- After the Paris attacks, many US officials and presidential candidates expressed opposition to accepting Syrian refugees
- Some governors opposed the resettlement of Syrian refugees into their states, but they do not have the legal authority to ban them
- Presidential candidates like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Marco Rubio called for a halt to all Syrian refugees entering the country, while others suggested only accepting Christian refugees
- The mayor of Roanoke, Virginia used the example of Japanese internment camps to argue against accepting Syrian refugees
- The US has a rigorous vetting process for refugees, including interviews, security screenings, and health screenings, which can take 18 to 24 months
- The House voted for tougher screening procedures for refugees, requiring the FBI director to sign off on each refugee
- The actual known ratio of arrested terror suspects to refugees is 1 in roughly 261,000
- France, despite suffering a terror attack, still plans to welcome refugees and remain a country of freedom

- François Hollande's personal relationships are not ideal
- He broke up with his partner of 30 years to be with a younger lover who looks like her
- He then left that lover for another younger lover who looks like the second lover
- Despite this, he is currently seen as a moral compass for politicians.

Last Week Tonight covers an inappropriate analogy for the refugee crisis.

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♪♪ Here in the U.S., the Paris attackers touched off a ferocious debate about Syrian refugees.

You may remember President Obama had pledged to accept at least 10,000 over the next year.

But after news broke that 1 of the attackers may have posed as a refugee and entered Europe through Greece with a fake Syrian passport, many U.S.

31 governors now oppose, are refusing, are suspending the resettlement of Syrian refugees into their states.

Okay, that's pretty extreme, but it's also pretty meaningless for 2 reasons.

1, governors don't have the legal authority to ban refugees.

And 2, even if they could, Syrians can just walk between states like anyone else.

The lines on maps are not crocodile-filled moats.

Presidential candidates also got involved with this anti-refugee rhetoric.

Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Marco Rubio called for a halt to all Syrian refugees entering the country, and others like, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush argued we could take some if they were Christian.

And if you're wondering how that would work, let Jeb Bush explain.

I mean, you can prove you're a Christian.

You see, a Christian has ears that protrude out from their head, whereas non-Christians lack external ears altogether.

Hold on, I'm thinking about seals and sea lions.

Forget everything I said about Christians and Muslims, I don't know what I'm talking about.

The Democratic mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, David Bowers, was so terrified of Syrian refugees, he used the worst possible historical example to prove his point.

Mayor David Bowers wrote, I'm reminded that President Franklin D.

Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

It appears the threat of harm to America from ISIS now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.

Did he not realize that Japanese internment camps are 1 of this nation's greatest sources of shame.

It's 1 of the parts of FDR's legacy his family would most like you to forget.

And bear in mind, this is a man whose own biopic featured a scene of him getting a handjob from his distant cousin.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep-beep, beep...

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep-beep...

♪ -♪ Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep-beep, beep-beep...

♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Did I have to show you that?

This week's events actually call to mind a chapter from FDR's time in office that is even more shameful than the saddest and classiest handjob of all time.

Authorities turned away a ship containing more than 900 mostly Jewish refugees from Germany, something American newsreels at the time tried to put a positive spin on.

907 Jewish unfortunates without a country permitted to land in Belgium after 5 weeks of suspense afloat.

Through American generosity, they will find at least temporary shelter in France, Holland, and England.

We sent a boat of Jews back to Europe in 1939.

More than a quarter of them then died in the war.

So, this Thanksgiving, when your grandmother's complaining about your new piercing, saying your generation is terrible, simply reply, Okay, Nana, but at least we didn't send Jews back to Europe in 1939.

Then break off a turkey leg, drop it like a microphone, and you've just won the dinner.

Every generation has had its own ugly reaction to refugees, whether they are the Irish, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, or the Haitians.

And those fears have been broadly unfounded.

In fact, there was only 1 time in American history when the fear of refugees wiping everyone out did actually come true, and we'll all be sitting around a table celebrating it on Thursday.

It's fair to be concerned about safety in the wake of these attacks.

And it's fair to wonder who we're letting in and what sort of screening system is in place.

