Nov. 20, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
19:58
3132 The Truth About The Syrian Refugee Controversy
On the heels of the Paris Terrorist Attack and new ISIS threats against the United States, the American people are beginning to ask questions about the intake of Syrian refugees. The United States is currently taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees and President Barack Obama has commented about taking in 100,000 refugees total (not just from Syria) in each of the next two years.The Governors of 31 U.S. States are refusing to take any additional refugees from Syria – and others are demanding additional information on the efficacy of any screening procedures. On November 19th, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation requiring new screening of Middle Eastern refugees. President Barack Obama threatened to veto the legislation, but the 289-137 vote - including 47 Democrats - is enough to override any veto attempt and these concerns cross party lines.What is the Truth About The Syrian Refugee Controversy?Sources: http://www.fdrurl.com/syrian-refugees
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
We're going to tackle one of the giant challenges facing the world at the moment.
What is going to happen to the millions of Syrian refugees and other refugees from conflicts and lack of economic opportunity throughout the Middle East.
We're going to make a very strong case here, I would argue a conclusive case, about what needs to be done and how these people can be helped the most.
In America, and of course in Europe as well, on the heels of the Paris terrorist attack and new ISIS threats against the United States, the American people are beginning to ask questions about the intake of Syrian refugees.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said, These individuals took advantage of the refugee crisis, of the chaos perhaps, for some of them to slip into France.
Syrian Ambassador to India Riyad Abbas said, among the refugees who went to Europe, maybe more than 20% belonged to ISIL groups.
Now Europe has received bad element into their ground.
They will face further problem in future.
Apparently he's translated by Google.
The Daily Mail recently reported that 66 individuals within the U.S. have been arrested in relation to ISIS terrorism plots, including Several refugees.
The governors, reading the tea leaves of public opinion polling, which we'll get to in a second, of 31 U.S. states are refusing to take any additional refugees from Syria, and others are demanding additional information on the efficacy of any proposed screening procedures.
The Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. has also confirmed that eight Syrians were taken into custody on November 16th after attempting to illegally enter the United States through Mexico.
On November 19th, the US House of Representatives approved legislation requiring new screening of Middle Eastern refugees.
President Barack Obama threatened to veto the legislation, but the 289 to 137 vote, including 47 Democrats, is enough to override any veto attempt.
These concerns, of course, cross party lines.
Now, as far as this vetting goes, there's no magical vetting wand that the government has to be able to sort the genuine refugees from potential evildoers.
According to many sources, the Syrian government is so corrupt and messed up for understandable civil war reasons at the moment that for a couple of hundred bucks or probably from a vague threat, you can get legitimate, genuine passports and documents from the Syrian government, which are impossible.
To verify in any objective sense.
The FBI director has said that it is impossible to vet all of the refugees.
It's supposed to be an 18 to 24 month process and involving, I hope, communications with a largely collapsed Syrian government.
It's certainly not going to be safe.
It's not going to work.
Fourteen recent refugees were resettled and one has just gone missing in the United States.
They know, the government knows, he's going to Washington DC to meet up with relatives, but Homeland Security says that tracking him is a violation of his constitutional rights.
So this guy who's kind of gone off the grid heading to Washington at the same time that ISIS has released a video saying that they're going to attack the White House, Well, it's not that being jumpy is crazy at this particular point in history, but there are solutions.
Yes, philosophy to the rescue.
What do the Americans think?
Should the United States accept Syrian refugees?
53% say don't accept them.
28% say accept them.
11% say only the Christian refugees and 8% are not sure.
So, of course, the governors are reading these tea leaves and responding accordingly because if the governors approve...
These migrants, these asylum seekers, and then there's an attack.
Well, things will not go well for them, to put it mildly.
Now, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that as of November 3rd, 2015, there were 4.29 million registered Syrian refugees.
Most Syrian refugees are currently located in Jordan and Lebanon and Turkey.
Of course, those are neighboring countries of Syria.
