Fear Of Refugees Essay

As for terrorist attacks, this is a much smaller problem. From 2014 to 2017, there have only been 6 terrorist attacks, none of which were on a massive scale (Press 2017). What’s more is that for the most part, terrorist attacks are not committed by refugees. In fact, the odds of a person being killed by a refugee in a terrorist attack is 1 in 3.6 billion (Nichols 2017). You are more likely to be struck by lightning twice (1 in 9 million) then to be killed by a refugee terrorist.

More than 3,500 refugees drowned on their way to Europe to live better lives. Why are they going to Europe, and why are they risking their lives to do so? Refugees are people who get forced out of their homes. To live a normal life they must leave their old lives behind just to get better ones, but we help the most we can.

Since 9/11, Muslims and the people of Arab and South Asian descent became targets by the government practices that result in racial profiling. “In June 2002, the attorney general John Ashcroft made announced a “Special Registration” that was a must for all males from a list of Arab and Muslim countries report to the government to register and be fingerprinted. For instance, ever since they crash into the Twin Tower’s those people seem to be targets especially trying to get a job” (Graves, L. 2010, December 27). They also seem to be more of a target for questioning before they attempt to come back into the country. “The United States has been actively engaged in prosecuting the Global War on Terrorism since September 2001” Dobrot, L. (2007, November 1). “Through after 5 years of the national effort that has included the loss of over 3,000 service members in combat operations, a lot of people are questioning whether the U.S. strategy is working, and if the United States understand how to combat an enemy based on radical revolutionary religious ideology” (Dobrot, L. (2007, November

After the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks 83,000 immigrants registered with the U.S. Government from a required program that targeted specified countries. Of those 83,000, twenty-eight would go on to be charged with a crime (“Immigration Law and Terrorism”). Yet in America, immigrants, children of immigrants, and those of Islamic faith are targeted as a threat to the United States of America. In return, immigrants and those of Islamic have become the victims of profiling, hate crimes, and in some cases their constitutional rights have been violated because of actions based on fear of their place of origin and or their religion. The key to antiterrorism is not singling out Muslims and immigrants as a threat based solely on their beliefs

It ties back to the research in that people are hypocrites who think it’s okay to attack Middle Easterners and then complain that they are the threat to others.The label is the misconception of who Middle Easterners are, the truth is: most Arabs are not terrorists, most Muslims are not Arab, and many of the early Arab immigrants adjusted well in America. The news on TV decides to create a different image of Middle Easterners, warning the public that they are a dangerous and can’t be trusted. The public then thinks it’s okay to harm them, with the excuse that they look similar to the people on the news, or just because of the intense hatred that they have against them. They have a fixed mindset that leads them to believe that Middle Easterners are what social media labels them to be. Vicious murders such as the one in Manhattan proved this hostility when a Middle Eastern taxi driver was stabbed in the face and throat because his passenger discovered he was a Muslim. America has made these attacks on Middle Easterners a common threat. The feud between whether or not this group of people should stay in America now becomes a more pressing issue than just hateful comments on the internet. If the news does not begin to inform the public on the true connections, if any, that Middle Easterners have to terrorist attacks then these immigrants will never feel safe in a country that wants them

Muslim immigrants have arrived to the United States of America from every nuke and corner of the sphere. The population is diverse in their own ways but each one of them bears similar reasons: Some desire to escape an old way of life, others to find a new one. Some wanted to escape violence, others the fetters of penury, or simple lack of opportunity. They have arrived with fervent hope, and often nothing more. The initial response received by them was largely varied. These new Americans found a vast new land hungry for their labor. But some, unfamiliar with these newcomers’ customs and religions, treated the new Americans as outsiders and believed they could never be real Americans. And with the events like the Gulf War and the World Trade Center bombing outpoured anti-Islamic sentiments in the 1990s. These sentiments intensified with the heinous and abominable attacks of September 11th. Muslims were being labeled as “extremists”, “jihadists”, “fanatics”, “fundamentalists” etc. They were being feared, discriminated and even harassed.

We walk around the United States terrified today of people of Middle Eastern descent because we’ve associated them and their religion with terrorism. We need to be reminded that a person’s race and religion does not make them a terrorist. Their actions make them a terrorist. A white, Catholic American could just as easily cause mass terror as anyone other person in this world, but we neglect to accept that fact because of the fear that has been instilled in us by groups like ISIS who have completely ruined an entire religion and race’s reputation.

Every day in my middle school eighth grade social-studies classroom, I often found myself asking the questions, “Why study history; shouldn’t we let go of the past; why is studying the past important?” Oddly enough, I found my answer to these very questions in a quotation in my social studies textbook. The quote profoundly stated, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” After reading the article, “Then Came War”, the story of unjust racial prejudice against Japanese-Americans in WWII, the answer to my question finally clicked. The story of Japanese Americans in WWII has brought forth many lessons, can be applicable to prejudicial events of our time, and has explanations and the impact of racial prejudice and stereotypes.

