The moral argument

For the slew of governors who have made it known that they have no interest in having Syrian refugees in their states, I would like to offer an excerpt from a poem.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddles masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

So reads, in part, “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, which you will find inscribed at the feet of the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus, in her poem, gives the statue a different name: The Mother of Exiles. Not only is this name fitting of the statue but it should also remain a pseudonym for our entire nation.

As a direct result of the terror attacks in Paris, an unfettered wave of xenophobia has run rampant across our nation and in doing so, we, as Americans, run the risk of betraying many of our most valued principles. When France, our oldest ally, is subjected to such horrors, it is easy to see the potential for our own suffering encapsulated within. However, in the face of hardship and fear we must not shy away from our defining characteristics, but rather embrace them even more fervently.

I am not saying that we have nothing to fear. In fact, I’m not even asserting that fear is a bad thing. Fear is instinctual, it is logical. Fear is also the very emotion that terror attacks are meant to incite. When we become reactionaries, we lose our capacity for sound reasoning, and a bandwagon approach to intolerance is not fitting of the American spirit.

I say that because Americans are not hardhearted; we give generously to charitable organizations, often through money, to make the world a better place. But when we are quicker to our wallet than our hearts, we miss the very point of donation. That is by no means an indictment of those who donate because I know for a fact that I am more likely to invest my money than my time, but it is all too easy to care about an issue when it is far away. This is about something more, this is about our humanity.

As a matter of perspective, let us consider our worst days. For the United States, the 9/11 attacks took the lives of more than 2,000. For France, the Paris attack killed or critically injured several hundred people, and almost 50 were lost in Lebanon last week. Since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011, more than 250,000 lives have been taken. I am not saying that any event or loss is more tragic than another, I am simply imploring the unwilling governors and indeed Americans at large to look on these victims not as our enemies, but as ourselves, because it is in our worst hours that we require the most empathy from others.

I am particularly embarrassed by Gov. Terry Branstad’s inclusion on the list of frightened legislators seeking to keep refugees out of their states, not only because I disagree with him politically, but because Iowa has long been a place of inclusion that welcomes all as they are and because he is not representing the state of Iowa as I know it to be.

Growing up in Des Moines and attending Theodore Roosevelt High School, I met young people whose families had immigrated, and sometimes fled, from all over the world. From Bosnia to Burma, from Somalia to Iraq, we were united not by where we came from but by the new geography we shared. According to the Des Moines Register, more than 1,700 refugees from at least 21 countries have settled in Iowa since 2012. A refugee “ban” in our state would cause so much more damage than just Syrians because if the ban had been instituted three years ago, none of those people would be here.

I love Iowa, I love Des Moines and I recognize that this place is no more my home than it is theirs. And I hope that someday soon I can share my state and my city with Syrians who are not seeking to make my home a dangerous place but rather a safe place to raise their families, a safety they have not known for many years.

The legal and statistical argument

Thankfully, the governors have no power to determine who is allowed, or how many people are allowed, to be admitted to the United States. The number is determined each fiscal year by the president, in consultation with Congress, but the number can be changed given that a crisis occurs. What the governors can do is attempt to take money out of their budgets that had been previously allocated to support incoming refugees. Unfortunately for the governors, they cannot specifically single out Syrian refugees, so if they reallocated those funds, they would be hurting potential refugees from every country.

Additionally, once the refugees are granted asylum in the United States, there is no way for a governor to stop them from traveling to whichever state they choose. Once they become legal residents of the United States they obtain the right to settle in whichever state they desire after their arrival.

Of the 745,000 refugees that have come to the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, only two have been arrested on charges relating to terrorist activity, which proves that ignoring the plight of tens of thousands of refugees for fear of terrorist activity in the United States is an unfounded premise, and we would be immeasurably cruel to these victims.

Quelling the fears of those who believe that extremists or militants could walk into the country unchecked is simple enough, as they need only to review the vetting process that each potential immigrant is put through to gain asylum in the United States. Their personal and family history is checked by government agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As you can see, it is by no means a walk-through.

The hopefully obvious argument

We are talking about human beings. These are people who find themselves in the direst of circumstances and have, quite literally, nowhere else to turn. Our state of Iowa is nothing without compassion and empathy. This entire country is nothing without its immigrants. And we are all lesser if we do not demand that as much as possible is done for these refugees, including, but not limited to, permanent asylum in the United States. And in the Iowa I know, all people seeking to live in peace will be welcomed wholeheartedly.