Refugee
Vote a Failure for Obama
By ELIZABETH
WILLIAMSON NOVEMBER 19, 2015 5:18 PM
On Thursday the
House overwhelmingly passed H.R. 4038, the American Security Against
Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act of 2015, which aims to stop resettlement
of Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the United States indefinitely. The
Senate is expected to debate the bill after Thanksgiving. Its fate is
uncertain there, and if it reaches President Obama’s desk, he has
said he will veto it. But in a stunning rebuke to the White House,
the legislation passed the House with a veto-proof majority.
There is little
doubt that the bill’s Republican sponsors exploited fear aroused by
the Paris terror attacks to build support for it, seeing a handy
opportunity to pursue a broader anti-immigrant agenda. It is a shame
that the nearly 50 Democrats who voted for this measure couldn’t
find it in themselves to resist.
But not for the
first time, President Obama failed to read the mood of Congress and
by extension many Americans, who after the Paris attacks are fearful
of admitting anybody from the Middle East. Traveling in Asia with his
closest advisors, the president was hampered in his effort to lobby
Democrats besieged by calls from constituents terrified that the
United States is next.
In a last-ditch
effort to head off Democratic defections, the president dispatched
Denis McDonough, his chief of staff, and Jeh Johnson, the Secretary
of Homeland Security, to the Hill on Thursday.
They and other
administration officials have struggled mightily to assure Americans
of the safety of the refugee resettlement program. The United States
has accepted 1,200 Syrian refugees this year, and three quarters of
them are women and children. Only 2 percent of those admitted have
been military-aged males not traveling with families. It takes up to
two years for a refugee from Iraq or Syria to be approved for
admission; nearly half are rejected. Stopping refugees at the border
will have little to no impact on the movement of terrorists, who
generally either enter illegally or are born here.
But for nearly a
week now, Americans have been watching footage of the horror in
Paris. They’ve seen the carnage, and absorbed the utter randomness
of the attacks. Most important, they have taken in the fact that at
least one of the attackers may have made it to France as a refugee.
For them, the facts
of the refugee program are not enough. For legislators, next year is
an election year. As a result, even House Democratic leaders refused
to tell legislators how to vote. “I’ve said to them from the
start, ‘Nobody’s asked you to do anything. Do whatever works for
you, for your district,’” said Nancy Pelosi of California, the
House minority leader, who voted against the bill. Some in the
congressional delegation from New York spoke eloquently against the
bill, but others lambasted the administration for asking them to take
a vote that could doom their reelection chances.
The urgency of
Americans’ worry made it imperative that the administration provide
political cover for Democrats to vote their consciences. The
president has more than a week before debate begins in the Senate to
absorb Thursday’s message and act upon that most basic of truisms:
You can’t fight emotion with facts.
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