Texas Gov. Greg Abbott isn’t afraid to take an unpopular stand. When it comes to honoring the hero who stopped a recent church shooting in its tracks or standing up for Second Amendment rights on college campuses, this is a good thing. But with his Friday evening decision to reject new refugees from Texas, this time the governor has come down firmly on the wrong side.
After the Trump administration reduced the overall number of refugees the United States will accept drastically, it also changed the resettlement rules so that states must provide consent or opt-in to receive refugees. And as reported by the Washington Examiner, Abbott penned a letter Friday in response to this change that he declined to accept refugees to his state for fiscal year 2020.
He wrote that “the state and nonprofit organizations have a responsibility to dedicate available resources to those who are already here, including refugees, migrants, and the homeless — indeed, all Texans.” The governor also noted that his state’s decision doesn’t deny any refugee admission to the U.S., or stop already-admitted refugees living in another state from moving to Texas.
Abbott will earn praise for this decision from prominent immigration skeptics on the Right such as Tucker Carlson and Michelle Malkin, but it’s the wrong call. The Trump administration was only asking Texas, a state with a population of nearly 30 million, to take in a few thousand refugees. For these refugees fleeing violence, disaster, and terrorism, a new home offers them a new life.
To be clear, when we’re talking about refugees, this does not refer to illegal immigrants. A refugee is “someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution.” The refugees in question under Abbott’s decision are ones who have already been accepted by the federal government, approved to enter the county, and vetted for security concerns by the federal government. All that’s left is for states to accept them.
Texas can more than handle the costs of refugee resettlement, which are inflated by critics who also overlook the benefits refugees bring to a community. As I previously explained:
No, not really. In the long run, refugees still have a net positive economic impact. A 2017 report from inside the Trump administration even found that ‘refugees brought in $63 billion more in government revenues over the past decade than they cost.’
So, too, while it’s reasonable for Americans to have concerns, the security threat posed by refugees has been statistically shown to be nearly negligible. Abbott’s decision to turn refugees away from the Lone Star state is unsupported, unwarranted, and most importantly, uncompassionate.
The editorial board of the Dallas Morning News criticized Abbott’s decision in stark terms, writing: “Texas has for decades been a leader in welcoming and helping to resettle refugees who have in turn made this state better. That reputation is tarnished now by opting out of something as fundamental to our national character as welcoming those fleeing war and persecution, as were those who founded this great country.”
Thankfully, 17 other Republican governors have decided to accept refugees into their states. It’s just a shame Greg Abbott can’t be counted among them.
