EDITORIAL: Facts don't support fear of refugees

Just nine days after a horrific terror attack on Paris, it may be understandable that emotions drove our decisions in the past week.

In one of those decisions, Gov. Mike Pence declared that no refugees from war-torn Syria would be accepted to resettle in Indiana.

As a result, Indiana turned away a young family from Syria that surely posed no threat. The family was redirected to Connecticut.

Pence has plenty of company in 29 other governors who declared similar bans on Syrian refugees. He became the first to actually send refugees away, casting an unflattering spotlight on Indiana.

The rejected family, a couple with a 5-year-old son, had been waiting in Jordan three years for permission to enter the United States. Any fear that they secretly might be terrorists connected to the brutal Islamic State defies logic. They applied for admission to the United States in 2012. The Islamic State terror group took its current form in April 2013 and began military operations in Syria at around the same time.

The fear that other refugees from Syria present a risk to Americans’ safety takes root in the news that one of the Paris attackers entered Europe disguised as a Syrian refugee.

The ease of getting into Europe and the difficulty of entering America could not be more different. Reports estimate 700,000 refugees from Syria flooded into Europe this year, under chaotic circumstances. People washing ashore on crude boats offer no opportunity for background checks.

In contrast, the United States is proposing to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees this year through a screening process that takes an average of 18-24 months.

Efforts to require even more rigorous security checks of Syrian refugees sound reasonable, but ignore the stringent safeguards already in place.

According to one news agency’s description of the existing U.S. process, “… refugees are vetted by the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, and the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security. Fingerprints are taken, biographical information is collected. They are then each individually interviewed by U.S. officials trained to verify that they’re bona fide refugees.”

Refugees from Syria are subject to special, extra screening, the report said.

Under those existing rules, since 2011 slightly more than 23,000 Syrian refugees have applied to come here. A little more than 7,000 qualified for the interview process. Only 2,034 were admitted to the United States.

In other words, the family that wanted to move to Indiana this week came through a process that clears only 9 percent of applicants and takes up to two years. That should be good enough to make Hoosiers feel at ease.

If you were an Islamic State mastermind trying to sneak a bomber into the United States, you might look for a better route than a refugee program with a 1-in-11 chance of a success and a two-year wait.

Of the Syrian refugees admitted to the United States in the past two years, half are children and about a quarter of them are adults over 60. Officials say only 2 percent are single males of combat age.

If — after all the screening — people still worry about the dangers of Syrian refugees, it could be sensible to focus more scrutiny on single, young adults instead of making a blanket rule against everyone.

U.S. leaders are proposing an increase in the number of Syrian refugees to be admitted to 10,000. But that larger number still represents a drop in the bucket — more symbolic than effective.

World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization, says 4 million Syrians are refugees. Other estimates are even higher. Sen. Dan Coats, R-Indiana, said the United States could take in 100,000 refugees — 10 times the current plan — without making a dent in the problem.

“The only reasonable solution to dealing with this humanitarian crisis is to create conditions in and near Syria that will permit people to safely remain near their home country,” Coats said.

Establishing safe zones for refugees and providing for their needs would be a first step. Ultimately, nations must join together to make it tolerable for Syrians to live in Syria again.

Of the nine charities working to settle Syrian refugees in the United States, six of them are faith-based organizations. It is sadly ironic that other sincere people of faith oppose those efforts and that people on both sides of the refugee debate are hurling Bible verses at each other.

In the aftermath of the Paris attack, Americans are abandoning logic and feuding emotionally about how we should respond. We are questioning each others’ motives and sincerity of religious beliefs. Somewhere an Islamic State mastermind is watching us tear ourselves apart and counting us as casualties, too, without any need to smuggle in a terrorist.