Fusion criticized right-wing media's xenophobic fearmongering that the Obama administration's plan to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year may “leave [the] U.S. vulnerable to attack,” explaining that refugees “are subject to the highest level of security checks of any category of traveler to the United States,” and describing how such “hostility can have a negative effect on newly arriving refugees.”

Right-wing media have repeatedly exploited the refugee crisis facing the European Union, to stoke the Islamophobic fear that President Obama's decision to increase the number of refugees displaced by the Syrian civil war who can resettle in the United States could leave the country “open[] for terrorists.”

In a September 14 article, Fusion's Casey Tolan called out right-wing media who are “up in arms,” writing “a series of alarmist headlines” and “painting vile caricatures of refugees,” to stoke fears about their resettlement, underscoring how such Islamaphobic hostility could hinder the ability of refugees to “thrive in a new home.” Tolan also pointed out that, contrary to Fox News' consistent scaremongering, refugees undergo “the highest level of security checks of any category of traveler to the United States”:

As the Obama administration looks to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year, right-wing media are again up in arms, and the response to the Idaho rumors suggests that local opposition could sprout up across the U.S. That kind of hostility can have a negative effect on newly arriving refugees.

Since Obama announced the new measures last week, a series of alarmist headlines from the expected right-wing news outlets--as well as myriad blog posts from WordPress sites like “Creeping Sharia” and “Refugee Resettlement Watch”--have been painting vile caricatures of refugees.

“Will flood of Syrian refugees leave U.S. vulnerable to attack?” asked Fox News.

[...]

Refugees go through multiple security clearances before they reach American soil, he noted. In fact, refugees “are subject to the highest level of security checks of any category of traveler to the United States,” a State Department official told the AFP.

Once they're approved, the State Department pays for refugees' plane tickets, although they agree to pay the cost back once they're settled. They're sent to one of 180 refugee resettlement centers around the U.S., where they get help finding a job and a place to stay. Refugees get support from the federal government for 90 days.

Studies have found that refugees' ability to thrive in a new home depends in part on how welcomed they feel by their local community, so the anti-refugee rhetoric that has flared in the past week could have a negative impact on the people coming here.

“It's not just a matter of the refugees adapting to the host community that they travel to, but the willingness of the host community to adapt to the newcomers,” R. Scott Smith, a professor at Utica College who has studied refugees in the U.S., told me. “If there is hostility to the newcomers resettling, that obviously makes the process more difficult... It's like going from one traumatic situation to another.”

In the most successful examples of resettlement, Smith said, host communities recognize the benefits that refugees can bring, such as the potential to revitalize struggling neighborhoods or reverse decreasing population trends.

Maybe everyone fearmongering about “Muslim colonization” should take a history lesson.

“People should understand why the United States has the resettlement program,” Rwasama said. “When you look at how America was created, this was a land of immigrants, that's what it started as. People that are refugees are people that are victims. They're survivors that are running away from those bad people that everyone is afraid of.”