Editor,
Gov. Susana Martinez wants to refuse to take any Syrian refugees until they have been fully vetted to ensure that they are not terrorists.
Muslims are not ISIS: They are not, in fact, terrorists any more than Christians are the KKK or the Catholics of old were the Spanish Inquisition. Refugees coming from the Middle East are running from the same terrorists that you are afraid of.
I am sure Martinez realizes this, but I do not think she understands the implication of letting these refugees set up camps elsewhere. Refugee camps are breeding grounds for crime, disease and poverty, and camps are certainly where the 10,000 refugees that Martinez wants to refuse will end up.
These are families, college-educated individuals (40 percent of Syrian displaced persons are college-educated, by many accounts), teachers, engineers and grocers. These peoples’ lives and homes were destroyed by the organizations that filled the power vacuums caused by Western intervention in the Middle East for so many years, and now we are refusing to offer shelter.
Not only would providing shelter be the right thing to do, but it would keep these poor, tired, terrorized people out of refugee camps (and likely reduce the costs and time required to integrate them into American society — costs that will only compound the longer it takes to “vet” them).
France gave us Lady Liberty, and she has a poem inscribed on her base. The New Colossus honors America’s past devotion to accepting immigrants and refugees. We used to see immigrants and refugees as a boon — they bring diversity, culture, language and economic value to a country that is rich in all those things, but that could always benefit from more.
ISIS wants us to fear. They want us to be paralyzed by it to the point of inaction, but I say we fight back. Fight back with love and warmth and the oh-so-American welcome, because fear has never been the American way.
Governor Martinez, if you cannot find it in your heart to accept a family of Syrian refugees into your home, send them to me. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore —because I am American and I am not afraid to live up to Lady Liberty’s expectations.
Sincerely,
Katherine Gutierrez
UNM senior
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