Christian agencies rebuke anti-refugee stance

Catholic, mainline, and evangelical agencies handling refugee resettlement in the United States are calling for communities to welcome refugees and reject the rhetoric of governors calling for a ban on Syrian asylum-seekers in their states in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. One of the eight terrorists in the attacks was carrying the Syrian passport of a refugee who arrived in Europe through Greece. The rest that have been identified were French and Belgian citizens.

The Christian refugee agencies emphasized the security of the U.S. refugee process and how different the refugee situation is here than it is in Europe. They also noted refugees have a good track record in the United States.

“The U.S. refugee program has since 9/11 built up rigorous and secure security screenings,” said Linda Hartke, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a nonprofit affiliated with the three major Lutheran denominations in the United States. The group first began refugee resettlement during World War II.

Hartke said rejecting refugees is “nothing less than signing a death warrant for tens of thousands of families fleeing for their very lives.” She called the governors’ response “small-minded panic.”

“We are disturbed … with the reaction by federal and state officials calling for an end to resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S.,” said Kevin Appleby, the director of migration policy for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). “The vast majority are vulnerable families. … To turn our back on them at this moment would be to forsake our heritage and to undermine our moral leadership in the world.”

Lavinia Limon, head of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, called refugees “the most vetted people entering the United States.”

Since 2012, the United States has accepted fewer than 1,900 Syrian refugees. Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon host the majority of the now 4 million Syrian refugees. Europe has shouldered an influx this year, with about half a million migrants from the Middle East and Africa seeking new homes. Before the Paris attacks, President Barack Obama said the U.S. would welcome 10,000 Syrian refugees next year. The resettlement agencies want to prioritize family reunification in these cases, regardless of whether the state governor is hostile.

“The importance of family being together is one of those American values that we have always lifted up in this work of resettling refugees,” Hartke said.

Typically the United States takes about two years to approve refugees for arrival, a much stricter and more involved process than in Europe. Refugees must face scrutiny from intelligence agencies, go through a background check against law enforcement databases, and complete interviews with the Department of Homeland Security. Syrians are subject to an extra layer of security. Refugee settlement groups have no control over the screening process. (See WORLD’s Nov. 14 cover story, “Who is my neighbor?” for more about Middle Eastern refugees settling in the United States.)

Appleby said the Catholic Church would view with “scrutiny” an additional layer of screening because the administration was already “slow-walking” refugees from the Middle East, “a lot of times to our dismay because of the length of time it takes to get into the country, when they’re sitting there at risk in the Middle East,” he said.

“It’s not as if over the last several years they’ve played free and loose with the process,” he added.

World Relief, a major evangelical organization that handles refugee resettlement, released a statement in response to the governors’ remarks, calling on Christians to “continue to pioneer the way for a compassionate response to the ongoing refugee crisis.”

“The only way to fight this darkness is by offering these refugees the love and light of Jesus Christ,” said Stephan Bauman, the head of World Relief. “Instead of allowing ourselves to be consumed by fear, we must ground ourselves in love and open our arms to these refugees. It would be a mistake to shut out all refugees who have been victims of the same sort of terror inflicted last week upon Paris and Beirut based on these concerns.”

The National Association of Evangelicals, which is affiliated with World Relief, also issued a similar statement.

Practically, governors can’t stop anyone granted legal status in the United States from entering their states. But the refugee agencies speculated governors could reject federal funding for refugees within their borders. States also could make it difficult for refugees to access social services. But Hartke said states could face court challenges if they refuse services to Syrians.

“Some of the statements that have been made, from my nonlegal perspective, sound highly discriminatory,” she noted.

Before the Paris attacks, churches showed openness to welcoming refugees into their communities. A group of 50 churches in Spartanburg, S.C., a resettlement area, signed up to help World Relief integrate new arrivals into the community. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who represents Spartanburg, had asked the State Department to halt the settlement of refugees there until he had more details about the program. He also asked the State Department which churches were helping with resettlement and discovered his own church on the list.