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Rescuing refugees: The answer to a complex problem is not so simple

Rescuing refugees: The answer to a complex problem is not so simple

Can movie stars save the Syrian refugees? Some humanitarian organizations seem to think so.

Angelina Jolie toured refugee camps in Iraq earlier this month, then chastised the world for inaction in a column in The New York Times. Across the Atlantic, 12 British entertainers, including Emma Thompson and Vanessa Redgrave, signed an open letter to David Cameron, scolding the prime minister for failing the refugees. “Resettling ‘several hundred people’ just isn’t good enough,” the celebrities huffed.

Credit the actors for drawing attention to a real and growing problem — the plight of Syrians driven from their homes by a savage civil war. But they, like Refugee Council executive Maurice Wren, are wrong to indict the West for “rationing” compassion. Compassion must be rationed, lest an individual or government go broke.

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Ms. Jolie is widely admired for adopting children and donating millions of dollars to global causes. And she is right that Syria’s neighbors — principally Lebanon, but also Jordan, Egypt, Turkey and Iraq — are overwhelmed by the number of refugees living in primitive camps. Syrian refugees now comprise one-quarter of Lebanon’s population, and their lot is miserable.

But the stars’ solution — that other countries open wide their doors — oversimplifies a complexity. For one thing, refugee resettlement is costly. The U.S. government issues per-capita grants for “reception and placement,” lends refugees money for airfare (some of which is never repaid) and works with private groups to provide health care and job counseling for up to five years.

Another concern is security. Some 70,000 refugees will come to the United States this year, and admitting people from a region boiling with jihadists is a delicate business. Fraud has occurred in the past, which is why the United States now requires DNA tests for families. For any country, national security must trump compassion.

On Syria, Ms. Jolie says “the international community as a whole has to find a path to a peace settlement.” Actually, one man does: Bashar Assad. He, not the empathetic but constrained West, is the problem. As such, he is also the solution.

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First Published: January 30, 2015, 5:00 a.m.

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