Kirsten Powers: A third way for helping refugees

Syrian refugees trying to escape the monstrous evil of ISIS have become the latest casualty in America’s toxic political debate.

Donald Trump indicated support for a database to track Syrian refugees that enter the country, and Ben Carson unhelpfully invoked rabid dogs in attempting to explain his opposition to opening our doors to desperate asylum seekers.

Meanwhile, too many supporters of accepting the refugees are dismissing the fear that terrorists might slip in with them as nothing more than rank xenophobia. Such concerns amount to “hysteria” according to President Obama.

But does anybody care that most Syrian refugees don’t even want to move to the West?

What they want is to go home.

Brian Duss, a media relations manager at World Vision — a Christian humanitarian organization — just returned from northern Iraq. He told me he heard the same thing from the refugees, whether Syrian or Iraqi: “We don’t want to go to Europe or the U.S.” He noted, “It’s as if they know we are having the wrong conversation here. They don’t want to leave. They want us to help them right now in this period of transition.”

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These were Muslim families who had fled for their lives, trying to outrun Islamic State with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Even though Europe has been flooded with Syrian refugees, those migrants account for about 10% of all Syrian refugees seeking asylum, according to United Nations data. Even fewer have gained asylum in the United States. According to the Department of Homeland Security, only 3.2% of those granted asylum by the U.S. were Syrians in 2013, at 811 people. A New York Times analysis found that 1,854 Syrian refugees have been admitted to the U.S. since 2012.

While some critics complain that Middle Eastern countries aren’t doing enough to address the refugee crisis, almost a fifth of Lebanon’s population is comprised of Syrian refugees and Turkey has accepted more than 2 million. Jordan has more than 600,000, Iraq 200,000 plus, and roughly 130,000 Syrian refugees have settled in Egypt. In Lebanon, World Vision staff report that many Syrian refugees are holding on to their house keys because they still hope to go home.

Even if the U.S. admitted the 10,000 Syrian refugees the Obama Administration has promised, it would remain an infinitesimal portion of the more than 4.2 million Syrian refugees registered with the U.N. Still, in a new Fox News poll, 67% of voters — including nearly half of Democrats — oppose admitting the refugees. At the same time, a recent Ipsos survey commissioned by World Vision found that 71% of Americans said they would be willing to help Syrian refugees.

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So perhaps there is a third way here.

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) remains underfunded, which has forced them to reduce the level of food assistance to those affected by the Syrian war to 50 cents a day. They immediately require $142 million to continue serving the refugees through the end of the year. This should be a no-brainer for Congress and the president.

World Vision has recommended Congress move quickly to fund critical humanitarian relief accounts including Migration and Refugee Assistance, International Disaster Assistance and Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance which would cost about $5 billion for 2016. These programs provide aid globally, not just in Syria. (For some perspective the U.S. spends roughly $100 billion a year on corporate subsidies).

The WFP has reported that many of the refugees are seeking new places to live precisely because they can’t survive where they are. So, if Americans don’t want them in the U.S., the best thing to do is help them stay where they are. It doesn’t hurt that this happens to be what most refugees themselves seem to want.

Kirsten Powers writes weekly for USA TODAY and is author of The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech.

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