In a recent Facebook post, I wrote —-

“The refugee issue is not a Syrian war issue or an Iraqi issue. The refugee issue will be with us for the long foreseeable future due to fundamental Islamic issues. That is why I would argue that it can’t be solved by our opening our borders but must be solved in the homeland where the issues exist and will continue to exist. That does not mean that we should not be benevolent and driven by our faith or desire for human decency that we should not act. We should act and extreme vetting is a critical part.
The birth rate among Muslims is multiples of most western nations. They are outgrowing their resources and ability to care for themselves. They have relied upon oil, but technology that lets us recover oil from shale deposits that are plentiful in North America makes their oil relatively lower in value and declining. Historically, Muslim nations do not develop or deploy technology – as opposed to the tiny country of Israel that could physically fit within the borders of Lake Michigan – who is a rich generator of new technology and food production practices.
The Muslim nations have a problem of over population and limited resources that drive some of their people to other nations, that is a constant threat to developed nations who they see having prosperity while their people are down trodden and who have constant internal strife as resources grow even tighter.
We need to take an honest and realistic view rather than going to a political knee-jerk response when anything regarding the refugee situation comes up.”

The above should explain why our accepting masses of refugees does not fix the problem, but one could make the argument that adopting a child does not make things right for all orphans but it certainly does greatly improve things for the one child that was adopted.  It is hard to argue with that.

I will argue that bringing in masses is a major issue in my mind. Let’s step back. Only one Muslim country has any version of a democracy and that is Turkey who has a parliamentary democracy. While their president is elected by a vote of the people, it is to a great extent a ceremonial position.

So what’s my point?  There are many, many differences that people raised in an Islamic culture face when coming to the U.S. Let’s define a few. There are people that would argue that the nuances of a democracy can only be learned by living in a democracy for a long period of time.  Let’s start first with the concept that legally, ALL are created equal. That EVERYONE has the same legal rights as me is a foreign concept to folks raised in Islamic countries.  Certainly, women are NOT equal there.  While culturally/socially, some may not feel equal here in the U.S., under the law, ALL are equal.  That is a fundamental underpinning of our nation and its laws.

With freedom comes responsibility. In Western Europe and North America, masses queue – get in line – to funnel through choke points like boarding a plane, going through security, getting your license renewed at the DMV.  In the Mideast and SE Asia, they mass around the choke point – they don’t queue.

We walk and drive on the right.  We make four-way stops work by a system of rotation. We “generally” honor traffic signals as opposed to what we see as craziness on the streets of cities in Asia and SE Asia.

We honor private property.  We don’t routinely walk across our neighbors yard or hunt on farmland without permission.  In a free country, where law enforcement basically exists to reign in the tiny percentage of outliers in our society, the masses have to assume personal responsibility to make freedom work in a democracy.  This is a foreign concept for cultures different than ours, where strong cultural and religious influences are as much law makers and law keepers as the totalitarian leaders that run the country.

Can people learn and adapt?  Absolutely. They must be taught and surrounded by reminders daily until they get it.  If women for your entire life were a lower status than you, that can be a hard idea to change in your mind.

In summary, we can’t have what happened in France and Sweden where there are Islamic enclaves that have formed where refugees have concentrated where law enforcement can’t even safely go. They only have contact with the culture and laws of the country when they choose to come out of the enclaves. Some parts of Paris have such suburbs. That does not promote integration.  That does not promote learning and constant reminders of how democratic, free people live.  That does not promote personal responsibility. So we are not only vetting to try and keep out the dangerous extremist, we are also managing numbers and vetting for people that can integrate and adapt to democracy and American freedom. We can’t afford to fail at this.  How would we ever recover if we did?