Liam Foster

Humanities pm
Position Paper
29 April, 2016
At 6:30 in the morning of August 3rd, two men walking along a beach found the body of
3 year old Alan Kurdi, a Syrian refugee who had drowned in an attempt to cross the
Mediterranean to seek asylum in Europe. This boy and the rest of his family, excluding his
father, washed up on beaches that same day. The boat that they had chartered to smuggle
them to Europe had capsized. The father held one of his boys under each arm in a vain attempt
to save their lives.
They are just a few of the innumerable people fleeing the war-torn Syrian nation for
whom a refugee camp is not an option. Due to a lack of economic opportunity in the camp, the
family could not make money nor a living there. The Kurdi family couldnt afford to use what little
savings they had been able to rescue from their homes for food in an overpopulated refugee
camp. They needed a place where they had opportunity economically. It is in the best interest of
the United States to admit 50,000 Syrian refugees, many of them very similar to this family. This
will improve the security, stability, and safety of the Middle East as well as building a better
foreign image of the United States. The United States is a country of immigrants. Our place as
the innovation capital of the world is being taken from us due to our sudden inability to accept
people in need. Many of the figureheads of American innovation are immigrants and refugees or
their descendants. Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Nikola Tesla, among others, come from this
group. Now we have slowed our admittance of those in need. Since 9/11 and the resulting mass
hysteria, our country has become xenophobic and discriminatory.
The cost of the admittance of the refugees will be very small. According to a report by
the Center for Immigration Studies, the cost to settle one refugee in the United States is about
$64,000. There are 320 million people in US. When you do the math, the cost per refugee per
US. citizen is about 0.02 cents. This cost will only account for 0.084% of the national budget.
This cost is most definitely not prohibitive.
This already small cost is offset by an influx in workers and an economy boosted by an
extremely assimilable admitted populace. John Cassidy, a writer for the New Yorker, states,
[The] Turkish economy will expand by three per cent this year and by four per cent next year.
Lebanons economy is also growing, at a rate of about two per cent this year, which will expand
to more than three per cent next year, the World Bank reckons. (Cassidy) According to the
International Rescue Committee, in the 26 cities in which we work, 80 percent of people from
Syria are in work within six months. (Milliband) According to a study by the Migration Policy
Institute, ...employed Syrians are more likely to work in high-skilled occupationsparticularly
in the sectors of educational services, health care, and social assistance, and retail tradeand
have higher earnings than the overall foreign or native-born populations.(Zong) This shows that
the Syrian refugees that will be admitted are employable. This influx of workers will boost the
economy and pay for themselves. This shows that the admission of refugees is the best long-

term plan for the aid of these refugees. The camps will continue to require funds. Resettled
refugees will eventually pay for themselves. Prolonged cost will not be an issue. These people
flee across oceans in search of work and opportunity. The educated often find what they are
looking for. This shows that the educated Syrian populace, the group that we draw our refugees
from, are employable and have the ability to support themselves without further government
support. These people have the initiative and skills, as shown by their perilous journeys to
safety, their high employment rate, and high wages, to be a useful addition to society. These
people will not be a burden. The United States has the ability to admit massive numbers of
refugees and has done so in the past. The New York Times stated, The United States once
offered refuge to tens of thousands at a time. In 1979, it provided sanctuary to 111,000
Vietnamese refugees and in 1980 almost doubled that number to 207,000. Around the same
time, the United States took in more than 120,000 Cuban refugees during the Mariel boatlift,
including more than 80,000 in one month alone. (Harris, Sanger, Herszenhorn) We admitted
nearly ten times the number of refugees proposed in the motion into the United States during
the Vietnam War. This admittance did not damage our younger and smaller economy back then.
The assumption that the admittance of less refugees into a much larger and robust population
and economy is simply invalid.
Even today, we demonstrate our immense ability to accept refugees. Over 115,000 Iraqi
refugees have fled to the United States since 9/11. ISIS, an organization of Iraqi origin, has had
ample opportunity to infiltrate this refugee flow, yet has not. If ISIS wanted to access the United
States disguised as refugees, they would have done so already. ISISs claim is an instrument
with the purpose of producing paranoia and fear of helpless refugees. In fact, no Syrian refugee
in the United States has ever been arrested on terrorism charges in the United States. The
Washington Post stated, A State Department spokesperson said of the nearly 785,000
refugees admitted through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program since 9/11, only about a
dozen a tiny fraction of one percent of admitted refugees have been arrested or removed
from the U.S. due to terrorism concerns that existed prior to their resettlement in the U.S. None
of them were Syrian. (Ye Hee Lee) According to the Washington Post, In an article on Oct. 18,
2015, the Economist further explained: If a potential terrorist is determined to enter America to
do harm, there are easier and faster ways to get there than by going through the complex
refugee resettlement process. (Ye Hee Lee) According to the Washington Post, Most of the
Islamic State's recruits and the most valuable are people who have been radicalized in
their own countries.(DePillis) If it is so much easier for ISIS to utilize social media to recruit
militants in other countries, why do they want to infiltrate the refugee flow? ISIS wants us to shut
our borders to refugees and to paint an image of our country as islamophobic, engendering a
hate of the United States among the Muslims of the Middle East. They use this hate to recruit
fighters in the geopolitical war against the West. ISIS wants us to reject those who need our
help in order to strengthen their recruitment ability. By closing our borders to refugees, we will
be strengthening one of the primary organizations that has precipitated the crisis we see today.
We need to admit these refugees in order to improve our reputation as well as the safety and
stability of the Middle East.

