Although the Syrian immigration crisis has been temporarily addressed, with world powers like the United States and members of the European Union pledging to accept thousands of immigrants, the crisis is sure to flare up again as more people flee from the living hell that some parts of the Middle East have become.
As American citizens, we have the ability to influence policy regarding the immigration crisis through voting and communicating with our elected representatives. Locally, we should use this ability to pressure the representatives of Salt Lake City into accepting more of the 10,000 immigrants that Obama has pledged to resettle in the U.S. during the coming year.
Our city has the capacity to accept many more people. Some Salt Lake City residents may be hesitant to support this action, invoking the argument that immigrants pose a risk to our communal security. Those concerned residents seem to be assuming that all Middle Easterners are terrorists simply because they come from the Middle East. However, 90 percent of all terrorist attacks are being carried out by non-Muslims who are not from the Middle East, so that fear appears unjustified. The statistics, as well as common sense, support the all-too-frequently ignored fact that not all Middle Easterners are terrorists.
Would you deny a starving and desperate individual food and shelter under the shallow presumption that, because of where they were born, they must be a terrorist? Our refusal to accept more Syrian immigrants is creating the conditions that make people far more likely to participate in terrorism. By denying them an escape from the nightmare their lives have become and preventing them from leaving the refugee camps, we are creating people who are desperate enough to join a terrorist organization in return for a means of feeding their families. We are not protecting ourselves from terrorism; instead, we are making the global community more vulnerable to it.
Once we have accepted more Syrian refugees, we must ensure that the immigrants have the proper support network to succeed and feel like they’re a part of the Salt Lake City community. We must ensure they are afforded the same level of respect and offered the same opportunities that we enjoy. We must ensure they are judged fairly and without hidden biases.
On the national level we must make a stand by voting for candidates who support accepting more immigrants, not candidates who shy away from the challenge. Remember, these immigrants did not ask for the war that forced them out of their home countries. They did not want the barrel bombs of the Assad regime or the horror of mortar strikes that reduced their home to rubble or the pain of losing a family member. We must also vote for candidates who have a viable way to permanently end the conflict on the ground, whether that means deploying U.S. ground forces or arming and training militaries in the region.
As Americans and human beings, it is our responsibility to accept immigrants with open arms. America has long been the destination of those who yearn for a better life. As a result we have prospered and grown strong, becoming a leader in the developed world. Some of America’s most cherished heroes, such as Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, were immigrants from foreign countries. These are people who revolutionized their respective industries. Our own forefathers were immigrants who came to a foreign land in search of freedom and opportunity. It is up to us to determine whether that sentiment is reflected in today’s society or if it dies off, a forgotten concept of a bygone era.