SPARTANBURG, SC — Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), who was one of many Republican governors to announce this week that his state will not accept Syrian refugees, acknowledged Thursday that the risk of refugees committing terrorism is extremely low, but said he can still justify turning away people in need because “this is a different time.” In the 14 years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, none of the roughly 750,000 refugees, including 2,174 Syrians, to come to the country have been arrested for planning domestic terrorist activities. When ThinkProgress asked the GOP presidential candidate how he can reconcile his decision to turning away refugees from war-torn Syria with his Christian faith, which he frequently mentions on the campaign trail, he claimed that he still has a “big heart” and does not want to put Ohioans in danger.
“I think we need to be careful about who we let in, plain and simple” he told ThinkProgress following a town hall in Spartanburg, South Carolina. “Look, I can’t let people into the state when it could jeopardize people’s security. I don’t feel that there’s any conflict at all between having a big heart and a good brain and having to be a leader of a state where I don’t want people to be in danger.”
I don’t think we have the means to find out who these folks are, as we have had in the past.”
When pressed about the actual dangers posed by letting in Syrians given that none of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. refugees have been arrested for domestic terrorism since 2001, Kasich attempted to explain how the country is different today.
“This is a different time,” he said. “And ISIS is a different organization. And I don’t think we have the means to find out who these folks are, as we have had in the past.”
It’s unclear what threats Kasich was referring to when he said that “this is a different time.” Though the threat of the Islamic State is real, none of the people who committed the attacks in Paris last week were Syrian refugees, and Syrians are attempting to escape violence in their home country that reaches the scale of the Paris attacks every day.
The process the United States is using to vet the 10,000 Syrian immigrants who will be resettled in the country is also thorough and takes on average 18 to 24 months, making the refugee process an unlikely path for terrorists attempting to sneak into the country. The extensive security process includes screenings by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees then the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, and the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security. The refugees are also individually interviewed by U.S. officials who are trained to verify that they’re actually refugees.
“Of all the categories of persons entering the U.S., these refugees are the single most heavily screened and vetted,” Jana Mason, a senior adviser to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, told Time.
These refugees are the … most heavily screened and vetted.
While Kasich said the current screening process is not as intense as one we had in the past, the reality is that the vetting of Syrian refugees will be held to some of the strictest standards ever used for refugees. Refugees to the U.S. already undergo one of the most stringent refugee policies in the world, and the process has not been any stricter at any point since September 11. In fact, the background checks being used on the refugees are part of security measures enacted after September 11, 2001.
Kasich’s claim that “ISIS is a different organization” from al-Qaeda and other groups that threatened the country in the past is true. But now is also a different time because homeland security in the United States has improved and there’s more coordination among intelligence agencies to counteract terrorist threats. The government is focusing on terrorism as a threat far more than it did before 2001.
And despite Kasich’s fears, the threat of terrorism by right-wing extremists in the United States is far greater now than the risk of terrorism. Recent studies have shown that domestic attacks by right-wing radicals are a graver concern to law enforcement and have led to more deaths than the threat of “homegrown jihadists” in the dates following 9/11.