Immigration continues to be one of the most significant issues for Latinos in the 2016 election. In mainstream discourse, Latinos have heard their share of xenophobic - and, in the case of Donald Trump, racist - remarks about immigrants from Latin America.
On 11/13, after I heard of the attacks in Paris, I felt deeply for the French people and the pain and fear they were experiencing. In 2013, I was a Boston resident, and remember viscerally what it was like to have a tragedy happen so close. The not knowing, the confusion, the fear, and the desire to protect everything one holds dear are feelings that resonate strongly with me.
In the days since the Paris tragedy, I have observed an outpouring of international support for the French people, and while some of this has been unifying and good, I have also heard distressing commentary about the Syrian refugees and Muslims akin to the negative rhetoric I have heard as a Latino.
As of 11/17, more than half of U.S. governors have said they will not welcome Syrian refugees to their states. When you listen to the U.S. presidential candidates' stances on combating terrorism, it is clear that there is a lot of confusion as to who the Syrian refugees are and what kind of threat they will pose to U.S. security.
Will our leaders be able to separate in their minds and the minds of the American people the difference between the refugees fleeing terrorism and the terrorists themselves? Their ability and willingness to do this will, I believe, have an impact on immigration reform in 2016. Will we welcome immigrants, or will we allow our fear to continue to fuel the wall-building rhetoric?
Who are the Syrian refugees?
According to the Washington Post, only 2,200 Syrian refugees have been welcomed into the U.S., and of these, 70% have been women and children under the age of 14. Syrian refugees are vetted after an 18-month period, and to date "no terrorist incident has ever been traced to somebody admitted through the American refugee resettlement program."
Much like many immigrants from Latin American, Syrian refugees are fleeing their country because of violence. According to the Brookings Institute, there are 7.6 million Syrians who have been internally displaced, and 4.2 million who have sought refuge outside of Syria because of the uncontrolled violence in their home country. Similarly, in addition to the economic reasons why so many Latin Americans migrate to the U.S., many are fleeing gang violence in their home countries. Over ⅓ of the homicides worldwide happen in Latin American, and 14/20 of the countries with the highest homicides rates are in Latin America. In 2014, the NY Times reported on the 90,000+ children from Central America who were fleeing unaccompanied to the United States to escape the massive gang violence in their own countries. The problem was so significant that human rights activists called for a change in the way we understood these children - not as 'immigrants', but as 'refugees'.
If it is clear that Syrian refugees are different from ISIS terrorists, then why are U.S. governors trying to block their entry? One oft-cited assertion has been that there is no clear way of discerning terrorists from refugees, even after an 18-month resettlement program. It is distressing that politicians like Marco Rubio are suggesting that the U.S. would be unable to figure out who is a terrorist after 18 months. I would like to assume that our U.S. intelligence is much stronger than that.
Their inability to discern between terrorists and those fleeing terror makes me feel less - not more - confident in our national security. I do not feel safe knowing that my politicians are barring an entire group of people to root out a possible outlier, all under the alias of "protection". What if I were part of the group they were barring? What if the U.S. decided to bar Latin Americans fleeing violence? How can we, in the face of such recent and roundly condemned terrorist atrocities in France, condone blocking human rights access to a group of people fleeing that very same violence?
What other reason do they have then for blocking Syrian refugees? I suspect it's pretty basic: fear. And that particularly pervasive and primal variety, too: fear of the other, fear of the unknown, xenophobia. The rhetoric that Donald Trump used, claiming that Mexico was sending criminals and rapists to the U.S. to promote his position that we ought to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and build a wall at the U.S./Mexican border, is rooted in xenophobia. Xenophobia is that laziest and most underdeveloped attempt at leadership, because it says I neither can take the time nor have the intellectual fitness to understand distinct differences between one person and another, and am therefore willing to marginalize an entire group of people.
What's more, xenophobia has no end. There will always be a scapegoat. Today, that scapegoat may be Muslims and Syrian refugees. Yesterday, it was Mexican migrants. Tomorrow, it might be undocumented immigrants from Latin America. It's only a matter of time before the rhetoric mutates and turns back on us again.