Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • ♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

  • Here in the U.S., the Paris attackers

  • touched off a ferocious debate about Syrian refugees.

  • You might remember, President Obama had pledged to accept at least 10,000

  • over the next year but after news broke that one of the attackers may have posed

  • as a refugee and entered Europe through Greece with a fake Syrian passport,

  • many U.S. officials had second thoughts.

  • REPORTER: Thirty-one governors now oppose,

  • are refusing or suspending the resettlement of Syrian refugees into their states.

  • Okay, that's pretty extreme but it's also pretty meaningless for two reasons.

  • One, governors don't have the legal authority to ban refugees.

  • And two, even if they could, Syrians can't just walk between states like anyone else.

  • The lines on maps are not crocodile-filled moats.

  • (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

  • Presidential candidates also got involved with this anti-refugee rhetoric.

  • Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio

  • called for halts to all Syrian refugees entering the country.

  • And others like Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush argued we could take some if they were Christian.

  • If you're wondering how that would work, let Jeb Bush explain.

  • What, you're a Christian, I mean, you can prove you're a Christian. It's--

  • -How? -I think you can prove it.

  • I think you can prove it,

  • I'm pretty sure you can prove it.

  • You see, I'll tell you how. You see...

  • a Christian has ears that protrude out from their heads,

  • whereas non-Christians lack external ears all together.

  • You know what? Hold on.

  • I'm thinking about seals and sea lions.

  • I often get them confused... Forget everything I said about Christians and Muslims.

  • I don't know what I'm talking about.

  • And it was not just Republicans.

  • The Democratic mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, David Bowers

  • was so terrified of Syrian refugees, he used

  • the worst possible historical example to prove his point.

  • REPORTER: Mayor David Bowers wrote:

  • (REPORTER READING LETTER)

  • Wow!

  • Did he not realize that Japanese internment camps

  • are one of this nation's greatest sources of shame?

  • It's one of the parts of FDR's legacy

  • his family would most like you to forget.

  • And bear in mind, this is a man who's own biopic featured

  • featured a scene of him getting a hand job

  • from his distant cousin.

  • ♪ (ROMANTIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

  • Did I have to show you that? No.

  • Did I want to? Absolutely, I did!

  • But this week's events actually call to mind a chapter from FDR's time in office

  • that is even more shameful than the saddest and classiest hand job of all time.

  • Specifically, when in 1939,

  • U.S. authorities turned away a ship containing

  • more than 900 mostly Jewish refugees from Germany.

  • Something American newsrooms at the time

  • tried to put a positive spin on.

  • NARRATOR: Nine hundred-seven Jewish unfortunates

  • without a country permitted to land

  • in Belgium after five weeks of suspense afloat.

  • Through American generosity, they will find at least

  • temporary shelter in France, Holland and England.

  • Yes. We sent a boat of Jews back to Europe in 1939.

  • More than a quarter of them then died in the war.

  • So this Thanksgiving, when your grandmother's complaining

  • about your new piercing saying your generation is terrible. Simply reply, "Okay, Nanna."

  • "But at least we didn't send Jews back to Europe in 1939."

  • Then break off a turkey leg, drop it like a microphone

  • and you've just won the dinner.

  • Dinner over!

  • Although... let's be honest here.

  • Every generation has had it's own ugly reaction to refugees.

  • Whether they are the Irish, the Vietnamese, the Cubans or the Haitians.

  • And those fears have been broadly unfounded.

  • In fact, there was only one time in American history when the fear of refugees

  • wiping everyone out did actually come true.

  • And we'll all be sitting around a table celebrating it on Thursday.

  • And look, it is absolutely fair. It's fair to be concerned

  • about safety in the wake of these attacks.

  • And it's fair to wonder who we're letting in

  • and what sort of screening system is in place.

  • Unfortunately, many of the people talking about it this week,

  • don't seem to have the first idea of what we're doing.

  • Do we know who these people are? No.

  • Are they properly vetted? No.

  • How do you vet them? There's no possible way to vet them.

  • There's virtually no vetting 'cause there are no databases in Syria.

  • There are no government records.

  • We don't know who these people are.

  • Look, it is difficult to vet people coming out of a war zone.

  • But it's not like we're just letting anyone in.

  • We are the United States of America, not Arizona State.

  • Because for the... Just for the record here.

  • Let me walk you through what our screening process actually is.

  • If you're a refugee, first, you apply through

  • the United Nations' High Commissioner for Refugees,

  • which collects documents and performs interviews.

  • Incidentally, less than one percent of refugees worldwide

  • end up being recommended for resettlement.

  • But, if you're one of them, you might be referred

  • to the state department to begin the vetting process.

  • At this point, more information is collected.

