Let’s not obsess about low-risk refugees

In response to Friday’s Paris massacres, 30 U.S. governors – and counting – have announced that they will not allow Syrian refugees into their states.

There’s a stampede of fear behind this. It’s partly understandable, partly demagogic and wholly off target. Washington’s Gov. Jay Inslee is one of the few who’ve pushed back, and he’s right to do so.

The kernel of substance driving the refugee scare is the fact that at least a few terrorists have hidden themselves among the masses of desperate Syrians who’ve overrun the borders of the European Union.

Nearly all the migrants who’ve been pouring into Europe have been trying to escape miserable refugee camps or Syrian violence, or both. Some have no homes to return to: Their towns and villages have been destroyed, and Christians and Yazidis targeted by Sunni extremists have good reason to fear for their lives should they return.

To their great credit, Germany and a few other wealthy European nations have taken in hundreds of thousands of these Syrians. The United States has taken in roughly 2,200 so far; the Obama administration plans to take in another 10,000 in fiscal 2016.

The chance that any Islamic State terrorist will be hidden among the U.S.-bound refugees is very low.

In Europe, authorities in Germany and other destination countries have been playing catch-up with the flood of people, trying to identify just who the newcomers are.

The United States doesn’t have to do hasty after-the-fact vetting. Refugees can’t paddle across the Atlantic Ocean the way they’ve been crossing the short passage from Turkey to the Greek Islands.

To reach the United States, they are first screened right where they are. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees determines in the camps whether they have a well-founded fear of persecution. If they get past that hurdle, they are sent to an American resettlement center overseas for further scrutiny from the State Department, Department of Homeland Security and FBI.

It’s true that most would-be refugees are unlikely to have reliable documents. But given the relatively few people the United States will let in, American authorities can be picky. They’ll presumably keep giving priority to families with children, as they have in the past.

Some have proposed giving priority to Christian Syrians priority. What the U.S. government should do – and has been doing – is give priority to people fleeing persecution.

In the case of Syrians, that clearly includes Christians and members of other non-Sunni Muslim faiths. The “religious test” that Barack Obama and some others have complained about has already been imposed – by the Islamic State. The religious make-up of U.S.-bound refugees will undoubtedly reflect that fact.

Getting into the United States via refugee resettlement requires many months of hard scrutiny. Getting in by commercial flight with false papers is infinitely faster and easier. We’d suggest that Americans do a lot less worrying about refugee resettlement and a lot more about passenger manifests.

This story was originally published November 18, 2015 at 9:27 AM with the headline "Let’s not obsess about low-risk refugees."