ROANOKE, Va. — ON Friday, David Bowers, the Democratic mayor of Roanoke, apologized for comments in which he called for halting the resettlement of Syrian refugees and suggested that our situation was similar to the one Franklin D. Roosevelt faced when he imprisoned Japanese-Americans.

The mayor didn’t have much choice. After his remarks earlier this week, Hillary Clinton’s campaign promptly kicked him off her Virginia leadership team. Area progressives are now praying that his bad press hasn’t killed the city’s attempt to persuade the Oregon-based Deschutes Brewery to choose Roanoke over our regional rival Asheville, N.C., for a planned expansion.

In the wake of Islamic State attacks in Paris, Beirut and elsewhere, I understand fears about terrorists making their way across porous borders. But refugees are not terrorists, and if anyone knows this, it should be the mayor of Roanoke. Having spent more than a dozen years chronicling Roanoke’s immigrant communities, I’m here to tell the mayor: Learn more about the complexity of the people you represent, and not just for the sake of attracting a brewery.

Roanoke is a small city of around 100,000 people, but it has welcomed upward of 7,000 refugees over the past 40 years, beginning with refugees from Vietnam, and more recently from countries as diverse as Myanmar, Cuba, Burundi, Bosnia and Somalia.