Trump says Syrian refugees aren’t vetted. We are. Here’s what we went through.

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President Trump says that it is not safe to accept certain kinds of refugees without “extreme vetting” that he has yet to detail. So he has now banned people from seven countries, including Syria, which I fled with my family in 2014. But we were thoroughly vetted before we came here, just like other refugees — exhaustively, endlessly vetted. We are not terrorists. And if we’d been stopped from coming here, we would be suffering horribly right now.

When our 7-day-old son died while receiving treatment for jaundice in a Damascus hospital, my husband and I decided to flee the country with our daughters. (I described the experience in an essay for The Post, parts of which are adapted here.) We ended up in a cramped apartment in Tripoli, Lebanon, where we soon spent our savings; we were living hand-to-mouth.

After a year, I received a call from the United Nations asking if my family would like to resettle somewhere else. Based on our documents, stories and circumstances — our large family, five girls, my husband’s potential as a healthy worker — we had been deemed eligible to apply for refugee status.

We could not return home to Syria. We could not continue living on the brink of starvation in Lebanon. A safe option was available: We began the application process to come to the United States.

The process started with a series of meetings with U.S. government representatives — at least five in-­person interviews with each of us and countless phone conversations. The questions were very detailed: about my family, my friends, how I spent my time. The interviewers often knew the answers to the questions before they asked them. They asked about my life going back to the day I was born; they even knew the location of the hospital. My story is my story, so I knew that the details would match their information. But I was stunned by the level of scrutiny and the length of the process.

Each member of the family told their story, and those stories had to be consistent with interviews given by other people who knew us. If our answers didn’t match information U.S. officials already had, or if they couldn’t validate our information, we didn’t progress to the next step. I had only a glimmer of hope that this would work — and that we could have a safe life for my daughters. We lived on that hope.

Finally, more than a year after we began applying and more than two years after we fled Damascus, we were cleared in December 2014 to resettle in Baltimore. We had $30 for the journey. During an airport layover in Germany, I bought a drink and, without realizing it, spent a third of our savings on a $10 bottle of water. My husband joked that now we were really finished and should just turn back.

We, too, have been appalled by the Islamic State’s terrorist attacks around the world, and we condemn them wholeheartedly. My family and I lived through horrific acts like these. I believe the screening we underwent was so intense, so thorough and so long that it would be impossible for militants to come here.

Now my daughters, who previously spoke no English, are in school, and my husband has a good job as a driver for a clothing company. My biggest dream is for them to have a good education and good careers, and for us to be part of this society: to learn the language, to do something productive, to integrate. That’s exactly what Trump believes is impossible.

If we hadn’t been able to come here, we would have been stuck. My parents and siblings are still in Tripoli, and they say the situation is so bad that you can’t imagine it.

Read the rest at WaPo

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If you (or she) had read the original article about those deported, you’d know (she’d know)
these were NOT families who were deported!
Of the 92 individuals 90 were adult males.
2 were adult females.
Not families, the women were not even from the same countries as the men!
These were invaders.
90 adult men, no families.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-01/26/c_136012736.htm

“Government spokesman Eric Kiraithe said the deported included 90 Somali men and two Kenyan women.”

It’s understandable that there are people escaping from countries that are under attack simply looking for a safer place to live, or for a better future at least for their young children. There are refugees who desire nothing but to escape to freedom here in the states and to assimilate to the culture. But Trump has a difficult position: does he allow these refugees a safe harbor, or risk national security and allow those who may be terrorists in disguise that will enter the US with the sole purpose of killing Americans (re: San Bernardino shooting and/or the Orlando nightclub shooting)?

@Leah:

But Trump has a difficult position: does he allow these refugees a safe harbor, or risk national security

You answer that question. I say he should keep a safe harbor for Americans. While some Syrians may have been verifiable a few years ago, I’d say the government, records, and people have been so corrupted, there is NO WAY that vetting could take place today. Yes, if we knew all the people from those countries were God loving persons and were only looking for a safe life for their familes, it would be nice to help them out. All we can be sure of today is that some percentage of them only want to cause death and destruction to the US. Until conditions can be restored to the point that persons can be verified. Give them a safe place to live in one of the districts in Syria. Once Isis is defeated and Syria is a safe place, then apply to another country if you so desire. Do not ask or expect Americans to give up their safety and families to people who only wish to kill them.

When the UN is scattering these refugees (and, “refugees”) around the world, why are none being sent to Iran? How about Egypt? For that matter, why is the UN not square in the middle of these areas of turmoil and working to resolve the problem (the reason for the existence of the UN, after all) instead of concentrating on demonstrating their anti-Semitism?

While there are numerous better solutions than dropping these people in Baltimore (out of the frying pan and into the fire), this is the type of safeguarding that needs to be in place before people from these war zones are allowed into our country, but OUR intelligence people need to be doing the vetting.

It seems to me that they should stay there, get arms, and fight for their freedom. Certainly some will die. They do in every revolution. Some of their families will die too. They also die in every revolution. However, if good people don’t stand up for their own freedom I can’t see why we should do it for them. And I can’t see why we (USA) must be the savior of the entire world especially for those who do not value their freedom enough to die for it. Those refugees need to stop running and start fighting. And don’t tell me they don’t have weapons. There are weapons every where in the middle east. Better to die trying to become free that to run and hide and then be beaten by every warlord around.

@Greg Fisher: They should fight to reform the religious/government system they are a part of which threatens them so.

Amen!! But instead of calling other Muslim nations for help (all of us know those nations won’t), they call upon the “Great Satan” because we are the only country who truly values their lives. If the refugees would take lessons from Israel, the Syrian Government, ISIS or any other malvado could not stand before them. They could create a true republic (not Islamic) and take care of their own needs.

Here’s what they’re trying to escape from, to put things into better perspective: Syria’s Secret Mass Executions