Refugees and the historical perspective, Gavin Jepma

Refugees and the Historical Perspective                                       Gavin Jepma

Refugees in the United States is a headline that more recently has been on the television screens as well as the minds of Americans. Despite Trump's executive order for a 90 day ban on immigration from six countries in the middle east under the premise that they are high threat countries, a little over half of Americans are okay with immigration. As with every issue however, there are several groups within the U.S. that would hinder the mobility of refugees hoping to escape. National security is high on the list of reasons, but the overwhelming numbers do not correlate with this fear. Taking the Paris attack and other terrorist acts from Europe into account, many people would in some cases rightly fear a terror attack brought on by refugees coming from a war-torn country. This fear is shrouded in other historical factors. The fear of foreign peoples travelling to the U.S. has been a constant reoccurring social issue. Starting with bans on Chinese and Japanese immigrants who were only kept out due to the xenophobic attitude that still permeates in today's society. Another example is the mass amount of immigration around the late nineteenth century from a wide variety of Europeans. The "Red Scare", a fear of communist infiltration from eastern European, specifically Russian peoples slowed immigration into the U.S. from these peoples. German immigration was also an issue, with the scars of the second world war causing Americans to fear these people. The bottom line being that bans on immigration stem from a historical repetition of strong nationalism coupled with xenophobic attitudes towards events forcing foreign peoples to seek safety in other countries. Even in today's arguably more multicultural perspective, pockets of resistance exist in the idea of freely admitting immigrants which includes refugees. The normalized misconceptions, no doubt solidified by the 9/11 attacks and neo-imperialistic intentions have far reaching consequences. More than likely creating the push-back effect we see when controversy over refugees is brought up.