Refugee help should make Texas proud
After 130 people were killed in terror attacks last November in Paris, Gov. Greg Abbott said he would ban resettlement of Syrian refugees in Texas for fear that some of them might be terrorists.
Thank goodness the people from aid agencies, religious groups and nonprofits who assist refugees didn’t listen.
State Department figures show that 6,737 refugees arrived in Texas between Oct. 1 and Aug. 31. And between Oct. 1 and Sept. 8, those new Texas residents included 825 Syrians, according to a report by Star-Telegram writer Diane Smith.
It quickly became clear that Abbott lacked authority to ban refugee resettlement.
Attorney General Ken Paxton stepped in and, on behalf of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, filed a lawsuit against the federal government and the International Rescue Committee, a resettlement agency.
The suit went nowhere. In February, U.S. District Judge David C. Godbey of Dallas ruled that courts can’t ban refugees, either.
Even if there were a terrorism risk — and Texas failed to prove there was — Godbey said that in the United States “it is the federal executive that is charged with assessing and mitigating that risk, not the states and not the courts.”
Godbey finally dismissed the Texas suit entirely in June.
In an apparent effort to save face, Abbott said he would work with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on a bill through which Congress would give governors veto power over refugee resettlement if they believe there’s a risk of terrorism.
Maybe it’s because Cruz got too busy losing his bid for the Republican presidential nomination to Donald Trump, but the reaction to that bill in Congress has been similar to the soft sound of crickets chirping.
Texas should be proud that it leads the nation in helping refugees settle into new homes. They come mostly from Burma (now called Myanmar), the Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq, drawn here by jobs and the state’s network of established immigrant and refugee communities, Smith reported.
In today’s world, there’s no guarantee that no terrorists are among them, but turning our backs on all of them is not the Texas we want to be.
This story was originally published September 16, 2016 at 6:35 PM with the headline "Refugee help should make Texas proud."