  • You'll be put through security screenings by the

  • National Counterterrorism Center,

  • the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security.

  • And if you're a Syrian refugee, you'll get an additional layer of screening

  • called the Syria in-house review,

  • which may include a further check

  • by a special part of Homeland Security,

  • the USCIS Fraud detection, and National Security directors.

  • And don't relax yet, 'cause we've barely even started.

  • Then, you finally get an interview with USCIS officers

  • and you'll also be fingerprinted

  • so your prints can be run through the biometric databases

  • of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security,

  • and the Department of Defense.

  • And if you make it through all that, you'll then have health screenings,

  • which, let's face it, may not go too well for you,

  • 'cause you may have given yourself a stroke

  • getting through this process so far.

  • But if everything comes back clear,

  • you'll be enrolled in Cultural Orientation classes

  • all while your information continues to be checked

  • recurrently against terrorist databases

  • to makes sure that no new information

  • comes in that wasn't caught before.

  • All of that has to happen before you get near a plane.

  • This process typically takes 18-24 months once you've been referred

  • by the U.N. to the United States.

  • This is the most rigorous vetting anyone has to face

  • before entering this country.

  • No terrorist in their right mind would choose this path

  • when the visa process requires far less efforts.

  • But nevertheless, the House still voted on Thursday

  • to add a few more steps.

  • The house voted 289 to 137 for tougher screening procedures

  • requiring the FBI director

  • to sign off on each and every refugee.

  • He signs off... That is ridiculous!

  • At this point, why don't we just include a pie-eating contest,

  • a spelling bee, and an evening wear portion.

  • But the really hard truth here is no one can promise

  • that someone dangerous still might not slip through.

  • And while that risk should not be denied,

  • it also should not be wildly inflated.

  • Let me ask this.

  • If you bought a five-pound bag of peanuts,

  • and you knew that in the five-pound bag of peanuts

  • there were about 10 peanuts that were deadly poisonous,

  • would you feed them to your kids?

  • The answer is no.

  • Yeah, of course it's no.

  • For starters, you should give your kids and actual meal,

  • not a handful of peanuts because they're human children

  • not circus elephants.

  • But second,

  • we wanted to do the math on what he just said.

  • So we bought five pounds of peanuts and we counted them.

  • There are about 1,000 nuts in there.

  • So if 10 of them are poisoned,

  • Mike Huckabee is essentially suggesting

  • that about one of every 100 refugees is a terrorist.

  • But in reality, of the more than 784,000 refugees

  • admitted to the U.S. since 9/11,

  • only three have been arrested for planning terrorist activities.

  • None of which, by the way, resulted in attacks here.

  • So, the actual known ratio of arrested terror suspects

  • to refugees is not one in 100.

  • It's one in roughly 261,000.

  • Peanuts themselves have killed far more people

  • in the last decade than terrorist refugees.

  • Oh, I'll go one step further!

  • Men named Mike have killed more people

  • than terrorist refugees and I don't see us rounding all of them up.

  • And that's kind of the point. Because as reasonably adults,

  • we accept tiny amounts of risk baked into our everyday lives.

  • We drive cars, despite knowing around 30,000 of us die in them each year.

  • We go swimming, despite the fact 10 people a day die from drowning.

  • Twenty Americans every year are killed by cows.

  • But no one is saying we should expel all cows from the country.

  • We're happy just taking them out one at a time, thinking,

  • "Well, we got them before they got us."

  • This is what freedom tastes like.

  • Any rational person knows you cannot completely eliminate risk.

  • You can only manage it.

  • And we do it with peanuts and cars, and swimming,

  • and hamburgers, and men named Mike.

  • 'Cause we rightly think that they're worth the risk.

  • And I would argue for the tremendous good we could do,

  • and the low-level of risk involved,

  • refugees are worth it, too.

  • And you may disagree,

  • but it is worth noting that as we devise new ways

  • to close our doors this week,

  • France, which has just suffered a terror attack

  • and has far less ability to police its borders,

  • did this.

  • REPORTER: French President Francoise Hollande says

  • France will still welcome refugees into the country

  • despite the Paris massacre.

  • Speaking at a gathering of the nation's mayors,

  • he said France will keep its commitment

  • to take in 30,000 refugees over the next two years.

  • Hollande added that France will remain a country of freedom.

  • Yeah, because they think it's worth the risk!

  • And it's frankly not ideal. Francoise Hollande,

  • a man who broke up with his partner of 30 years,

  • in order to shack up with a lover

  • who looks exactly like her, just 10 years younger

  • Only to quickly leave that lover for another lover,

  • who looks exactly like the second lover,

  • just 10 years younger again.

  • That man is currently functioning as an effective moral compass

  • for your politicians.

♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it