The St. Cloud Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency

That 26 governors suddenly oppose allowing Syrian refugees into their states is among the saddest statements America can make to a world trying to help 4 million of those refugees.

To the refugees themselves, such a message could be a death sentence. Remember, these are men, women and children fleeing a country torn by civil war and one in which ISIS is slaughtering everyone it considers non-believers. To deny help is to do exactly what ISIS desires — portray the Western world as hateful of Islam.

For the rest of us, especially Americans too young to remember either World War, now we have a sense of what it’s like not to learn from our history.

Witness America’s restrictive immigration policies from the late 1930s until the early 1950s. Xenophobia and antisemitism at home kept America from providing refuge to countless Jews fleeing Nazi Germany’s death march. During that same era, hundreds of thousands Japanese Americans found themselves in internment camps for nothing more than their appearance. Similarly, World War I turned domestic attitudes about German-Americans from good neighbors to untrustworthy immigrants.

Almost exactly a century later, more than half the nation’s governors are repeating history. Either lacking of or ignorant to the facts, they call for a better vetting process of Syrian refugees.

Yet evidence abounds that vetting process is among the most stringent America has — especially for Syrian refugees, whose applications can take even longer than the 18 to 24 months required of applicants from other countries. That’s because the federal agencies involved include the FBI, State Department, Homeland Security, the Defense Department and the National Counterterrorism Center.

Then there is this, courtesy of The Economist: “Since the 1980s not a single refugee, who has gone through the refugee-resettlement process, has committed a terrorist act in America.” USA Today even notes every terror attack in the U.S. for the past 35 years has been carried out by a non-refugee.

It’s facts like those that make the comments of these governors — now echoed by some local state legislators — so troubling.

The Paris attacks understandably put the world on edge again about radical Islam terrorists. America, though, can’t repeat history by letting fear and bigotry override the fact that there is no evidence this nation’s vetting of refugees is substandard nor contributing to the risk of terrorism here.

Until such evidences surfaces, this nation must continue to give safe haven to as many fully vetted Syrian refugees as possible. Their lives depend on it.