Syrian Refugees

[Kutnupe14]

Yes, fighting for your own country is a novel idea.

Don't assume the people who disagree with you are the ones not thinking.

Yes, completely novel. People fight for their govts, but rarely for their countries.

 

[jamil]

Yes, completely novel. People fight for their govts, but rarely for their countries.

How about home? Does that work for you?

 

[dusty88]

To put a fine point on it, didn't he say "Syrian Refugees" and not "Muslims".

Yes, actually I just watched a video where he supposedly said something about registering Muslims. He didn't say that at all. A reporter tried to put words in his mouth, he babbled something meaningless, headlines were written, Rachel Maddow embellished, etc.

I don't even remotely support Trump but the headline is a lie.

He suggested perhaps keeping track of people after they come here (which would probably be a good idea for all non-citizens, if it's feasible)

 

[308jake]

Why would they fight for their homes when we will give them ours?

 

[Kutnupe14]

How about home? Does that work for you?

That depends. Is it worth it? Keep in mind even OUR ancestors decided their homes weren't "worth it," packed up and left (well some left involuntarily).
Syria, where the average worker ears about $300/month. The head of state is a dictator. The post powerful group opposing that dictator is a bunch of bloodthirsty loons who have been imported from all over the middle east. The other groups in the mix are at war with both. Which faction do you join? What am I fighting for? Freedom? A $350/month job? A democratic political system?

It's easy for an American to do these things, because we understand freedom, democracy, and self-determination. It's not so easy for a people that have been underfoot all their lives.

 

[308jake]

It's not so easy for a people that have been underfoot all their lives.

In my mind, that is all the more reason to fight.

 

[actaeon277]

So the other refugees (and are a bunch more) get a free pass? After all, he did say "Syrian Refugees"

Kut (thinks you're fooling yourself, if you don't think "Muslim" is implied)

I thought there was a lot of Christians that were given refugee status because of persecution.

 

[actaeon277]

Yes, actually I just watched a video where he supposedly said something about registering Muslims. He didn't say that at all. A reporter tried to put words in his mouth, he babbled something meaningless, headlines were written, Rachel Maddow embellished, etc.

I don't even remotely support Trump but the headline is a lie.

He suggested perhaps keeping track of people after they come here (which would probably be a good idea for all non-citizens, if it's feasible)

I'm not for him either. But I prefer to blame someone for what they said, not for what someone said that they said.

 

[JTScribe]

I thought there was a lot of Christians that were given refugee status because of persecution.

Yup, oodles and gobs.

Why Are There Only 53 Christians Among America?s 2,184 Syrian Refugees? | Christianity Today

 

[IndyDave1776]

This country exists for freedom and for people to pursue their dreams of bettering their lives.

No, this country exists for the purposes established in our founding documents including and especially the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Nowhere in either document do you find sacrificing the well-being of our own nation and its citizens for the well-being of foreigners of at minimum no particular allegiance to the US, and quite possibly hostile to the US, especially given that according to their book, they are obligated to be hostile.

Which country are we at war with?

The Constitution provides the mandate to defend against enemies, foreign and domestic. It does NOT specify that those enemies must be UN-member recognized nation-states led by governments with formal borders, an international diplomatic presence, or a stationary seat of government.

Spends years talking about how untrustworthy, corrupt, and ill-managed the government is.

Suddenly has 100% faith in the government and its processes.

Funny how that works, some people abandoning their long-professed principles as soon as they become inconvenient.

This seems relevant to the discussion of refugees providing for themselves.

More Than 90 Percent of Middle Eastern Refugees on Food Stamps - Breitbart

Relevant, but it doesn't really matter. If they are self-supporting, they are displacing a citizen given our current state of unemployment.

The problem with vetting anyone from these countries is the lack of records kept over there and any records of anything have probably been blown to smithereens in the last few years.

Excellent! Thank you for making a significant portion of my point for me. You have been insisting that the .gov is going to do a thorough and perfectly acceptable job of vetting refugees and now you are owning up to the fact that it simply can't be done even if the .gov really wants to, and I, for one, don't believe that the .gov gives a flying f**k about vetting them.

The new caliphate. Semantics instead of substance?

Indeed so. Once again, he fails to understand that 'enemies foreign and domestic' need not be recognized territory-holding nation-states.

I certainly do not relish the idea of offering an enemy an easy way into our country.

With that said, I think that there are many far easier ways to gain access to our country than our refugee asylum program. We are not Europe, refugees cannot simply walk directly across our borders. In order to enter our country as a refugee they must gain approval first.

With a British, German, Dutch, or French passport an un-compromised radical can walk right into the United States on a tourist visa, and then disappear into the ether. With a little planning a radical with a less-desirable passport can stll gain access to the US with a student or work visa.

