I haven’t seen any reports on how the refugees will be selected, ie whether women and children will get preference.
What, you’re hoping the US is going to separate families, @TatinG? How very humane of you 
“Equally ludicrous were the German Jewish refugees in the UK who were rounded up and imprisoned as enemy aliens.” Indeed, Consolation. All Jewish refugee men, and boys over 16 (including those who had arrived not long before on the Kindertransport), were detained in 1940 and put in internment camps. My mother had turned 16 a few months before the war began, but wasn’t interned, fortunately, because girls and women were exempt. Some of those interned were sent on ships to Canada and kept in a camp there, and others to Australia, with many losing their lives on the Arendora Star when it was torpedoed, and some 2,000 Jewish refugees enduring the hellish conditions of HMT Dunera, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMT_Dunera. At least, once they turned 18, they were offered the opportunity, which many took, to join the Army or do war work.
And don’t forget the defeat in early 1939 of the Wagner-Rogers Bill right here in the USA; it would have admitted 20,000 German-Jewish children after Kristallnacht – the equivalent of the 10,000 children (including my mother) that Britain took in the Kindertransport. See https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/wagnerrogers.html. An excerpt:
[More at link]
Almost certainly, the overwhelming majority of the Jewish children who would have been helped by the program perished.
By contrast, a year later, when British children were endangered by the Blitz, President Roosevelt and Congress joined together and quickly passed legislation allowing thousands of those children to come to the U.S. temporarily. From what I’ve read, the government was flooded with requests for 6-year old blonde girls! Obviously, they were a lot more desirable than little Jewish children, otherwise known as future ugly adults. Or children from Syria, at least according to Governor Christie, who said in an interview yesterday:
You could imagine plenty of families that were already separated, by the death of the father.
@DonnaL, from today WaPo.
Are there little orphans from Syria that need homes? Are we so hard-hearted we can’t find homes for toddlers? If Americans are adopting special-needs children from abroad, and they are, surely we could also find loving homes for healthy war orphans.
Not sure if this has been posted already.
“A Syrian passport found next to a suicide bomber in the Paris terror attacks may have been planted, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said.
Reports that the identity in the passport may have been registered in several countries along the so-called Balkan route raise the suspicion that it could be a deliberate attempt to implicate refugees and “make people feel unsafe,” de Maiziere said.”
You know there would be hell to pay for the party responsible for admitting any refugee who later committed a terrorist act, right? And that there are no reliable methods for screening the refugees? A compromise would be to admit women and children and old people but not young men, the usual demographic who commit these atrocities.
It’s true that the Granny bomber is relatively rare.
From the excellent link provided upthread, the briefing given by three senior administration officials to reporters:
http://m.state.gov/md249613.htm
So it sounds like they’re already doing what was discussed in this thread, namely bringing in women, children and grandparents, but rarely young single men of military age.
Anyone following this raid? BBC has a good update feed.
I hope they got Abaaoud. Or killed him.
Sounds like there’s a good chance.
The internment of Japanese-Americans was a travesty because they were American CITIZENS.
The Syrian refugees are not US citizens.
And that to many people - especially the majority of US governors - means they are not worthy of a simple act of human compassion. I say it is a very short leap from “Americans***** first” to “Christians first” and even “White people first”.
How about we put Humanity****** first?
*[/b ] This also goes for many, many countries. To think that people are defined by a piece of land they occupy is nothing short of ridiculous.
Granted the situation is more complicated than I make it seem. But if the people on this forum can come up with a dozen reasonable suggestions on how to adequately - and humanly- deal with the refugee situation, then I don’t understand why the US government can’t.
I think the US should not take in somebody who the US has not enough means and will (and “heart”) to take care now and in the future.
Whoever we bring in should not be treated as “second class” citizens who will unlikely have the similar life as most other citizens later – otherwise they could be turned into, say, perpetually unemployed angry persons in the future.
It is OK to take some in, if we really know what to do (and have the will and means to do) about them, in the decades to come. Otherwise, we will run the risk like France has now; 1800 of their citizens become “fighters” in other countries like Syria (or become radicals within their own country.)
I do not know whether I should bring up this controversial point: the extreme form of “religion”, especially the big and powerful one, could be used by many to do a lot of bad things. (The two largest religions in this world gave us a lot of “troubles” in the past N centuries, even though it could help many people in may different ways as well. Maybe it is not a bad idea that there are many smaller-sized, less powerful religions even if the number of religious people is still the same. The problem with a very large religion or religion group is: It will often split into several groups and the in-fighting among the close groups could become even more fierce. We could argue that the two largest religions: Islam and Christian, were closely related to some extent at their beginning. Look what their relation becomes now!)
Re: “How about we put Humanity** first?”
This is a noble goal. But the US should have enough humane people first. When many US citizens are not even willing to take care of their fellow citizens on the bottom (share their health care resources), how can do you expect most of them are willing to do more than what their heart (and other practical means) will tell them to do?! Do whatever our citizens as a whole are willing and capable. Most of us are not “saints” (for many, may not be even very humane.)
"
** Granted the situation is more complicated than I make it seem. But if the people on this forum can come up with a dozen reasonable suggestions on how to adequately - and humanly- deal with the refugee situation, then I don’t understand why the US government can’t."
Would a good start be to redefine the problem on a regional basis, use diplomacy to shame the rich Gulf nations in hosting their fellow Muslims, use the same with the Russians who support the Syrian government to open THEIR borders?
Are there any superior reasons why the refugees should be headed to Europe or the US?
What each of us may feel personally is very different from what the role of any sovereign government should be. The role of any government should always be to prioritize its own citizens first.
I would volunteer. And no, I’m not kidding.
As an aside, zeldie, do you think any of the Gulf nations would have a problem if the parents shared their college students’ Amazon accounts? B-)