“They look like them, they talk like them, and so they must be them. They can’t be trusted
within our boarders, not during a time like this. It’s safer for everyone else within the nation that
they’re separated from our communities. During a time where the world is in conflict, it’s better
to worry for our own rather than be concerned with those who may just very well be enemies of
the state.” What’s most disturbing about this kind of talk is that our nation has had this sort of
mentality multiple times within the last hundred years. Post Pearl Harbor America developed a
distrust for its American born Japanese populace. Fearing that these citizens were involved in
espionage simply because of their heritage and race, internment camps quickly sprung up
towards the western seaboard. Conditions were poor, living quarters were often small and stuffy,
and imprisoned Japanese Americans were under constant watch by armed guards. Attempting to
flee the camps would result in arrest or even death. To the rest of the America, these were just
the necessary steps required to keep the nation safe.
Today the United States experiences a level of fear and paranoia that it has not seen since then.
As the Islamic State continues to spread across the globe committing acts of violence and
manslaughter on massive scales several countries have begun to take certain precautions to
prevent a possible repeat of the attacks in Paris, France. This has meant countries administering
heavily armed police and military personnel to populated major cities all over the world,
countries such as France and Russia taking military action against Isil directly in Syria via
airstrikes, and some even going as far as turning away Syrian refugees by closing their borders.
Fleeing the country are millions of men, women, and children, most of them traveling by foot
attempting to make it out of their now war torn homeland. However parts of the world have
agreed to open their boarders to thousands of these incoming immigrants. Germany has agreed to
take in a little under a million of these refugees, the U.K. is sheltering more than a hundred
thousand Syrians, and the US will be taking in an estimated five to ten thousand Syrians within
the coming months. This decision alone has caused Americans to split the country down the
middle as to whether or not this was the right call.
Already over two dozen states have had their officials proclaim they are opposed to allowing
Syrians to migrate and take refuge within their borders. While the states might not have the exact
power to turn away these migrants, I feel one day future generations will find these numbers
unsettling. From my perspective I don’t think we could be doing enough for these people.
Thanks to social media we’ve all seen devastating photos of families bloody, bruised, and beaten
along with hearing thousands of horror stories from the Syrians themselves about their travels
and what has happened to their homes. However most of America fears that Isil will use the
cover of the refugee migration to infiltrate the states and fulfil their promise of wreaking havoc
within the U.S. This is an understandable fear considering the Paris attacks were carried out
within this fashion. However this hate and closed mindedness is not only aimed at the Syrians,
but the Muslim population as a whole. This has led to bigotry and even going as far as hate
crimes being committed against people under the Islamic faith in the United States.
Unfortunately, there’s not much about this we can change. We can take in as many refugees as
we want, but the cold truth is we can’t alter everyone’s perspectives to our liking.