Recent Attacks Underscore Need To Rethink Refugee Resettlement

Assimilating immigrants – even those coming from developed nations – is never easy. But there is clear evidence that the process is crumbling under the weight of mass immigration from nations with low levels of education and cultures drastically different from that of the West. Assimilation is further hampered by external interests, such as the Saudis that spend millions of dollars annually to spread a totalitarian form of Islam among disaffected members of the refugee community here in the U.S.

The past several years have demonstrated that Western refugee policies, intended to protect the innocent, can also harm citizens of host countries.  Western democracies have traditionally sheltered those fleeing persecution. But this good will has occasionally been repaid with aggression and violence.

Global jihadism is making the West a terror target. Terrorists are exploiting refugee and asylum protections to attack the very societies that offer the chance for a peaceful and prosperous life. Clearly, we must do a better job of distinguishing between those fleeing legitimate persecution and those who would kill us.

In the U.S., an Iraqi refugee recently pled guilty to attempting to bomb Texas malls. Twenty-four-year-old Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan came to America in 2009 fleeing sectarian violence. Yet he began planning the very type of bloodshed he claimed to be escaping. Several months later, a Somali refugee, attending Ohio State University on a scholarship, drove his car into a campus crowd then stabbed 11 fellow students. In fact, there have been approximately 380 foreign-born individuals convicted of terrorism in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

Read the rest of Dan Stein’s op-ed here.