Excluding refugees makes us less safe

Imagine for a second you’re a high school senior getting ready to embark on your collegiate adventures. And you have decided that becoming a member of a fraternity or a sorority will greatly enhance that college experience. You are being courted quite actively by one particular Greek house, but that’s not one you have any interest in joining. However, the one you really desire to join wants no part of you. So the second house steps up its recruiting efforts, telling you they will give you plenty of opportunities to "get even" with those that slammed the door in your face. Makes that house a lot more appealing, doesn’t it.

That, in a nutshell, is ISIS’s recruiting strategy. It offers a refuge for the disaffected, the disenfranchised and tells them it will teach them how to get even with those who disaffected and disenfranchised them.

Remember, last Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris were not carried out by Syrian refugees, but individuals of the Muslim faith born and raised in France or Belgium, Muslims ISIS managed to recruit because they were somehow alienated by their government. (The Syrian passport found on one terrorist turned out to be a forgery.)

According to figures I came across, there are some 140,000 Muslims in Texas, comprising about .7 percent of the state’s total population. Now these 140,000 are hearing from our state’s highest elected officials "We don’t want you and your kind here and we’re going to do everything we can to keep the doors closed to you and your kind." All ISIS needs to do is isolate three or four of those 140,000 to wreak havoc in some major metropolitan area of Texas and the actions by Gov. Greg Abbott will go along way to making it easier for ISIS to find those three or four or more.

His actions are stupid, irresponsible and make us far less safe.