EDITORIAL: Don't force refugees on Montana

Five hundred people showed up earlier this month for a Ravalli County commissioners’ meeting to urge the commissioners to officially object to importing Syrian refugees to the Bitterroot.

A few days later, nearly 500 people showed up in Kalispell to attend an informational meeting on the dangers of refugee resettlement, and 100 more traveled to Helena to protest at the Capitol.

So why would the idea of a few dozen Syrian refugees cause hundreds of Montanans to turn up across the state to protest vehemently against the federal government’s resettlement policy?

That’s easy. Fear.

But that’s the only thing that all Montanans can agree on regarding this issue. The follow-up question, of course, is whether that fear is justified or not.

It’s not sufficient to just point to the protesters and label them Islamophobic as if that proves anything. As everyone know, Islam is the breeding ground of Islamic terrorism, and Islamic terrorism is the No. 1 problem facing the world today.

But it’s not just terrorism. What is happening in Europe — which has been practicing an open-door policy for refugees not just from Syria but across the Middle East and North Africa — is a warning that the cultural divide between Islam and Western civilization is a source of friction, hatred and horror.

Just as bad as the Paris massacre and the Charlie Hebdo shootings have been the attacks on women and gay people across Europe. The refugees may want Western jobs, but they don’t want Western values, and that goes for Western Montana as well as Western Europe.

Americans are not stupid. We can see what has happened to Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Greece, Belgium and Italy as a result of the European Union’s failure to regulate its external border. We don’t want it to happen here.

That doesn’t mean that we have to ban all Muslims from entering the country, as Donald Trump has suggested on a temporary basis. But it should mean that only immigrants who are fully vetted and have a proven commitment to assimilate get to come here, and they do so on the same basis as other immigrants. They should not be forcibly deposited in small rural communities that don’t have the resources or inclination to welcome them.

The people of Montana are not united in their opposition to Syrian refugees, but if the government forces them into our midst against the will of the majority, the result will be division and loss of cohesion in a state that is already divided enough.