Are Syrian Refugees Terrorists Empirically?

2016-01-28

I just did a bit of research on who, in hindsight, carried out the terrorist attacks on Paris last November. At the time, there was a lot of uncertainty over whether it was refuges or natives. As it turns out, they were from: There are also other people who weren't involved in the attack proper.

The conclusion I draw: No one who had been through the normal refugee process was involved in the attack. This suggests that, contrary to some people's fears, Syrian refugees are not a serious threat to our national security.

Then there was all the New Years trouble in Germany (and possibly other places as well). I did a bit of reading on that too, and determined that it was also not Syrian refugees. Instead, it seems to have been mostly illegal immigrants from North Africa. Also despite what I originally heard, that most of the crimes was theft, not rape (although there were a few cases). It seems to me that the attackers were being clever. They realized that a women is surrounded by sexually aggressive men will (understandably) be focused on getting away unharmed. This provides a perfect opportunity for someone else in the gang to steal her wallet, etc. It's actually quite clever, doubly so given that it appears that nearly all of them are going to get away with it.

I was originally going to propose a (nutty) scheme to screen out the "good" Syrian men form the "bad" ones, in place of the current government's claim that unmarried men are evil unless proven otherwise. However, it seems that we don't need it. The rules still seem a bit unfair, but since the total number of people helped either way is the same, its not a major issue to me. It seems that their semi-arbitrary screening protocol is going to work by coincidence.

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