History proves it is normal for Americans to be leery of refugees

Is it un-American to want to turn away Syrian refugees?

More than 30 American governors want to keep Syrian refugees out of their states. The president scolded them, and said that to “slam the door” on people desperate to flee terrorism “would be a betrayal of our values.”
And true, it does go against the plaque on the Statue of Liberty.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

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But have you checked out some of the old polling data?
A Gallup poll in 1939 asked whether we should take in 10,000 refugee children from Germany.

Sixty-seven percent of Americans said “no.” You could argue that we had no idea how far Hitler would go.

But then in 1946, after the war and after the Depression, Gallup again asked a similar question and 59 percent still disapproved.

By 1953, there was the Red Scare and President Eisenhower wanted to admit refugees fleeing communist rule. But Americans were still split. Forty-seven percent approved, but 48 percent disapproved.

Related: Refugee, immigration controversy has long history in Washington

Twenty-five years later, it was the Vietnamese boat people fleeing communism and President Carter wanted to admit 14,000 a month. Sixty-two percent of Americans still said “no.”

Of course, despite popular opposition, we have taken millions of refugees and they are directly to blame for the nationwide outbreak of really good ethnic restaurants, among other things.

But the idea that it’s un-American for governors not to want Syrian refugees, because it’s “not who we are,” appears to be dead wrong. History shows that not wanting refugees is quintessentially American. It is exactly who we are, about 60 percent of the time anyway.