Syrian children eat a snack as refugees and migrants gather near the border of Turkey and Bulgaria on Tuesday. (Bulent Kilic, AFP/ Getty Images)
Re: “U.S. increases number of Syrian refugees it will take to 10,000,” Sept. 11 news story.
Donald Trump shows that Americans are frustrated by illegal immigration. We also welcome legal immigrants.
President Obama’s proposal to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees is far short of making a major difference. More than 4 million Syrians are displaced. Consider accepting a million refugees. The initial costs, $15 billion, are half of 1 percent of the annual federal budget. Those costs are tiny compared to the trillions of dollars we spent on a mistaken war in Iraq, a war that contributed to Syria’s problems.
Taking a million refugees is not just humanitarian, but in our self-interest. America is aging, the number of workers per retiree is declining, and we need more immigrants to restore demographic balance.
Three-year-old Aylan Kurdi drowned fleeing Syria; thousands are dying or losing everything to human traffickers. Every refugee is a human being with the same inalienable rights as you or me. Let them in.
Martin L. Buchanan, Lakewood
This letter was published in the Sept. 16 edition.Re: “The Syrian refugee crisis and climate change,” Sept. 15 letter to the editor.
Letter-writer Robert Beck blames the gut-wrenching Syrian refugee crisis on — of all things — climate change. Here’s a far more plausible cause: When President Obama drew his infamous “red line” in the Syrian sand, Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator, promptly thumbed his nose at the president and stepped over it. Obama did nothing. This caused not only Assad, but the Islamic State and Assad’s ally Vladimir Putin, to conclude that the U.S. is now no more than a paper tiger that can be ignored and dismissed at will. Bad foreign policy decisions can, and do, have disastrous unintended consequences. Had Obama acted as he promised, there would be no Syrian refugee crisis.
Richard Stacy, Denver
This letter was published in the Sept. 16 edition.
