Letter: Thoughts on the refugee question

Barack Obama has an ally in Ray Richmond’s column. Richmond isn’t “proud today of the way my country is behaving.” Neither is our president.

Richmond claims our countrymen are telling Syrian refugees “to turn around and go home to lives of certain gloom and likely death.” Apparently he’s unaware many Syrian refugees seeking entry into the U.S. have already found safety in Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and other countries of the region. This is a finding by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, confirmed by the U.S. State Department.

Richmond asserts this “sounds disturbingly like the ’30s and ’40s when Jews were denied emigration to the United States, and left to die at the hands of the Nazis.” Not so. Between 1933 and 1941, 35% of all immigrants to America under quota guidelines were Jewish.

A recent Arab Opinion Index poll of 900 Syrian refugees found [13%] held a positive view of the Islamic State. Seventy-five years ago, I doubt one Jewish immigrant held a favorable view of Germany’s Nazi Party.

The Community-Organizer-in-Chief has led from behind for years. On his watch, the Syrian civil war began in 2011. Yet our president seems incapable of uttering the words “radical Islamic terrorists.”

FBI Director James Comey testified recently to the House Judiciary Committee that we have no real way to conduct background checks on refugees. If he can’t assure our nation’s safety, there’s serious doubt a columnist can. The solution needs to be left to the president of the United States. The next one.

Allen Brandstater

Glendale