BORDERS
In recent weeks I've come across many public declarations (in person, on the news, and on social media) claiming “no refugee has ever become a terrorist.” Even President Obama said so. Yes, this is a very understandable emotional response to xenophobia; but it should matter to everyone if this statement, or anything like it, is true. Sadly, it is not. And because of that it feels less like a compassionate extinguishment and more of a fanning of flames.
The first example that comes to mind is the two men who plotted the 2013 VIA Rail attack here in Canada (and who were subsequently caught, put on trial, and sentenced to life in prison.) They weren't Canadian-born. Chiheb Esseghaier – a physics doctoral student – is Tunisian, and had earned landed immigrant status. His partner, Raed Jaser, was a refugee from Jordan (via Germany, but of Palestinian descent) who, after many years and much labour successfully passed through the vetting process, and had just been granted permanent residency. Consider the meaning and implications of this. Just ponder some of the questions that inevitably arise. Were these men raging religious fanatics with violent tendencies before arriving in Canada? If so, how did they even board a plane, land here, and set up residence in two of our most populous cities, Montreal and Toronto? If they weren't the situation may actually be far worse, for what is happening here on the ground? Among the charges that had these two men put away for life was “conspiracy to commit murder at the direction of, or in association with, a terrorist group.” The case against them cites support and direction from terrorist agents in Iran and tells us police and intelligence agencies were following them for more than a year as they planned their attack. The undercover agent involved in their capture, Tamour Elnoury, wrote a book largely about the case, called American Radical, in which he describes the men as lucid, taking steps to evade surveillance, and elaborating complex justifications for murder – all of which demonstrates beyond any doubt their knowing right from wrong. Elnoury describes the men as die-hard terrorists, full of hatred and desperate to kill infidels: calculating a plot to derail a train, shoot Jewish businessmen, and bomb Times Square.
In this light is the argument then that these two, an immigrant and refugee, were “not terrorists” because they didn't manage to kill anyone? Seems to be the claim. You couldn't state “no refugee has ever become a terrorist” while knowing these details. Or maybe it's just that you believe this to be an extraordinarily rare example? Well, there are two problems with that thought. Firstly, these cases are not so rare. Again, just pulling examples from memory, there are half a dozen cases from Alberta alone of folks heading off to join ISIS, and of mosques getting shut down due to their administration's apparent ambition to radicalize the community. In the US we know of a bunch of Somali refugees, settled for years in Minnesota, who returned to Africa to fight with al-Shabaab – the folks who claimed responsibility for those brutal attacks in Kenya. There are many hundreds more documented cases like these in North America alone if you go looking. And things are far worse and growing more so in Europe. The second fact that complicates the idea that these cases are rare is that, while many seem to feel borders are evil, people, most strangely, don't feel this way when it comes to any of the other barriers we erect to keep out malicious agents: the walls, windows, and doors; fire walls, malware and virus scanners; clothes, masks, and goggles; skin, hair, and immune systems. Why is that? What's the difference exactly? In just the same way it takes only one virus or one truly bad actor to destroy everything you care about. And just as we do with all these other forms, we don't need to be extreme in response to threats we just need to discriminate rationally. And just as almost no one fails to discriminate when eating, and no one swims in just any body of water or has sex with just any old person, we should have such a rational approach to immigration.
All these details should matter to us. Pretending any one of these cases of violent extremism is trivial is silly. Ignoring all of them together is mad. We don't need to persecute refugees or immigrants, but we don't need to lie to ourselves either. Yes, the truth can be upsetting but our willingness to live in a fantasy world is more so.
And we may wish to ask ourselves why President Obama – someone who is intelligent, we know has all the information, and whose second term is nearly up – would knowingly lie and do so so very blatantly. It doesn't make sense. You don't stamp out xenophobia with bullshit. That's fertilizer and a recipe for worsening distrust, fear, and hatred.
No, immigrants and refugees are not a special class of humans made uniquely benevolent by their circumstance. And we know for certain that it's not the most persecuted or destitute who – in solidarity and religious fervour, and in spite of the good will or of their host nation and its people – seek to blow you up or mow you down in a truck; instead, it's troublingly common to find that it's the highly educated and those who've gained all the rights and privileges of citizenship.
So we should simply have the audacity to treat people as we would ourselves (almost entirely other immigrants and refugees) expect to be treated.
