Gov. Mike Pence and governors from more than 20 other states are suspending the resettlement of Syrian refugees in response to the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris Friday.
According to the Family and Social Services Administration, Indiana has helped resettle 40 Syrian refugees since 2010.
We sat down with Sumit Ganguly, Director of Indiana University's Center On American and Global Security to discuss the governor's response and the implications of the attacks.
Q: Do you think Gov. Mike Pence's decision to suspend the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Indiana is the right move?
A: No, I'm afraid not. The refugees, any refugees that we were to take in in Indiana would be carefully vetted by the federal government. These individuals would be fingerprinted, their backgrounds would be checked quite rigorously, their names would be checked against existing databases of terrorists or potential terrorists and, consequently, the likelihood of someone slipping through this very extensive net would be exceedingly slender. And, consequently, I think we are letting our fears overcome our reason.
Q: Do governors have the authority to bar refugees from entering their states?
A: That is an important constitutional question because if there are federal facilities, I wonder how a governor can prohibit the federal government from putting people in a federal facility. So this is a fairly complex question and ultimately the courts might have to get involved in this.
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Q: What message are the governors of states barring Syrian refugees sending to the rest of the world?
A: It's sending a message that we are overly anxious, that we are letting our fears get the better of us, that it also frankly feeds into a vision of a xenophobic America. An America that is fearful and distrustful of foreigners, particularly those from the Middle East. I think it is not exactly the message that we want to be associated with.
Q: Is the federal government's vetting of refugees strong enough to prevent radicals from entering the country?
A: There is always that possibility. No human system has been devised on background checks that is 100-percent reliable. But that said, I am certain that against this tragic backdrop of the events in Paris, any government, particularly our national government, would be exceedingly careful and would go to great lengths to ensure that individuals who are being given asylum in America are ones whom they have carefully scrutinized. Because the last thing any national government would want is to have let a terrorist slip through and cause havoc in the country.
Q: What approach do you think the U.S. should take when it comes to Syria and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East?
A: There is no silver bullet. There is no immediate panacea to the problem they're facing. The tragedy is that the Syrian state has in large measure collapsed. Significant portions of the Syrian state have been overtaken by ISIS and the capacity of the Bashar al-Assad regime to impose order on much of the state has basically vanished. What we have to work on is a negotiated solution by which moderates take power in Damascus and we find a way to ease al-Assad out and we find ways of not merely containing the Islamic State at this point but finding a way of eviscerating the Islamic State. And, even if this involves sort of supping with the devil, even if this involves working with the Russians. Because we face a common enemy in the Islamic State and we have to think of a long-term, diplomatic, military and political strategy to deal with the crisis which has now started to engulf Europe and may well come to our shores.
Q: In the wake of the attacks in Paris, many are concerned the United States could be ISIS' next target. How vulnerable are we?
A: It's much more difficult to enter the United States because we are blessed in an important fashion in that we have weak neighbors both to the south and the north and on the east and the west we are surrounded by very large bodies of water. So it's very difficult for individuals to simply drift onto our shores, unlike in the Mediterranean, where you can risk your life on a dingy but could actually show up on a Greek island and from there wind your way to France, to Germany and even possibly through the channel into Britain, though that's a little more difficult. Where as we I think are much more secure. I'm not saying that America is an impregnable fortress that we live in, but I think we are considerably more secure because of our peculiar geography and neighbors who are much more likely to cooperate with us to keep our borders secure, despite some of the overheated rhetoric in the presidential debates at the moment.