Unfortunately, many of the people talking about it this week don't seem to have the first idea of what we're doing.

There's virtually no vetting, because there are no databases in Syria.

Look, it is difficult to vet people coming out of a war zone, but it's not like we're just letting anyone in.

We are the United States of America, not Arizona State.

Just for the record here, Let me walk you through what our screening process actually is.

If you're a refugee, first, you apply through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which collects documents and performs interviews.

Incidentally, less than 1 percent of refugees worldwide end up being recommended for resettlement.

But, if you're 1 of them, you may then be referred to the State Department to begin the vetting process.

At this point, more information is collected.

You'll be put through security screenings by the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security.

And if you're a Syrian refugee, you'll get an additional layer of screening called the Syria Enhanced Review, which may include a further check by a special part of Homeland Security, the USCIS Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate.

And don't relax yet, because we've barely even started.

Then, you finally get an interview with USCIS officers, and you'll also be fingerprinted, so your prints can be run through the biometric databases of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense.

And if you make it through all that, you'll then have health screenings, which, let's face it, may not go too well for you, because you may have given yourself a stroke getting through this process so far.

But if everything comes back clear, you'll be enrolled in cultural orientation classes, all while your information continues to be checked recurrently against terrorist databases to make sure that no new information comes in that wasn't caught before.

All of that has to happen before you get near a plane.

This process typically takes 18 to 24 months once you've been referred by the U.N.

This is the most rigorous vetting anyone has to face before entering this country.

No terrorist in their right mind would choose this path, when the visa process requires far less effort.

But nevertheless, the House still voted on Thursday to add a few more steps.

The House voted 289 to 137 for tougher screening procedures, requiring the FBI director to sign off on each and every refugee.

At this point, why don't we just include a pie-eating contest, a spelling bee, and an evening wear portion?

But the really hard truth here is no 1 can promise that someone dangerous still might not slip through.

And while that risk should not be denied, it also should not be wildly inflated.

Let me ask this, if you bought a five-pound bag of peanuts, and you knew that in the five-pound bag of peanuts there were about 10 peanuts that were deadly poisonous, would you feed them to your kids?

For a start, you should give your kids an actual meal, not a handful of peanuts, because they're human children, not circus elephants.

But second, we wanted to do the math on what he just said, so we bought 5 pounds of peanuts, and we counted them.

There are about a thousand nuts in there.

So if 10 of them are poisoned, Mike Huckabee is essentially suggesting that about 1 of every 100 refugees is a terrorist.

But in reality, of the more than 784,000 refugees admitted to the U.S.

Since 9-11, only 3 have been arrested for planning terrorist activities, none of which, by the way, resulted in attacks here.

So, the actual known ratio of arrested terror suspects to refugees is not 1 in a hundred, it's 1 in roughly 261,000.

Peanuts themselves have killed far more people in the last decade than terrorist refugees.

Men named Mike have killed more people than terrorist refugees, and I don't see us rounding all of them up.

Because as reasonable adults, we accept tiny amounts of risk baked into our everyday lives.

We drive cars, despite knowing around 30,000 of us die in them each year.

We go swimming, despite the fact 10 people a day die from drowning.

20 Americans every year are killed by cows.

But no 1 is saying we should expel all cows from the country.

We're happy just taking them out 1 at a time, thinking, well, we got them before they got us.

Any rational person knows you cannot completely eliminate risk.

And we do it with peanuts and cars and swimming and hamburgers and men named Mike.

Because we rightly think that they're worth the risk.

And I would argue, for the tremendous good we could do, and the low level of risk involved, refugees are worth it too.

And you may disagree, but it is worth noting that as we devise new ways to close our doors this week, France, which had just suffered a terror attack and has far less ability to police its borders, did this.

French President Francois Hollande says France will still welcome refugees into the country despite the Paris massacre.

Speaking at a gathering of the nation's mayors, he said France will keep its commitment to take in 30,000 refugees over the next 2 years.

Hollande added that France will remain a country of freedom.

