Many in the mainstream press are calling for the U.S. to admit as many Syrian and Iraqi refugees as possible, despite warnings from top intelligence officials and evidence that refugees have been arrested for terror-related activity, and evidence that one of the Paris attackers last week entered France as a refugee…

“They need to adopt some Syrian refugees,” said Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke on Wednesday, referring to several governors who have said they will reject any refugees sent to their states. “First off, there’s no better way to highlight how important family is to you than by expanding your own family.”

Both The New York Times and Washington Post made the same argument. The Times said that “confusing refugees with terrorists is morally unacceptable and, as a matter of strategy, misguided.”

“The risk from a small number of vetted refugees is far outweighed by the humanitarian imperative to help innocent people escaping from Syria’s evil rulers and from the Islamic State,” said the Post.

A leader of New York City’s Syrian community told The Post on Wednesday that ISIS terrorists have “absolutely” sneaked into America by posing as civil-war refugees — and joined sleeper cells just waiting to be activated.

“I believe the terrorists from Syria have been coming into the United States, not only in the past few years, but way before that,” said Aarafat “Ralph” Succar of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, home of the city’s largest enclave of Syrian immigrants. “I think they’re already at work.”…

“You can go to the Syrian government today and say to them, ‘I need a piece of paper that says I’m Tony Caterpillar.’ And they give it to you,” he said.

“These are not forged documents. These are written out by a government employee who needs money, whose family has no food.”

Few ISIS soldiers or other terrorists are going to spend at least three years in a refugee camp for a 0.042 percent chance of entering the United States when almost any other option to do so is easier, cheaper, quicker.

If the United States still takes in 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016, and the number of refugees rises to 4.5 million, a mere 0.22 percent of them–one out of every 450–will be resettled in the United States.  That number is still so small and the process so well monitored that potential terrorists are unlikely to see the refugee system as a viable way to enter the United States. 

Foreign- born terrorists tend to enter on student visas, tourist visas, business visas, have asylum applications pending, or are lawful permanent residents – all nonimmigrant or immigrant categories face fewer security and background screenings than refugees do…

The security threat posed by refugees in the United States is insignificant.  Halting America’s processing of refugees due to a terrorist attack in another country that may have had one asylum-seeker as a co-plotter would be an extremely expensive overreaction to very minor threat. Resettling refugees who pass a thorough security check would likely decrease the recruiting pool for future terrorists and decrease the long run risk.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says President Obama isn’t being honest when he says the administration only wants to bring 10,000 refugees from Syria.

Speaking with Iowa radio’s Mickelson in the Morning on Thursday, Paul said the number of refugees would actually end up being closer to 200,000 because refugees that come here would want to petition for their families to come.

“One of things people don’t realize is, President Obama saying, ‘oh, it’s only 10,000,’” said Paul. “You know what happens when 10,000 refugees from Syria get here, they all petition to have their families come over. So you add that and you multiply by four and then those bring their families over. This 10,000 will turn into a couple 100,000 through family migration.”

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday (in a room with a governor who said he’d refuse refugees) that she understood the concerns over the security risks, but that the United States needed to accept refugees, as reported by AL.com…

Among those in attendance was Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) who had released a statement Sunday that said he would not “stand complicit to a policy that places the citizens of Alabama in harm’s way.” He was one of 13 governors to release statements to that effect.

Rice acknowledged Bentley at the conference, but said the country needs to be “open and welcoming” to refugees.

“I fundamentally understand that you in a position of authority, like you, governor and others, in addition to having compassion for others, you have to be safety conscious for your people,” Rice said, nodding at Bentley. “What the United States has done is to be open to people who are fleeing tyranny, who are fleeing danger, but we have done it in a very careful way that has worked for us.”

It’s true (at least according to these stats) that many of the refugees are women and children, but this doesn’t mean they’re necessarily friendly. To make that assumption is to ignore the fact that jihadists use women and children in terrorist operations.

We only have to look to an attack as recent as Paris to see that this is true. When police raided a suburban Paris apartment where they believed the mastermind of the attacks was holed up and planning another attack, they found a woman, who blew herself up with an explosive vest. How many other women are playing either a support or active role in terrorism plots across the West? The use of women is becoming increasingly common as radical Islamists seek to breach areas on high alert for military-aged men…

Given these facts, how can our president continue to allow Syrian refugees into our country, even if they’re mostly women and children (and that is up for debate)? Remember the Boston Marathon bombers? They were refugees too, fleeing the Chechen conflict. They were “vetted” and, just like those who knew the terrorists in France, friends and associates said they never suspected these refugees were radical Islamists.

When Obama mocks those who want to protect our citizens from the bloody hell those innocent people suffered in France, he needs to be reminded of the true face of our enemy. It’s not just a man’s face. It’s a woman’s face. It’s a child’s face. This isn’t xenophobic or uncharitable. It’s reality.

In September, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, called the free movement under the Schengen Agreement “a unique symbol of European integration.”

But what once seemed a sensible idea now offers real and present danger. Stolen, doctored and fake passports from the Schengen area are among the most sought-after forms of identification by terrorists, drug smugglers, human traffickers and other criminals. As of last year, eight Schengen countries were on the list of the top 10 nations reporting stolen or lost passports in Interpol’s databases. Not one of those countries systematically screened passports at their borders…

Having open borders without the proper vetting aids and abets terrorists. The failure to thoroughly screen passports or check identities at border crossings is simply irresponsible in the face of global terrorism. Based on my 14 years of experience running Interpol, I know that terrorists will be much more likely to succeed as long as countries fail to properly check the identities of those who cross their borders…

Until passports are screened systematically at every single entry point, the 26 Schengen countries must suspend their open border arrangement and close this passport-free travel zone throughout Europe.