I would rather live in Indiana than in Syria, today...tomorrow, whenever. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that there are people in Syria that feel the same way. Our government offers a "right way" to do this.

I have no problem with this. A lot of good people are going to have an opportunity to improve their lives, and the lives of their progeny. If a few undesirable characters are able to manipulate the system and gain access the country in order to do harm I do not see that as an indictment of the asylum program. Rather, I see that as an indictment of the human condition, and of religion specifically.

Indiana has a history of accepting refugees from "enemy" countries. We took thousands of Soviet refugees at the height of the cold war. Those refugees become earnest Hoosiers. I think the Syrians will too, if we let them.

First, just because we have greater vulnerabilities, that doesn't justify opening a door that we can very easily leave closed.

Second, I do not have confidence in the process for screening potential refugees, especially given that, as previously noted, there are no data available from which to work other than what they do or do not while on best behavior while standing in the queue.

Third, someone preferring to be here rather than elsewhere is not an adequate justification for admitting them.

Fourth, our citizens presently have significant difficulty providing for their own needs and those of their progeny. Taking the vulnerable among us and making them even worse off in the process of giving preference to those who are not citizens is not a position I consider acceptable. I see the indictment of religion coming in the form of those who would come to our country with the intention of by one means or other converting it into something that it has never been and never should be as an article of faith.

Fifth, it is important to remember that many of those 'enemies' of generations past were far more culturally similar with us including their views of governmental right and proper. That led to reasonably easy assimilation and for the newcomers to become Americans. Unfortunately, few newcomers of any subtype today have much inclination toward becoming Americans but rather seem to expect the US to conform to the image of the sh*tholes they are fleeing.

Which country? The caliphate isn't a country, sovereign nation, even a city.

Once again, for someone who gave another member a great deal of grief for not reading/not being able to read/not being able to comprehend, you sure as hell seem incapable of wrapping your head around the constitutional mandate for defense against ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC, as opposed to hostile formally-established and recognized nation-states.

Oh, and apparently China, which is a nation-state capable of declaring war and possessing a coherent foreign policy, agrees with the rest of us that a person or organization does not need to be a nation-state to be an enemy or to be on the receiving end of war, as follows:

China declares war on ISIS after terrorists claim to have executed Chinese hostage - Mirror Online

In that so many people don't believe in the ideals that this nation sought to achieve when it was founded, yes.

Yes indeed. If people like Washington could see us selling out the ideals of our founding and self-destructing the nation to our detriment for the good of foreigners who are, at best, indifferent to these ideals, they would be kicking our asses into next week if not next century.

We are always at war and must maintain vigilance. There are countless people, groups and countries that want to destroy our way of life.

Very well said! Enemies foreign and domestic can be any one of the categories of people, groups (both potentially non-state actors), and countries.

 

[IndyDave1776]

You guys are comparing apples to onions. The dynamic is completely different.

Really? I suppose speaking English makes a role-reversing difference on whether a person should be expected to fight for his own home.

I'm not familiar with how Syria worked before the SHTF there. The nation was pretty secular on a government level, but on a local level did tribal identities remain as strongly as they did in Afghanistan? That could make quite the difference if there was no real national "identity" as there is here.

It isn't such a stretch when you consider that at the time of our revolution, most people's primary loyalties were to their own colony/state and not to any central government, and we probably would not have been able to establish a stable and workable unified government without the personal influence of several highly-regarded individuals like Washington. I suppose that once again speaking English gives us a monopoly on being able to raise up men like GW.

Yes, completely novel. People fight for their govts, but rarely for their countries.

OK, so you are telling us that even though we fought against the most powerful military on the planet to establish our independence without a functioning unified government of our own, no one else on the face of the earth can manage that much? You? The person who seems to be INGO's most outspoken critic of any idea that can be used to support the notion of American exceptionalism?

Why would they fight for their homes when we will give them ours?

Not much incentive to put their backs into it, is there?

That depends. Is it worth it? Keep in mind even OUR ancestors decided their homes weren't "worth it," packed up and left (well some left involuntarily).
Syria, where the average worker ears about $300/month. The head of state is a dictator. The post powerful group opposing that dictator is a bunch of bloodthirsty loons who have been imported from all over the middle east. The other groups in the mix are at war with both. Which faction do you join? What am I fighting for? Freedom? A $350/month job? A democratic political system?

It's easy for an American to do these things, because we understand freedom, democracy, and self-determination. It's not so easy for a people that have been underfoot all their lives.

Yes, and after the packing up and leaving didn't work out so well as a permanent solution, we kicked the British out in spite of the incredible odds against it being possible, much the same as the odds that people today hold up as 'evidence' that we shouldn't expect the Syrians to even make the effort to take care of their own business.