And it's frankly not ideal that François Hollande, a man who broke up with his partner of 30 years in order to shack up with a lover who looks exactly like her, just 10 years younger, only to quickly leave that lover for another lover who looks exactly like the second lover, just 10 years younger again.

That man is currently functioning as an effective moral compass for our politicians.


Speaker 0: ♪♪ Here in the U.S., the Paris attackers touched off a ferocious debate about Syrian refugees. You may remember President Obama had pledged to accept at least 10,000 over the next year. But after news broke that 1 of the attackers may have posed as a refugee and entered Europe through Greece with a fake Syrian passport, many U.S. Officials had second thoughts.

Speaker 1: 31 governors now oppose, are refusing, are suspending the resettlement of Syrian refugees into their states.

Speaker 0: Okay, that's pretty extreme, but it's also pretty meaningless for 2 reasons. 1, governors don't have the legal authority to ban refugees. And 2, even if they could, Syrians can just walk between states like anyone else. The lines on maps are not crocodile-filled moats. -...

Presidential candidates also got involved with this anti-refugee rhetoric. Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Marco Rubio called for a halt to all Syrian refugees entering the country, and others like, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush argued we could take some if they were Christian. And if you're wondering how that would work, let Jeb Bush explain.

Speaker 2: What does the focus on

Speaker 1: Christian families actually look like? Is that gonna...

Speaker 3: Well, you're a Christian. I mean, you can prove you're a Christian. It's... How? I think you can prove it.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. I think you can prove it.

Speaker 0: I'm pretty sure

Speaker 4: you can prove it. You see, I'll tell you how.

Speaker 0: You see, a Christian has ears that protrude out from their head, whereas non-Christians lack external ears altogether. You know what? Hold on, I'm thinking about seals and sea lions. I often get them confused. Forget everything I said about Christians and Muslims, I don't know what I'm talking about.

And it was not just Republicans. The Democratic mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, David Bowers, was so terrified of Syrian refugees, he used the worst possible historical example to prove his point.

Speaker 5: Mayor David Bowers wrote, I'm reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It appears the threat of harm to America from ISIS now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.

Speaker 0: Wow. Did he not realize that Japanese internment camps are 1 of this nation's greatest sources of shame. It's 1 of the parts of FDR's legacy his family would most like you to forget. And bear in mind, this is a man whose own biopic featured a scene of him getting a handjob from his distant cousin. -♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 2: Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep-beep, beep...

Speaker 0: ♪ -♪

Speaker 2: Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep-beep... ♪ -♪ Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep-beep, beep-beep...

Speaker 0: ♪ -♪

Speaker 2: Beep, beep, beep, beep...

Speaker 0: ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Did I have to show you that? No. Did I want to? Absolutely I did.

Speaker 4: But this week's...

Speaker 0: This week's events actually call to mind a chapter from FDR's time in office that is even more shameful than the saddest and classiest handjob of all time. Specifically, when in 1939, U.S. Authorities turned away a ship containing more than 900 mostly Jewish refugees from Germany, something American newsreels at the time tried to put a positive spin on.

Speaker 6: 907 Jewish unfortunates without a country permitted to land in Belgium after 5 weeks of suspense afloat. Through American generosity, they will find at least temporary shelter in France, Holland, and England.

Speaker 0: Yes. We sent a boat of Jews back to Europe in 1939. More than a quarter of them then died in the war. So, this Thanksgiving, when your grandmother's complaining about your new piercing, saying your generation is terrible, simply reply, Okay, Nana, but at least we didn't send Jews back to Europe in 1939. Then break off a turkey leg, drop it like a microphone, and you've just won the dinner.

Dinner over. Although, let's be honest here. Every generation has had its own ugly reaction to refugees, whether they are the Irish, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, or the Haitians. And those fears have been broadly unfounded. In fact, there was only 1 time in American history when the fear of refugees wiping everyone out did actually come true, and we'll all be sitting around a table celebrating it on Thursday.

And look, It is absolutely fair. It's fair to be concerned about safety in the wake of these attacks. And it's fair to wonder who we're letting in and what sort of screening system is in place. Unfortunately, many of the people talking about it this week don't seem to have the first idea of what we're doing.