This Commissioner for Refugees has requested over four and a half billion dollars or about just a little over a thousand dollars per capita to assist the Syrian refugees.
Of course this amount may seem low to you but of course keep in mind the poverty line for a family in Lebanon is fourteen hundred bucks a year compared of course to twenty four thousand dollars a year in the U.S. Cost of living in many many Middle Eastern countries dramatically lower than that of the U.S. and other Western countries.
I assume it has something to do The UNHCR has only 2 billion of the 4.5 billion needed to assist the refugees, meaning they are 2.5 billion or 56% shy of their required funding.
Now, the United States is currently taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees, and President Barack Obama has commented about taking in 100,000 refugees total, not just from Syria, in each of the next two years.
So, two and a half billion dollars needed to help and resettle these refugees in the Middle East.
Okay.
Is that a lot of money for the U.S. government or for U.S. private charitable agencies and citizens?
Well, the Obama administration spent 500 billion dollars to put, quote, four or five fighters on the ground in Syria.
Of course, that money could have settled over 473,000 refugees in the Middle East.
But hey, We've got four fighters who probably switch sides anyway.
Okay, so what is the cost by location?
Everyone has every desire in the known universe, but all of our resources are finite.
So we have to put our desires to work where they do the greatest good.
Resettling Middle Eastern refugees per capita cost by location.
You can resettle a Middle Eastern refugee in the Middle East for just about $1,000.
In the United States, that's almost $13,000, right?
Almost 12 to 13 to 1.
So you can have one refugee in the United States or you can have 12 or 13 refugees Well, only if you're interested in moral posturing rather than actually helping people.
Of almost $13,000.
They don't include things like English language instruction in public schools, the cost of local social workers, the many means-tested programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, Head Start, the additional child tax credit, usual costs of government services like infrastructure maintenance, law enforcement, and fire protection are also not included.
So the number is actually far, far higher.
Now, let's look over five years for individuals and households.
So over five years, if you want to resettle someone in the Middle East, it's going to cost you $5,200 and change.
You want to resettle an entire household in the Middle East, $21,140 over five years.
You want to do that in the United States for the individual $64,000.
$370 for a household.
Over a quarter of a million dollars, people.
$257,481.
That is a lot of money, and again, this doesn't include all the costs.
So just think of that quarter million dollars.
Think of that quarter million dollars.
Do you want to resettle one household for five years, or do you want to give that money to the Middle East and have them resettle many, many, many times more?
Okay, Middle Eastern migrant welfare usage by type.
What is it costing to bring people into the United States in this kind of context?
Well, 62% of the Middle Eastern migrants are on welfare.
32% of them are using the cash assistance of the supplemental security income.
Temporary assistance for needy families, 37% are on that.
Of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, 91% of Middle Eastern migrants are on that form of welfare.
Women, infants, and children welfare, 20%.
And housing welfare and subsidies, 19%.
And again, the sources for all of this below, please dig into the data.
Don't take our word for it.
We've got all the links to all the sources below because, of course, we just so much enjoy putting the sources down.
We're mentioning it in the video, usually more than once, and then having 12 million people say, hey, man, where are your sources?
I can't believe it.
So just check below, dig into it.
These are as validated as validated can be.
Now, the totals, for various reasons, are much higher in general than are being reported.
So these slides, which we're about to talk about, they combine several Center for Immigration Studies reports and data for native immigrants and illegal immigrants and for households using the most accurate welfare data available, which is called the Survey of Income and Programme Participation, or SIPP. The refugee data uses annual social and economic supplement of the current population survey data, which generally underestimates welfare use when compared to the SIPP And thus, totals are likely higher.
What about Medicaid usage?
Of course, Medicaid is government-subsidized or paid healthcare.
Now, 13% of Middle Eastern refugees have no healthcare whatsoever, and of course, the cost of treatment then, when they show up in emergency or are borne by hospital systems, and thus, of course, the U.S. taxpayers, or I guess these days, taxpayer.
