The post? "Why can I not a find a Republican candidate willing to accept Syrian refugees? I can think of several dozen Bible verses they'd violate by refusing to help them. They claim to be Christian, but actions speak louder then words."
First of all, Facebook is not the place to post things like this. In fact, I am known to stop following people that post such things because (again the backfire effect comes up) I feel like I am being attacked personally. Of course, it isn't logical. It's...human. Secondly, I think I did attack people. I felt that the Republican politicians acted ignorantly and so I attacked anyone, including friends and family, for supporting them. If my job was to insult people, I succeeded.
Having felt better about myself for venting, I immediately regretted it as the comments came in defending the Republicans. The backfire effect began working on my readers and on me. In fact, even though I had lost a day's worth of productivity I felt like a champion for my cause. Of course I did! Every time I defended my beliefs I dug deeper into my trench until nothing could change my mind. I was absolutely certain I was right. I saw the same thing happen to my commentators as they dug into their trenches too.
At the end of the day everyone feels like a champion, don't they? They defended their cause and I defended mine and the other side is just too ignorant to ever get it. Meanwhile, we have a nation divided and feeling vulnerable and 4 million refugees on the European border trying to find a safe haven.
So how should I address the situation? Well, here goes:
According to a review of the Migration Policy Institute, of the 745,000 refugees resettled in the U.S. since 9/11, two men have been charged with terrorism-related crimes (providing funds for a terrorist organization in another country, not the United States). Additionally, the Tsarnaev brothers, whose parents were refugees from Chechnya, committed the Boston bombings, though there is no evidence that they were radicalized overseas; their turn to terror was the result of a domestic radicalization process.
However, movements that claim that refugees pose a threat have sought to cast doubt on the fact that
there is a 99.9997% chance that a refugee will not carry out a terrorist attack.
Republicans claim that refugees pose enough of a national security risk that we should not allow any refugees, particularly Syrians, into our borders because they might be terrorists.
However, the U.S. government thoroughly screens refugees' backgrounds--an intensive process involving the Homeland Security State, and Federal Bureau of Intelligence agencies. It takes 18 to 24 months for the checks for proposed refugees to the United States to be conducted (compared to four months in Canada).
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