Syrian and Iraqi refugees abandoned their homes and everything familiar in a desperate search for safety. Carrying their babies and scant worldly possessions they trudge across the burning sand, pile into battered boats, face a hazardous Mediterranean only to land on strange lands seeking shelter. They want be safe. They are not going through all this because they’re bored or greedy. They aren’t seeking better paying jobs, nicer clothes or bigger cars. They simply want to avoid being slaughtered by the same maniacs who are threatening the rest of the world. We’re on the same side of this war, folks. It’s not like they’re friends with the terrorists. Even if a bad guy sneaks across with them, it doesn’t mean they invited him. However, several Republican presidential candidates have lost their program guides. Instead of standing by the words inscribed on our Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
These pompous candidates are determined to slam that golden door in their faces. And why? Because immigration and terrorism are hot button topics and they want votes. So before you jump on the closest political band-wagon think about this:
- Terrorists can go wherever they want to go – Syrian immigrants or no Syrian immigrants.
- They are well funded. Their groups have money and means, passports and bombs. Islamist extremists have been getting into the USA for years. On student visas, work visas, in freighter cargo holds or as stowaways on Boeing 747’s.
- Not all terrorists are imports from the Middle East. Some of them already live here. Some were born here. Many are not and have never been Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Druze, Yazidis, or any other ethnic minority who call the middle east their home
- Groups like al Qaeda are transnational groups made up of many nationalities and based in many countries, so let’s not discriminate against one terrorized nationality.
It’s abhorrent that these political wanna-be’s spout simplistic, reductionist ideas and pretend that they are solutions. It’s even more abhorrent that so many potential voters swallow this crap as if it were the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
And to make it worse, a new screening idea hit the stomping grounds. Christianity. Apparently if you declare yourself a devout worshiper of Christ, then you’re home free. All our immigration officials need to hear is that you are a God-fearing Christian and you’re home free.
Short-sighted candidates believe, or say they believe, if you go to the right church and pray to the right God, in the right language from the ‘right’ bible then the rest of us can breath a sigh of relief. That defines you as a good guy (the right God’s guy) and we trust you. Pray to the Christian god and you will be a good neighbor, a good citizen, a hard-working, tax paying, family loving American.
Okay, let’s check that out. (per Colin Taylor, posted 11/17/2015)
- The shooter who killed and wounded people at the Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church on 7/27/08 was a devout Christian, an anti-abortion right-winger.
- White political right-wingers have waged war on abortion providers for years. In the name of ‘truth and justice’ they are responsible for at least 6 murders, 383 death threats, 153 assault/batteries, they’ve wounded 13 people, waged 100 butyric acid attacks, 373 physical invasions, 41 bombings, 655 anthrax threats, and several kidnappings. Sound like terrorism? You bet!
- Timothy McVeigh, America’s most notorious domestic terrorist, obsessed with the Branch Davidians, bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City on 4/17/1995, killing 168 people, including nineteen children, and wounded 648 others.
- The Ku Klux Klan in their white sheets and pointed hats terrorized us since the Civil War. ‘God fearing Christians’ they massacred, bombed, lynched, pillaged, raped and murdered thousands of African Americans, Jews, Catholics and gays; not a single one worshiped Allah.
- On 6/17/2015, a white racist member of a Lutheran church shot up the historic Zion Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston killing, among others the pastor and State Senator Clementa Pickney.
You’d think this array of facts would correct those Republican assumptions just a tad, but apparently not. So, where does that leave us? If being born an American isn’t an anti-terrorist guarantee and living here isn’t a guarantee and working here isn’t a guarantee and being a member of the right church isn’t a guarantee what would be? We can build fences everywhere but that’s not going to stop those with adequate determination, funding and resources. We can attach lie detectors to everyone while they pray and see if they are sincere believers in the Christian God, but that won’t help, there are plenty of sincere Christian killers. We can threaten to kill the families of all the terrorists but then ISIS and al Qaeda will kill their families and recruit the orphans.
So what’s the answer? Think about why people are enraged and disillusioned. Why young people are so susceptible. Why hatred is the default setting between divergent societies across the globe. See if you can identify some of the hundreds of reasons why this is happening world-wide: clash of values/cultures, socioeconomic inequalities, hunger, disease, rigid puritanical pseudo-morality, ethnocentrism, homelessness, mental illness, social isolation, envy, greed, flagrant national antipathies, then once your view is broadened, stop supporting the simplistic-oriented, hate-mongering politicos. Let them know you expect more than blustering and bullheadedness. Insist that they delete their crazed acrimonious rhetoric from their speeches and for God’s sake (any God’s) VOTE for rational, sensible, factual intelligent candidates. At least that gives us a chance to keep our political/governmental structures on track and maintain the USA as a respected world leader. If we’re not, the world has a bigger problem than immigration debates.