So, 23% of natives in America use Medicaid, 39% of immigrants, 51% of illegal immigrants, and 62% of refugees.
What about cash assistance?
SSI, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF. Native, 7.1% on SSI, 1.7% on TANF. Among immigrants, 10.8% on SSI, 2.1% on TANF. Among illegal immigrants, there's significant barriers for illegal immigrants getting these cash assistance programs.
2.2% and 2.2%.
Among refugees, where there are no real limits for these cash assistance programs, we have consumption rates of these welfare.
32.1%.
Of refugees are on supplemental security, income, welfare.
36.7% on temporary assistance for needy families.
It is very, very expensive.
All of this money being taken out of the US taxpayer system.
Could it be better used elsewhere in private charity?
Helping these people where they live?
Of course.
What about food assistance?
Well, The SNAP program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, 16% of natives use it, 4% use women, infants, and children, and 12% use the school lunch program.
Among immigrants, 20% SNAP, 8% WIC, 25% school lunch program.
Illegal immigrants, 22% SNAP, 23% WIC, and 48% of illegal immigrants use the school lunch program.
Among refugees, 91% use the SNAP program, 20% use WIC, and 33% use the school lunch program.
These are the real tangible costs of bringing these people over.
Is it the best way to help them?
No.
Public or subsidized housing.
6% of natives use it, 7% of immigrants, 4% of illegal immigrants, and 19% of refugees.
Now, it has long been noted in America, and I'm sure this is true in other places as well, that if you have less education, you're more likely to be on the welfare rolls.
So if you have less than high school education, and 12 years of education, if you have less than high school education, 58% of those people are using welfare, 77% of immigrants, and 77% of illegal immigrants.
Now, There's no specific data for Middle Eastern refugees.
However, Middle Eastern immigrants who entered America in the last five years have an average only of ten and a half years of education.
And that's education in another culture, in another language, usually studying a religion that is not exactly economically valuable to know when you arrive in the United States.
So you have a tough time, even if you're educated in the native culture, native history, native language, if you come in with less than high school education from other countries, That's going to be pretty bad.
There's a substantial body of research showing that immigrants, this is not just refugees, but all immigrants who enter into America with less than a high school education or 12 years of education are a massive financial drain on government services over the course of their lifetime.
The National Research Council estimated back in 97 that during his or her lifetime, the average immigrant with less than a high school education created a net fiscal burden of minus 89,000 dollars.
I wonder what a 2012 estimate would be 18 years later.
So it is not going to look good for the society as a whole in terms of economic burdens with relation to these Middle Eastern immigrants.
All right, let's crank up the numbers and talk about 10,000 refugees.
So if you want to resettle 10,000 refugees, which is of course being bandied about, if you want to resettle them in the Middle East, where they have compatible cultures, language, some religiosity, compatible histories, and compatible climates, one-year cost of resettling, 10,000 refugees in the Middle East, $10.6 million.
The five-year cost, of course, $52.9 million.
If you wish to settle the same 10,000 refugees in the United States, the one-year cost is not $10.6 million, but $128.7 million.
That's quite a lot higher.
The five-year cost, instead of $52.9 million in the Middle East, is resettled in the United States, $643.7 million.
So, as we mentioned earlier, the UN Commission reports a gap of $2.5 billion in funding, that it needs to resettle 4.29 million Syrians in neighboring countries.
So just the five-year cost of resettling about 39,000 Syrian refugees or about 9,700 families of four in the United States is exactly the same as erasing the entire current funding gap at the UN for this issue.
So you have the choice, right?
You can close off the funding needed to settle 4.29 million people, or you can help 39,000 or 9,700 families of four.
Come on.
If you have compassion, if you care, you have to know what the right thing to do is.
Now, how it's done, I generally prefer voluntary solutions, but we're just talking about the numbers as a whole here.
How can we help the most people?
And by the way, if you want to try and get these 4.29 million Syrians in the United States, it costs well over $55 billion.
