If I were a Syrian mother who had left a bombed-out house and a home town reduced to rubble and had walked partway to Europe and spent my life’s savings to pay a criminal to transport me across dangerous waters for the rest the journey, I think I’d probably stay there and not try to come to the United States.
Paul Ryan attributes the high rate of mass shootings in the U.S. to inadequate mental health care, leading the logical person to conclude that the U.S. has a far higher rate of mental illness than Europe, about 59 times higher if you make the comparison of mass shootings. If your Syrian child’s PTSD from being bombed, hunted, raped, starved, or discriminated against causes him or her to flip out, it is clear from Mr. Ryan’s analysis that mental health care is many, many times more effective in Europe than here. And even if the mental health care is spotty, he or she will at least not be allowed or encouraged to buy an automatic rifle and as much ammunition as can fit in a box under his or her bed.
That is an ironic paragraph, but in reality, your child would be less safe here than in Europe. Vigilantism, radical racism (which can cut both ways), religious fanatacism, and an easy path to personal weaponization exist in Europe, but farther out of the mainstream. It’s a matter of degree of risk.
Those Syrian doctors, lawyers, farmers, teachers, craftsmen, cooks, engineers, and laborers, most of whom are far more bitter enemies of ISIS than are Fox News commentators, are better off elsewhere.