Tjaden letter: Refugees

Muslims are not to be blamed for crime in the United States. It is not the Syrian refugees fleeing from heinous crimes that want to kill us. I was always taught growing up that all oranges are fruits but not fruits are oranges. All rectangles are squares but not all squares are rectangles. The same way that all ISIS is Muslims, but not all Muslims are ISIS. Just because you don’t like oranges doesn’t mean you don’t eat fruit. Let’s look at the Department of Justice statistics — 42.9 percent of crime is white, 84 percent of white people killed each year is from other white people. Not Muslim, not black, not Hispanic, but white. We can’t let the few stop us from saving the majority. To deny entry of Muslims after a rigorous screening process taking several years is simply outrageous. Being a refugee is not a choice. It’s not their choice to lose everything they have to live in constant fear. I wish that we could step away from racist and misguided thoughts and return to logic and see what’s really going on here. Address the problem at its root. It’s not them, it’s us, we have a problem of rampant racism.

This story was originally published January 15, 2016 at 11:40 PM with the headline "Tjaden letter: Refugees."