When anti-President Trump protesters took over a crane in downtown Washington on Wednesday, police blocked vehicle traffic on 15th Street NW from K Street to M Street, and blocked off L Street from 16th Street to Vermont Avenue. I walked across K Street at 15th, looking at traffic in both directions stalled on what is normally a bustling street. I walked across L Street at 15th, completely blocked off in all directions to vehicles, and thought about how many cars were usually passing through at 9 a.m.
Though it didn’t affect my commute, I thought about all the commuters who would be late to work, thanks to mindless protesters who shut down traffic. When commuters found out it was a Greenpeace protest that held them up Wednesday morning, would they view Greenpeace with praise or scorn?
Commuters weren’t the only ones harmed. Although plenty of work continued on the construction site, some of it had to be postponed because of the protest. Apparently 150 workers were sent home without pay.
Believe it or not, annoying someone, disrupting their day and especially threatening their livelihood probably isn’t the best way to bring them over to your cause. If Greenpeace really wanted to make friends, they’d focus less on disruptive stunts and spend more time appealing to people’s love of nature.
On a much larger and more serious scale, this situation has parallels to the refugee problem in the Middle East.
Greenpeace are environmental extremists in an ideological battle to get people to agree with their radical ideas. The Islamic State are terrorists in an ideological (and literal) battle with the West to get everyone in the Middle East, and eventually the world, to join its jihad or face death.
Have you ever been rejected by a university, a team, or a potential mate? The most common response to those rejections is, “Fine, I didn’t want you anyway.” To the contrary, acceptance makes people feel wanted, like they’re a part of a community that’s bigger than them.
A blanket ban on all refugees, as Trump signed into effect in an executive order on Wednesday, effectively says to people in war-torn countries, “We don’t want you here.”
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That’s the message the order gives to people in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen who just want to escape their countries and find a better life in a new homeland. It pushes them away from our country, our ideals, and what we stand for. It pushes anyone on the fence closer to the Islamic State.
When refugees or immigrants do come to the United States, it’s a mind-blowing experience. Our norms and beliefs that may have seemed odd before are suddenly a favored way of life. For example, Pew Research Center polling found that only 20 percent of Muslims around the world would be comfortable with their child marrying a Christian.
Compare that to 62 percent of Muslims in the U.S. who said they’d be comfortable with their child marrying someone who isn’t a Muslim. It’s not that the U.S. has gotten lucky and that more tolerant Muslims happen to come here: living in the U.S. makes Muslims more tolerant.
After they get settled, some refugees might even join our military so they can go back to the Middle East to fight the Islamic State. For example, Ali Mohammed grew up in Iraq but his family chose to come to the U.S. after extremists threatened his family. Now, Mohammed is a Marine translator in Iraq, helping in the fight against the Islamic State.
That may be true, one might say, but it’s better for fight the Islamic State abroad than to let them come here. If that’s your belief, keep the odds of a refugee turning into a terrorist in mind. Analysis published by the libertarian Cato Institute in September 2016 showed that refugees-turned-terrorists killed only three people in the 41 years prior to 2016. With the number of refugees who came to the U.S. in that time frame, that means the odds of an American being killed in a terrorist act committed by a refugee are one in 3.6 billion per year.
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Don’t forget: Our vetting process for refugees is already the most etreme kind of vetting there is. It’s more robust than the vetting done on candidates for other visas or for immigration. The terror attacks committed in the U.S. in the past few years have largely been inspired by the Islamic State, but not by members of the Islamic State who came to the U.S. through the refugee vetting process.
While Trump says the ban is only temporary until we can figure out what’s going on, and that extreme vetting needs to be done, he fails to articulate exactly what those terms mean.
Instead of pushing victims of chaos in the Middle East into the arms of the Islamic State, let’s welcome the tired, the poor, the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” to our homeland.
Jason Russell is the contributors editor for the Washington Examiner.