Syria needs our help. These people are fleeing the use of chemical weaponry,
indiscriminate bombing, civil war, and the extremist and genocidal ISIS. Increased funding to
refugee camps like the opposition has suggested will not work. The refugees that have fled to
Europe show this. If a refugee camp was a viable alternative to literally crossing oceans and
risking lives, we would not have a refugee crisis. People cannot go to these camps because
they need to have a source of income that the camps can not supply. People in these camps
have little access to education, food, water, and do not have income to buy these necessities.
Their insecurities in Syria have only been replaced by new ones in these camps. We need to
admit these people in order to help them live their lives.
The United States needs to admit these refugees in order to stabilize the Middle East,
weaken ISIS, and paint a better picture of the United States internationally. This will help make
us less vulnerable to terrorism. The cost of this program is not in any way prohibitive, as
evidenced by the larger admittance of refugees into a smaller government and economy during
the Vietnam War. This plan not only helps the United States both domestically and
internationally, but is the best way to help the people of Syria. According to the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2014, the lives of more than 3,500 men women and
children ended the same way that the toddler Alan Kurdis did: face-down and lifeless on a
Mediterranean beach. The death toll has since risen as more and more refugees attempt to flee
to the European continent. The following is written on the base of the most famous statue in our
country. Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The
wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my
lamp beside the golden door! We are a nation of migrants and refugees. These people require
our aid. Placing them in a refugee camp and prolonging the issue is not the correct course of
action. If the camps were viable, people would not be risking their lives crossing oceans. This
motion goes beyond saving the lives of the Syrian people; it saves their livelihoods. The United
States can not only afford to accept these people, but to do so would be in the best interest of
our country. It is the moral duty of our nation to do so. Please, vote yes on the motion in order to
show your support of a stable levant, a weakened ISIS, a morally just United States, and the
placement of a vital piece of the puzzle that is the rescue of the Syrian people.

Works Cited

DePillis, Lydia. "What Was behind ISIS's Attack on Paris, According to Experts." Washington
Post. 15 Nov. 2015. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/15/whatwas-behind-isiss-attack-on-paris-according-to-experts/>
Harris, Gardiner, David E. Sanger, and David M. Herszenhorn. "Obama Increases Number of
Syrian Refugees for U.S. Resettlement to 10,000."The New York Times. The New York
Times, 10 Sept. 2015. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/world/middleeast/obama-directs-administration-toaccept-10000-syrian-refugees.html?_r=1>
Milliband, David. "The U.S. Should Let In 100,000 Syrian Refugees." IQ2 Debates. IQ2
Debates, 13 Jan. 2016. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
<http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/1492-the-u-s-should-let-in100-000-syrian-refugees>
Ye Hee Lee, Michelle. "The Viral Claim That not One Refugee Resettled since 9/11 Has Been
arrested on Domestic Terrorism Charges."Washington Post. The Washington Post, 19
Nov. 2015. Web. 19 Apr. 2016. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/factchecker/wp/2015/11/19/the-viral-claim-that-not-one-refugee-resettled-since-911-hasbeen-arrested-on-domestic-terrorism-charges/>
Zong, Jie. "Profile of Syrian Immigrants in the United States."Migrationpolicy.org. Migration
Policy Institute, 23 Nov. 2015. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
<http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/profile-syrian-immigrants-united-states>