Guest writer

On unfounded fear

Ignorance clouding our minds

There are seven deadly sins, by Christian tradition: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride.

In these tremulous times, an eighth deadly sin has emerged to cloud all too many American minds with fear and even hatred. This fatal sin is ignorance.

Profound ignorance lies behind the fusillade of demands since this month's terror attacks in Paris to close our nation's door to all refugees from war-ravaged Syria (perhaps Afghanistan and Iraq as well).

These panic-mongers assert that admitting any Syrian refugees, including the youngest of children, might allow ISIS operatives or other fanatics armed with automatic weapons or suicide belts to murder innocent Americans.

This ignorance, whether willful or merely negligent, rests on remaining deeply clueless about the admissions process already in place.

If these deniers of America's traditional open-door policy bothered to seek the facts, they would be (or should be) ashamed of their ignorance. If they are politicians seeking voters' trust, they should be doubly ashamed. Any number of websites are available to lay out the facts, which were delineated in Sunday's New York Times.

The story carried this headline: "Why It Takes Two Years for Syrian Refugees to Enter the U.S." It listed the 20 steps already required for people from that war-devastated Mideast country, whether tyke or terrorist, to be legally admitted to the United States.

The first four steps occur before American authorities even get involved.

As Times reporters Haeyoun Park and Larry Buchanan mapped out, any Syrian applicant must first register with the United Nations, submit to a UN interview, be granted refugee status by that body, then be referred for resettlement in the United States.

According to the Times story, only the most vulnerable applicants are referred, accounting for less than 1 percent of refugees worldwide.

The next four steps involve a U.S. State Department interview, an initial background check, a higher-level background check for some applicants, and yet another background check for all refugees ages 14 to 65.

Next come three separate screenings of fingerprints. Then each case is reviewed at U.S. immigration headquarters and sometimes referred for more scrutiny by Homeland Security's fraud detection unit.

Syrian applicants still in consideration after those stages progress to a lengthy in-person interview with another Homeland Security officer, typically done in either Jordan or Turkey. Homeland Security approval is required for further consideration. (A House of Representatives bill passed this month would also mandate approval by the FBI director and the director of national intelligence.)

Next come screening for contagious diseases, a cultural education class and matching with an American resettlement agency. The penultimate step is a multi-agency security scrutiny before the refugee leaves for the United States. Then a final check comes at the American airport of entry.

Given the thoroughness of this vetting, already in place well before Paris' night of terror, it's no wonder that fewer than 2,000 Syrian refugees have been admitted to the United States in the last three years.

Any ISIS-motivated killer aiming to sneak legally into America disguised as a Syrian refugee today would have needed to apply around the end of 2013, before that demented caliphate had even declared itself to the wider world.

Those are some of the plain facts. It's sadly un-American that they're struggling to swim upstream against a flood of ignorance, willful or negligent.

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Jack Schnedler retired as Deputy Managing Editor/Features of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 2011. He is a Vietnam-era U.S. Army veteran.

Editorial on 11/28/2015

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