A common misconception that people from the Middle East are Muslim. Which allows the notion that Islam is synonymous to terrorism. The President of the United States has capitalized on this notion and used it as a weapon of hate. It’s clear that the president has specifically targeted this marginalized group of people due to his woeful ignorance, because of Donald Trump’s election and him directing his attention towards one specific race has been perceived as him normalizing the discrimination towards this group of people. With that being said he has initiated a certain

Past acts of terrorism done by foreigners have provoked fear throughout the American people. 9/11 is one example that brought upon a negative change. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks Americans were scared of foreigners, especially any person that was Islamic, coming into the country. The 9/11 attack caused Americans to associate any Islamic person with being a terrorist. This provoked a change in airport security. According to the article “To Combat ISIS, Welcome Syrians”, Anne Speckhard explains how the negative connotation with the Islamic religion has made it very hard for the innocent Syrians fleeing their country to seek asylum in the U.S. “We have failed to enact efficient practices and sufficient resources to allay our fears that within

Society assumes that if you're dressed as a muslim or you look muslim or you're actually muslim you're a terrorist, which is just disgusting to know that your country is so racist and actually looks down upon a group of innocent people just because they look a certain way. Refugees just want to escape the darkness that is occurring in a place they call home. Their home is being ripped from their finger tips and we can't just stand by and not do anything. We need to give in our all for people who's lives are being taken from them right in front of us. We need to stop being scared if they might be terrorist because in reality anyone can be a terrorist, so don't risk their lives over an assumption. If you were in their shoes wouldn't you want the same

I want to point out that I do recognize that ‘Muslim’ isn’t a race, it’s a religion, but it feels like after 9/11, being ‘Muslim’ has become racialized. This reminds me of the article The Social Construction of Race by Ian Lopez because it resembled how easily we can socially construct certain groups to have ‘natural’ differences from us, when it is all just social interaction and created by our society, such as the racialization of Muslims. I remember Christianity and Catholicism were always the norm. I never grew up learning about my culture in depth, unless we were learning about 9/11. I remember people’s faces physically changing when I said I was Muslim. People who are Christian or Catholic have the privilege of having a religious temple or building near them at all times, they have time off work for their holidays, we use their Calendar system, their religion is always represented in media, they don’t have to speak on behalf of the people of their religion when someone from their religion commits a crime (like a school shooting), and they can worship their religion freely without feeling fear. Seeing the way my religion was portrayed in the media and how my parents almost hid this from neighbors, made me realize that there must be something wrong with us and I still carry this fear of saying I’m

Since Islam is a religion that promotes peace and kindness, one could ask where the stereotype that all Muslims are terrorists originated. Following the tragedies of September 11, 2001, Arabs and Muslims have been presented as potential terrorists. This idea stemmed from the theory that, “media bias increases when a specific ethnic, religious, or racial group is seen as a threat to national security.” (Stiffler, 2013). Since the attacks on September 11, 2001 Muslims and Arabs have been “hyper-visible” in the media as potential terrorists. Due to the negative media attention and failure of most media platforms to

The Syrian refugee crisis has received massive media coverage. People around the world are trying to comprehend the desperate, complicated situation surrounding Syria. The civil war in Syria is the worst crisis in our time. Syrians upset at the fact that long promised reforms have not been enacted, began anti-government demonstrations which started the civil war in 2011. The peaceful protests turned ugly, with the government violently putting an end to those protests. Afterward, ordinary citizens took arms, causing the situation to escalate. Syrians are fleeing their homes because of the great violence, which have left thousands dead and millions wounded, a collapsed infrastructure, resulting in a shattered economy, and for the safety of the children. Syrians are either streaming to surrounding countries or risking their lives to travel to Europe.

The European refugee crisis began in 2015, when a rising number of refugees and migrants made the journey to the European Union (EU) to seek asylum. Refugees are people who have been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. According to the data that was shown in Business Standard and also confirmed by BBC News, the top ten nations which account for 90% of the sea arrivals in 2015 were: Syria (49%), Afghanistan (21%), Iraq (8%), Eritrea (4%), Pakistan, Nigeria and Somalia (2 %), Sudan, Gambia and Mali (1%). Also the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees confirms that the top three nationalities of refugees are Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi. Of the refugees and migrants arriving in Europe by sea in 2015, 58% were men, 17% women and 25% children. (Wright, 2015). According to Eurostat, EU member states received over 1.2 million first time asylum applications in 2015, 4 countries (Germany, Hungary, Sweden, and Austria) received around two-thirds, while Latvia received a very small part of them.