Refugee Letter Built Around Blatant Lie

A well-intentioned group of evangelicals from Tennessee have signed a letter to Governor Lee asking him to continue to move refugees into Tennessee after President Trump revolutionized America’s refugee program earlier this year.

Signing the letter to Governor probably made the signatories all feel good, but they affixed their name to a document built around a blatant lie. Below is an excerpt from this letter.

The vetting process is remarkably successful: since the Refugee Act of 1980, no refugee resettled to the U.S. has taken a single American life in an act of terrorism. We can be secure and compassionate in welcoming refugees.

Source: http://evangelicalimmigrationtable.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/governor-bill-lee-eit.wr-letter.pdf

The idea that refugees are perfect is endearing, but it doesn’t fit the facts that we as Tennesseans should be able to recall from Memory.

Emanuel Samson, a Sudanese refugee raised as a Christian, killed one woman and wounded seven others at Burnett’s Chapel Church of Christ in 2017.

Note that the article says this young man spent years at a refugee camp. He suffered from PTSD. That is a terrible thing. How did it escape the vetting process?

That happened in Tennessee. We welcome a young man and his family FROM a refugee camp into America. Which actually makes them economic migrants and not refugees – but that is another story altogether.

This isn’t unique to this incident. Before we go any further, take a look at this page: https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum

You’ll note that the government put information about refugee and asylum status on the same page. You’ll then note that the definition of an asylum seeker is someone who can “Meet the definition of refugee.”

In other words, according to the government, an asylum seeker is always a refugee, but a refugee isn not always an asylum seeker.

In 2002, a set of brothers came to the US on a 90 Day Tourist Visa with their families. You probably know them as the Tsarnaev brothers.

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You know the Tsarnaev brothers because they made two bombs out of pressure cookers and placed them at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The result was 3 dead and 280 people wounded. By folks World Relief and the Evangelical Immigration Table assure you would never commit an act of terrorism. You see, they’re vetted.

The Letter to Governor Lee is thus built around a lie. Refugees do not have a perfect safety record. Americans have been killed by refugees. You have examples from a refugee in Tennessee. You have an example from two refugees in Massachusetts.

Some might say that Emanuel Samson’s attack wasn’t an act of terrorism. Are you kidding? He attacked a house of worship. He shot eight people. One of them died. He did it because he was mad at white people after the Dylan Roof shooting. This wasn’t just terrorism, it was reactive race-based terrorism. It was the saddest kind of terrorism.

For those who say the Tsaernov Brothers weren’t refugees, we shown that as aslyum seekers, they have to “fit the definition of a refugee” in the mind of the US Government.

Governor Lee needs to know the letter he received is based around a lie. You can call his office at (615) 741-2001.

Just as importantly, your fellow Tennesseans need to know that the letter to the governor was built around a lie. Evangelicals need to know a lie was sent to the governor in their name.

And so does everyone who signed this letter. They’re victims too.