harm to the United States. This statistic comes from analyses that equate prejudicial and violent views toward the U.S. expressed in surveys with actual threats of violence. Using that as the standard, Muslims have more to fear from the U.S. than we do from Muslims. The country whose citizens have the greatest proclivity to justify civilian deaths by the military? According to a Gallup poll, that would be the United States, where 49 percent believe civilian deaths are justified. That’s twice as high as citizens of Islamic nations, at 24 percent.

As a veteran who fought in the Middle East, Mr. Higbie must know that orders of magnitude more Iraqi civilians have been killed by our war on terror than have Americans.

I’m no apologist for violent, despicable, radical Islamic jihadists. Islamic governments and faith leaders have much to do to eradicate the radicalization of their populations. But the sentiments expressed by Mr. Dawson, Ms. Levy and Mr. Higbie do not represent my understanding of the American values for which our men and women in uniform have fought and died.

Jonathan Perloe
Cos Cob
The writer is a member of the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee.

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