IRRATIONAL FEAR

Humans can be very stupid. One of the ways in which we are sometimes not so smart is how our fears relate to the risks posed to us. If our fears were proportional to the risks, we would be much more afraid of driving than flying, terrified of sloth and gluttony, and not really very concerned with the risk of being killed by an act of terror.

The Cato Institute published an analysis of the threat posed by refugees and found that there is little reason to believe that restricting refugee access to the US results in more safety.

From 1975 to the end of 2015, 20 refugees have been convicted of attempting or committing terrorism on U.S. soil, and only three Americans have been killed in attacks committed by refugees—all in the 1970s. Zero Americans have been killed by Syrian refugees in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The annual chance of an American dying in a terrorist attack committed by a refugee is one in 3.6 billion.

The report details how the numbers of refugees arrested for terrorism bandied about by conservatives have been artificially inflated in a pretty egregious way:

One list released by Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) details 580 terror-related convictions since 9/11. This incomplete list probably influenced which countries are temporarily banned, and likely provided justification for another section of Trump’s executive order, which directs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to release all information on foreign-born terrorists going forward, and requires additional DHS reports to study foreign-born terrorism.

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First, 241 of the convictions (42 percent) were not for terrorism offenses. Senator Sessions puffed his numbers by including “terrorism-related convictions,” a nebulous category that includes investigations that begin due to a terrorism tip but then end in non-terrorism convictions. My favorite examples of this are the convictions of Nasser Abuali, Hussein Abuali, and Rabi Ahmed. An informant told the FBI that the trio tried to purchase a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, but the FBI found no evidence supporting the accusation. The three individuals were instead convicted of receiving two truckloads of stolen cereal. That is a crime but it is not terrorism.

Second, only 40 of the 580 convictions (6.9 percent) were for foreigners planning a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Seeking to join a foreign terrorist group overseas, material support for a foreign terrorist, and seeking to commit an act of terror on foreign soil account for 180 of the 580 convictions (31 percent). Terrorism on foreign soil is a crime, should be a crime, and those convicted of these offenses should be punished severely but the government cannot claim that these convictions made America safe again because these folks were not targeting U.S. soil.

Third, 92 of the 580 convictions (16 percent) were for U.S. born citizens. No change in immigration law, visa limitations, or more rigorous security checks would have stopped them.