Last year, the Cato Institute, a Washington DC-based libertarian think-tank, crunched some statistics on terrorist threats. The results, some of which have been widely circulated on social media over recent weeks, are thought-provoking.
Only three refugees have committed fatal terrorist attacks on US domestic soil since 1975 — and all three were Cubans, admitted before the Refugee Act of 1980 created a more rigorous screening process. In fact, if you look at the past four decades, the data suggest that the chance of dying in a terrorist attack by a refugee — of any religion — was just one in 3.64 billion in any given year. That is far lower than the risk of being struck by lightning or even being killed by a falling vending machine (yes, really). It is also minuscule compared with the risks posed by guns and car crashes, which kill about 13,000 and 38,000 Americans respectively each year.
What should we make of this? Opponents of Donald Trump view this as proof of how misguided — or malevolent — the White House has been with its recent travel ban. No one from the seven nations included in Donald Trump’s executive order has killed any Americans in a terrorist attack on US soil since 1975. Yet after a judge blocked the immigration order, President Trump tweeted: “Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril . . . People pouring in! Bad!”