Refugee backlash, and liberty

Currently it appears that at least some of the terrorists who performed the attacks in Paris were Syrian, and at least one of their passports has been linked to an actual refugee, now apparently it is pretty easy to fake or otherwise acquire Syrian passports so I personally am not rushing to judgement, but the rest of this post will be written under the assumption that the reports are correct, just for ease of comprehension.

In the aftermath of the attacks, several of the Republican candidates have said terrible things, Ben Carson said something insane about having better intelligence sources than the White House, Trump put out the idea that if people in the Bataclan Theater had had firearms more of them would have survived, and so on and so forth. What most of them agree on however is that the US should rethink its policy on accepting refugees because some of them may be terrorists. Ted Cruz also is a big fan of the idea that the refugees are just trying to get to some country where they have cable, but I will talk about the terrorist thing.

Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

That's the second half the The New Colossus, inscribed on a plaque in the Statue of Liberty, used in political speeches and books by such people as JFK and President Obama, among many others, notice that it does not include the line "unless they are just here for the cable" nor does it say anything about assuming people are terrorists.

The poem, and for a large part of our history, the mindset of immigration, was to welcome anyone looking for a better life, it didn't even ask for the best other countries could offer, and for a long time, neither did we.

It paid off, people coming in through Ellis Island saw an open door an a welcoming light, and they reacted appropriately:

I saw the Statue of Liberty. And I said to myself, "Lady, you're such a beautiful! You opened your arms and you get all the foreigners here. Give me a chance to prove that I am worth it, to do something, to be someone in America." And always that statue was on my mind

I pulled that quote from Wikipedia, that was an immigrant from Greece. His quote is not particularly special though, people don't come here to be lazy, coming to America to be someone, and to live in freedom, is quite literally the American Dream.

When we demonize refugees, when we give in to paranoia and terrorism and prevent people from coming here, from anywhere, we betray the very ideals that gave our own ancestors an opportunity to succeed. Killing that dream because someone may be an enemy is stupid and insults the courage of the millions who sacrificed to make this country what it is in the first place.

Terrorists will always attempt to kill people in the most cowardly ways possible, we can't live in fear of that or they win, they cannot be allowed to be used as an excuse to take away freedoms, or to prevent us from showing kindness to the unfortunate. People want to come here for a better life, why are we in such a hurry to prove them wrong? They are personifying the ideals that founded this country, people like Cruz and his ilk would see those ideals crushed for a momentary political advantage, they are the ones who abuse the system, and they are the ones who don't deserve to be supported by it.