Letter: Barring refugees will make America less safe

I was disappointed to learn that the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly for the “SAFE” Act of 2015, a bill which could make it much harder to get refugee status in the U.S.

Will blocking refugees from Syria and other terror-ravaged countries keep a terrorist out of the U.S.? If so, we better also block refugees, immigrants, and tourists from every country in the world, because ISIS is wily, and patient, and creative.

The “SAFE” Act actually makes the world less safe. By blocking Muslim refugees, we give the impression that our country is anti-Muslim ... that we are evil westerners, exactly as ISIS portrays us. And Donald Trump, with his talk of “registration” for Muslims in the U.S., may as well make ISIS recruitment videos, because that is the likely effect of such inflammatory talk.

We’re willing to bar the door to refugees fleeing the very same brand of terrorists who carried out the atrocities in Paris, in Beirut, in Egypt ... but we will not require so much as a background check on an angry American who wants to buy enough automatic weapons and ammo to shoot up a grade school or a theater.

What happened to my America?

This story was originally published December 14, 2015 at 5:50 PM with the headline "Letter: Barring refugees will make America less safe."