The argument, if you can call it that, for letting more refugees or migrants into the country is that, as put it in quoting Elizabeth Warren, “We’re not a nation that sends children back to ISIS murderers because we don’t like their religion.” I only begin with this quote from Cenk Uygur because it is nearly identical to every other argument I have heard in favor of letting in more migrants.
The argument begins with emotional manipulation; most of the migrants coming into Europe and the United States are not children. In fact, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, most of them are adult men -- 62 percent to be exact. So the argument begins by saying that if you don’t support the policy of having open borders and letting in as many migrants as possible, then you are an evil, soulless monster, and you hate children. The argument goes on to further set up this straw man by saying that conservatives only want to restrict the number of migrants because of the religion of the migrants.
Now, as far as I know, there have only been a few Republicans who have said anything about screening migrants on the basis of their faith, and those would be Jeb Bush and Donald Trump. So they chose the statements of two men to be representative of all Republicans and thus all conservatives. Most conservatives that I have heard have a deep concern about the security problems of letting in a bunch of young Muslim men from countries that have been at war for the last few years, and who might well be Islamic State fighters. And yes, most conservatives are quite comfortable with denying citizenship to young men who believe in a faith that has repeatedly shown its hostility to every aspect of Western society and every intellectual achievement within the Western world since the Enlightenment. The argument being made by the progressives is not a logical one; rather it is the response of emotional reactionaries upon having their faith challenged. So it begins with emotional manipulation and closes with a straw man -- sounds about right.
What's even worse about this argument is that it is hypocritical and has no limiting principle. The reasons given for why we have to let this particular group into our country are that they are “fleeing from danger.” There are quite a few people who are fleeing or would like to flee from quite horrific dangers within their own country. Right now, in the Congo, there is a mass killing going on that rivals the European Holocaust. In the Congo, close to 6 million people have lost their lives, and that is a conservative estimate. Don’t you think that those people are in real danger? And that if they thought they had a chance of getting accepted into the United States, they would try and flee from that danger? Of course they would, who wouldn’t? But then, by the principle and precedent set up by the Left, we would also have to accept every single citizen of the Congo who is “fleeing from danger.”
OK, maybe you think we can handle taking in everyone from Syria and the Congo who is fleeing from danger. What about the citizens of South Sudan, who are constantly being attacked by the Sundanese government because the people in South Sudan happen to be Muslim. Certainly if they thought that they could get into the United States, they would take the risk to try and get here. Also, they have an even stronger case for “refugee status” because they are being persecuted for their religion.
OK, so now we are taking in the Syrians, people from the Congo, most of the Muslims living in South Sudan; who else is on the list? Certainly women and LGBT people living under ISIS control, under the repressive regimes of Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Jordan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, and maybe even Russia, depending on your view of their recent laws concerning homosexuality, could make a strong case that they are being persecuted and would fit under the criteria of refugee status. In many of the countries I have just listed, homosexuality is punishable by death. Can you really say that someone who may be killed for their sexuality would not be fleeing from danger if they tried to make their way to Europe or the United States?
OK, so now we have women and members of the LGBT community from most of the countries of the Middle East and several countries in Africa. But I am sure that will only amount to about, oh, I don’t know, maybe 20 million refugees. I mean, surely the richest country in the world can handle less than a 10 percent increase in its overall population.This is not a slippery slope argument; it is an “apply the logic of the argument to real cases happening in the world right now” sort of argument. It is the same thing that liberals did when neoconservatives said that they wanted to invade Iraq because the Saddam Hussein regime was so evil, and the liberals rightly pointed out that there are quite a few evil regimes operating in the world today, so are we going to invade all of them? To which the neocons pretty much answered, yes we are.
If you take refugees who are fleeing from danger in Syria, then what is the logic that would say that we shouldn’t take refugees fleeing from danger in the Congo or South Sudan or Saudi Arabia? Are we going to send those children back to Christian murderers or Wahhabist murderers or sometimes just plain criminals who run the nation? So is it just ISIS murderers that we are unwilling to send children back to? The people selling you these emotional arguments will never give you an answer to any of these questions because they are emotionally blackmailing you. They have no interest in convincing you with logical argument.
There is nothing in the logic of the Left’s argument on taking in refugees that would prevent a policy of open borders because, remember, there are a lot of people fleeing from danger who come from Mexico and the rest of Latin America. Can anyone say that the cartels do not constitute a real danger for millions of Mexican and Latin American citizens? And what is even worse is that a big part of the power of the cartels comes from our war on drugs, even further increasing our duty and responsibility to take them in. So why even have a border policy when there are this many people who are fleeing from danger and would like to have America as a place to escape from that danger? I have two problems with this idea: 1) I believe in national sovereignty and that any nation has a right to have borders and have a say in who gets to enter their country; and 2) I would like to help every single person who is fleeing from danger, I really would. I don’t like being the guy who is saying that we can’t help all of these people and that to do so would change our culture in terrible ways; it is not a comfortable position to take.
No matter how I state this position, I am always going to seem like the evil conservative who is harming “women and children”; I would much rather be on the “migrants welcome” side because then I would be able to feel good about myself and have the feeling that I am on the “right side of history.” But I cannot take that position because 1) importing enough people from a different culture will destroy the Western culture that I love; and 2) the people we are importing do not share the same values as me, so giving them more voting power and social power is something that goes against any logical political calculation that can be made.
I also think that a significant amount of the way that the Left frames this issue is disingenuous and emotionally manipulative. They frame this issue in this way: The people who want to take in more refugees are the morally and emotionally more considerate people, morally good people, and the people who are on the “right side of history.” While the people who don’t want to take in more refugees/migrants or don’t want to not take in any refugees or migrants are the bad people, the people who have something wrong with them, who just hate women and children, who hate Muslims, who hate brown people, and who hate everything good in this world including sugar, spice, and everything nice. This is a tactic to sound like you are making an argument without actually having making one. It is a way of morally berating people that quite frankly has no place in rational conversation and that should have died out around the time of the Salem Witch Trials. It does not bother me to be morally berated in this way because the people who do the berating mainly support socialism, which was the main factor in the mass murder of over 100 million innocent people and they mainly don’t believe in my rights to individual liberty. They have no moral high ground and maybe once they have washed all of that blood off of their hands they can berate me about my immorality and heartlessness. For now, though, I will not take moral instruction from those who wish me to be in chains rather than be free and I would encourage you to do the same.
If we are to maintain our civilization and our freedoms, we will have to do quite a bit of independent reasoning and not be so easily swayed by those who play on our emotions and use their perceived moral high ground to point the finger of moral condemnation at others. Think for yourself, reason for yourself, and understand the wonderful words of one of our founding fathers, John Adams. He said: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Emotional manipulation and absurd arguments may rule the day in the minds of many, but facts cannot be changed. Seek the truth, seek the facts, and know that if someone tells you not to seek them on a certain issue, then you are probably on the right track.