I think kind of a non-starter.
So if you want to help, and you've got, let's say, $128.7 million, okay, you can settle 10,000 refugees in the United States, or you can resettle 121,797 refugees in the Middle East.
And come on, this makes...
No sense to do it the way that it's being proposed.
This is just moral sentimentality and moral posturing and so on.
If you actually want to help people, think of some poor, I don't know, some poor black family in Detroit, Michigan, right?
And they want to be resettled or they've got no economic opportunities.
They want to go out for greener postures.
Would it make more sense to move them to Ohio and give them some money for a fresh start?
Or would it make more sense to send them to China where they don't speak the language?
Why they don't know the culture, they don't know the history.
Would it make any sense to do that at all?
No, you want to help people locally where they are most comfortable culturally.
This program, whether it happens in Canada or America or Europe, is going to create an underclass of people almost certainly destined for failure.
It's going to create resentment among taxpayers, and of course it does raise the risk of terrorist attacks, which we'll get to in a moment.
In America, yes, there are millions of people.
In the Middle East, who need help?
Fair enough.
Okay, 565,000 people in America are homeless at the moment, nearly one-fourth of whom, or a quarter of whom, are below the age of 18.
Do they need some help?
You could argue yes, a little bit more.
So...
We have to get away from sentimentality as the methodology.
I mean, everybody wants to, oh, we're going to go help these people, going to bring them in, and it's just a bunch of posturing.
We need to be smart and sensible, look at the numbers, and figure out where we can do the most good for the least amount of money.
Just, you know, if you care about the refugees, send the money to them directly.
Send it to the local agencies.
Help them settle out.
Help them settle down.
With regard to the security issue, FBI director says, there's no way, no way we can vet all these guys.
And, of course, ISIS has said, well, we're going to smuggle people in through this refugee program to attack Europe and North America.
So, of course, Americans are concerned, especially after Paris.
And even though Gore Vidal referred to America as the United States of Amnesia, they do remember enough that the Boston Marathon bombers were Muslim refugees.
For decades, the U.S. has taken in far more refugees than the entire rest of the world combined, and nearly half of those refugees are Muslims.
And of course, the majority of Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens, but, you know, there are some notable exceptions that you don't get if you're importing Scotch people, or Scots.
The blind sheik, who was imprisoned for his role In the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he was an asylum seeker, he was an asylee.
The ringleader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Renzi Yousef, yes, also came in through the asylum program.
There was a wide variety of other, we'll put a list, links to an article with a list to these below.
So there is risk.
There is danger.
The government cannot control who's coming in.
It cannot vet people who's coming in.
And what is the quality of life for people in Paris now who are terrified every time a car backfires?
And what is the quality of life worth?
Forget about the dollars and cents.
Just your sense of security and ease inside your own country and culture.
And the last point I want to make, of course, you know, we want to resettle people where the culture is similar, the language, the history, the religion, the climate, and all that is similar.
Also, we do want to leave some smart people in the Middle East, right?
The people who tend to be able to wend their way through the bureaucratic maze of being asylum seekers and who have the initiative to either keep or get documents to come in tend to be the smarter, more entrepreneurial, maybe slightly better educated, and more get up and go, more voom.
And those people are kind of what's needed in the Middle East to help rebuild some of these shattered societies.
So if the brain drain sucks the most competent people out into the West, what's going to be left is more of a hotbed of radicalism and potential hysterical activism in the Middle East.
So I think for this reasons, we should really reevaluate the way that we want to help people overseas.
Again, I'm All for the voluntary charity aspect, but the idea of resettling people from the Middle East in North America and in Europe is completely the wrong thing to do at every conceivable level from security to actually helping people to cultural compatibility to welfare costs to the whole thing.
Help them where they live.
Don't bring them over to end up as a doomed underclass in a different society.
This is Stefan Molyneux for Freedom Aid Radio.
Thank you so much for watching and listening.
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