Christians especially should sympathize with the plight of Syrian refugees. Jesus was at one point a refugee, after all — when his family fled to Egypt…

The Bible is full of scriptures that call Christians to willingly and cheerfully help the downtrodden — including those who are of less than perfect moral virtue: “Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you,” the Gospel of Luke reads.

At the Last Judgement, Jesus says he will invite the righteous into heaven, telling them, “I was a stranger and you invited me in.” The Apostle James writes that “to visit orphans and widows in their affliction” falls under the definition of “religion that is pure and undefiled before God.”

And to be clear, the scriptures don’t say “help the downtrodden, but only if they’re Christian.”…

We must not overreact to the terrorism in Paris by turning our backs on Syrian refugees who are running for their lives from the same enemy that carried out that murderous plot. As Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans, “Don’t let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.”

Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, told BuzzFeed News on Thursday that he was shocked by the “overheated” rhetoric being employed by high-profile politicians in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris.

“Donald Trump is saber-rattling about shutting down mosques in this country, which, as somebody who works every day on religious liberty, I’m astounded that we could have a presidential candidate of either party speaking in such a way,” Moore said. “Evangelicals should recognize that any president who would call for shutting down houses of worship … is the sort of political power that can ultimately shut down evangelical churches.”…

“I don’t think we ought to have a religious test for our refugee policy,” Moore said, adding that a rigorous vetting process could still make room for innocent Muslims. “We really don’t want to penalize innocent women and children who are fleeing from murderous barbarians simply because they’re not Christians,” he said, though he added that persecuted Christians in the region haven’t received enough attention from the U.S.

If the Islamic State wanted to dispatch a terrorist to America, it wouldn’t ask a mole to apply for refugee status, but rather to apply for a student visa to study at, say, Indiana University. Hey, governors, are you going to keep out foreign university students?

Or the Islamic State could simply send fighters who are French or Belgian citizens (like some of those behind the Paris attacks) to the U.S. as tourists, no visa required. Governors, are you planning to ban foreign tourists, too?…

If Republican governors are concerned about security risks, maybe they should vet who can buy guns. People on terrorism watch lists are legally allowed to buy guns in the United States, and more than 2,000 have done so since 2004. The National Rifle Association has opposed legislation to rectify this…

The Islamic State is trying to create a religious divide and an anti-refugee backlash, so that Muslims will feel alienated and turn to extremism. If so, American and European politicians are following the Islamic State’s script.

Is it loving to accept refugees from a war-torn country? Of course. Is it loving to not care about security risks that could lead to the death of your countrymen? No. Is it prudent to consider the benefits to humanity relative to the risks to yourself of others? Of course.

Think about it in your own life. Perhaps you have been blessed with enough resources to share some of your bounty with those in need. Do you give money to the beggar you encounter on the street? Do you support charities that help the homeless? Do you give money to your congregation and have the elders and pastors distribute it to those in need? Do you help friends who are in a crunch? Do you open up your house to those who are in need of shelter? Maybe you do one or several of these things. But in what you do, it’s incumbent on you to first take care of your vocational responsibilities to your nearest neighbors — your family. You may be less willing to let a stranger sleep on your sofa if you have young children, for instance. You may be less willing to share your largesse with a charity if your daughter just lost her job and is worried about making ends meet.

Providing security or working to protect the security of your neighbors is a form of charity. Accepting refugees from faraway lands is also an act of charity. Sometimes, because of man’s fallen condition or even just the allocation of limited resources, these things are in conflict. When they are, we are to behave prudently in balancing those risks. That can take time, energy, and thought…

Perhaps the charitable thing to do is take out ISIS. Perhaps the charitable thing to do is not to put Syrian refugees into a troubled American resettlement industry and instead have 3,000 congregations sponsor a family and be responsible for helping them learn English, get an education, job training, employment, health care, counseling, and integrated into a community that can help them thrive.

Indeed, Scripture draws a clear line between the responsibility of the individual and the role of the state. Individuals are to forswear vengeance, leaving justice to earthly rulers as God’s “agents of wrath” who bring “punishment on the wrongdoer.” The state has an affirmative responsibility to protect its citizens, even to the point of bringing a sense of “terror” to those “who do wrong.” There is no contradiction between personally welcoming the “strangers” among us while our leaders endeavor to protect us from a genocidal terrorist force that uses refugee status as a shield and disguise to perpetrate brutal attacks against innocent civilians…

The true scandal is not that we’re turning our back on the poor, but that our Christian president has utterly forsaken his God-ordained duty to be an “agent of wrath” against our sworn enemies, allowing evil to thrive and placing America under direct threat. By failing in his God-ordained duties, Obama is failing in his constitutional duty to defend our nation — we are far weaker and more vulnerable than when he took office…

While the American people are undoubtedly imperfect, we have lived our Judeo-Christian values by establishing and defending the most generous, compassionate nation on the face of the earth. We continue to live those principles by helping feed, house, and defend countless refugees from conflict zones abroad. And we would not violate those principles by closing our borders to a specific group of people who we know will mask and facilitate deadly attacks against our friends, neighbors, and families. America can and should be both compassionate and wise. God expects no less.