Welcoming refugees patriotic, good for economy

Marsha Wallace and Diane Smock | Guest columnists

Back in January, at a protest held at the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport -- one of several held around the state to protest President Trump’s travel ban -- we met a Muslim mother and her young son. With tears in her eyes and a trembling voice, she thanked us repeatedly for spending a Sunday afternoon standing in the cold with our fellow citizens. We were there to show our support and good will toward her and others who fled persecution in their homelands to seek a safe haven for their families in the United States and to pursue the American dream.

Today is World Refugee Day. It's a good time to remind our representatives in Washington that one of the founding values of our country was to offer oppressed people refuge from violence and persecution. We call on our Congressional delegation to support the refugee resettlement program and protect funding in the International Affairs Budget that provides life-saving assistance to refugees around the world.

As Americans we must open our minds, hearts, and borders to refugees. To forsake our founding values and these vulnerable people is contrary to what it means to be American. Refugees, like other immigrants to this country, are essential to our economic stability and to global security.

Some Americans have expressed concerns about the potential economic impact of refugees coming to the United States. In fact, across the country, refugees are revitalizing the communities in which they live, contributing their experience and energy to the workforce and creating new jobs and economic opportunities. In South Carolina alone, immigrant-owned businesses generated over $207 million in income in 2014. According to the most recent census data, almost 150,000 South Carolina workers are immigrants. In 2014, immigrants in South Carolina contributed almost $140 million to Medicare and over $560 million to Social Security.

As a country founded by immigrants and enriched by those who have arrived on our shores, we have offered safety, solace, and security to hundreds of thousands of people in need from around the world. Refugees have left their entire lives behind, often with just the clothes on their backs. They have more than returned the favor by weaving deeply into the fabric of our country and making contributions of incalculable value to our communities.

There is widespread confusion about the quality of the vetting system for refugees. Lt. Gov. Kevin Bryant expressed a common misconception in a recent Greenville News article: "We've known for a long time that we really don't know who is coming into our country. We're going to have to secure our borders until we figure out a way to vet these folks.” He is wrong.

In fact, the refugee resettlement program is the world’s largest and most stringent. Its critics should stop peddling untruths and take a hard look at the program, which includes multiple levels of background checks and investigations that make refugees by far the most scrutinized people coming into our country. This is not just our opinion: a bi-partisan group of our nation’s top current and former national security experts agree. Refugees must go through dozens of checks and interviews by our nation’s top security and counter-terrorism experts, a process sometimes lasting over two years.

Many studies show that communities that receive refugees have lower crime rates and that refugees are less likely to be incarcerated than those born in the United States.

Commitment to the resettlement program will strengthen our country’s standing in the world by showing solidarity with nations who are already doing more than their fair share while also demonstrating that we are willing to do our part. It will also be an important step toward restoring our country’s moral leadership.

Supporting refugee resettlement in the United States and funding assistance programs around the world isn’t just the right thing to do -- it makes economic sense, improves our national security, and is in keeping with the very principles our country was founded on. It’s the American way.

Wallace is a co-founder of Dining for Women, an organization dedicated to transforming lives and eradicating poverty among women and girls in the developing world. Smock is a former Greenville County Probate Judge and a former at large member of Greenville City Council. Wallace and Smock are Sisters on the Planet Ambassadors, a project of Oxfam America dedicated to fighting global poverty, hunger, and injustice, with a particular focus on empowering women and girls worldwide.