Oh, and the last time I checked, even though Britain was more 'democratic' than, say, France, between the bizarre methods of selecting members of Parliament and the fact that those who did not reside in England proper did not get to participate at all, even in the less than equally apportioned representation that occurred, you seem to thing that our people were born as expert practitioners of the democratic process as we now know it even though this is a very difficult assertion to support.

Yup, oodles and gobs.

Why Are There Only 53 Christians Among America?s 2,184 Syrian Refugees? | Christianity Today

Of course. God forbid that we admit the people who are at the very top of the ISIS list of candidates for sadistic executions, or have the most in common with our own culture.

 

[churchmouse]

Dave has been busy.

 

[jamil]

Dave has been busy.

Dave has been repped.

 

[churchmouse]

Dave has been repped.

If one ever gets the opportunity to sit down and discuss life FTF with Dave it is an experience. I enjoy this with him.

 

[Birds Away]

If one ever gets the opportunity to sit down and discuss life FTF with Dave it is an experience. I enjoy this with him.

I've never had the pleasure but would like to.

 

[BugI02]

I'm not familiar with how Syria worked before the SHTF there. The nation was pretty secular on a government level, but on a local level did tribal identities remain as strongly as they did in Afghanistan? That could make quite the difference if there was no real national "identity" as there is here.

Yet another reason to keep out such tribalism here. If you cant or wont join the tribe 'American' then you are wrong for this country and should not be allowed in whether refugee or immigrant

 

[2ADMNLOVER]

Yet another reason to keep out such tribalism here. If you cant or wont join the tribe 'American' then you are wrong for this country and should not be allowed in whether refugee or immigrant

Such a simple concept , don't know why folks don't get it .

 

[jamil]

That depends. Is it worth it? Keep in mind even OUR ancestors decided their homes weren't "worth it," packed up and left (well some left involuntarily).
Syria, where the average worker ears about $300/month. The head of state is a dictator. The post powerful group opposing that dictator is a bunch of bloodthirsty loons who have been imported from all over the middle east. The other groups in the mix are at war with both. Which faction do you join? What am I fighting for? Freedom? A $350/month job? A democratic political system?

It's easy for an American to do these things, because we understand freedom, democracy, and self-determination. It's not so easy for a people that have been underfoot all their lives.

"Freedom, democracy, and self-determination". Wow.

No, I haven't discounted the possibility that their home is ****ty enough that they'd want to live somewhere else. However, the concepts of personal responsibility and self-sufficiency are not harmed by the similarities of the two contexts as you try to argue, rather they are upheld by the differences. America's European settlers came to a new land and had to survive; they built the culture they wanted to have. They weren't whisked away to a new land into an existing culture, as refugees, and given homes and means to live for free.

The arguments in this thread are indeed ideological. One side says, "be compassionate" and if you disagree with us that means you are cowardly, ignorant, meanies. The other says, "being compassionate in this way is unwise", and if you disagree with us, you are simply foolish. I'm not advocating against compassion, I'm advocating against foolish compassion. And from the things we think are foolish, you guys try to fashion a giant straw man against us.

It is an impasse where there isn't much middle ground. I can't convince you that you're being foolish. And you can't convince me that your "compassionate" solution is actually sincerely compassion (too easy to be compassionate with other people's resources), and especially that it's not foolish.

So who wins? Probably the dickhead in the oval office, who in almost 2 terms hasn't shown much fondness for "freedom, democracy, and self-determination". So, eventually, pause or no pause in the inflow, we will be bringing many more Syrian refugees into this country who don't understand freedom, democracy, and self-determination, and are more likely breed more Tsarnaev brothers than if we pursued a wiser solution.

 

[BugI02]

Such a simple concept , don't know why folks don't get it .

I think it's a touch of hubris on our part. We assume that people coming here will of course (eventually) recognize the superiority of our system and want to join in. It hasn't been until we began to commonly see evidence that this is not happening that there was a renewed push to require it.

 

[jamil]

Yet another reason to keep out such tribalism here. If you cant or wont join the tribe 'American' then you are wrong for this country and should not be allowed in whether refugee or immigrant

What makes immigrants "good Americans" isn't necessarily abandoning their culture and adopting ours. Vietnamese refugees are a good example. I worked with many Vietnamese over the years and I have a profound respect for them. They adopted the "American way" while still holding onto their culture. The people I worked with came here as refugees when they were young, went to college, got degrees and worked the same job as me. They really fit in here because their cultures were compatible in that they had a sense of personal responsibility, and accountability. They seemed to fully understand the concepts of freedom, democracy and self-determination and I think they thrived in a new land because of that. They found a way to adapt to American culture without replacing their own.