Speaker 1: Do we know who these people are? No. Are they properly vetted? No. How do you vet them?

There's no possible way to vet them.

Speaker 4: There's virtually no vetting, because there are no databases in Syria. There are no government records. We don't know who these people are.

Speaker 0: Look, it is difficult to vet people coming out of a war zone, but it's not like we're just letting anyone in. We are the United States of America, not Arizona State. Because, for the... Just for the record here, Let me walk you through what our screening process actually is. If you're a refugee, first, you apply through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which collects documents and performs interviews.

Incidentally, less than 1 percent of refugees worldwide end up being recommended for resettlement. But, if you're 1 of them, you may then be referred to the State Department to begin the vetting process. At this point, more information is collected. You'll be put through security screenings by the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security. And if you're a Syrian refugee, you'll get an additional layer of screening called the Syria Enhanced Review, which may include a further check by a special part of Homeland Security, the USCIS Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate.

And don't relax yet, because we've barely even started. Then, you finally get an interview with USCIS officers, and you'll also be fingerprinted, so your prints can be run through the biometric databases of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense. And if you make it through all that, you'll then have health screenings, which, let's face it, may not go too well for you, because you may have given yourself a stroke getting through this process so far. But if everything comes back clear, you'll be enrolled in cultural orientation classes, all while your information continues to be checked recurrently against terrorist databases to make sure that no new information comes in that wasn't caught before. All of that has to happen before you get near a plane.

This process typically takes 18 to 24 months once you've been referred by the U.N. To the United States. This is the most rigorous vetting anyone has to face before entering this country. No terrorist in their right mind would choose this path, when the visa process requires far less effort. But nevertheless, the House still voted on Thursday to add a few more steps.

Speaker 3: The House voted 289 to 137 for tougher screening procedures, requiring the FBI director to sign off on each and every refugee.

Speaker 0: He signs off? That is ridiculous! At this point, why don't we just include a pie-eating contest, a spelling bee, and an evening wear portion? But the really hard truth here is no 1 can promise that someone dangerous still might not slip through. And while that risk should not be denied, it also should not be wildly inflated.

Speaker 7: Let me ask this, if you bought a five-pound bag of peanuts, and you knew that in the five-pound bag of peanuts there were about 10 peanuts that were deadly poisonous, would you feed them to your kids? The answer is no.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Of course it's no. For a start, you should give your kids an actual meal, not a handful of peanuts, because they're human children, not circus elephants. But... But second, we wanted to do the math on what he just said, so we bought 5 pounds of peanuts, and we counted them.

There are about a thousand nuts in there. So if 10 of them are poisoned, Mike Huckabee is essentially suggesting that about 1 of every 100 refugees is a terrorist. But in reality, of the more than 784,000 refugees admitted to the U.S. Since 9-11, only 3 have been arrested for planning terrorist activities, none of which, by the way, resulted in attacks here. So, the actual known ratio of arrested terror suspects to refugees is not 1 in a hundred, it's 1 in roughly 261,000.

Peanuts themselves have killed far more people in the last decade than terrorist refugees. I'll

Speaker 4: go 1 step further.

Speaker 0: Men named Mike have killed more people than terrorist refugees, and I don't see us rounding all of them up. And that's kind of the point. Because as reasonable adults, we accept tiny amounts of risk baked into our everyday lives. We drive cars, despite knowing around 30,000 of us die in them each year. We go swimming, despite the fact 10 people a day die from drowning.

20 Americans every year are killed by cows. But no 1 is saying we should expel all cows from the country. We're happy just taking them out 1 at a time, thinking, well, we got them before they got us. -...this is what freedom tastes like. -...

Any rational person knows you cannot completely eliminate risk. You can only manage it. And we do it with peanuts and cars and swimming and hamburgers and men named Mike. Because we rightly think that they're worth the risk. And I would argue, for the tremendous good we could do, and the low level of risk involved, refugees are worth it too.

And you may disagree, but it is worth noting that as we devise new ways to close our doors this week, France, which had just suffered a terror attack and has far less ability to police its borders, did this.

Speaker 1: French President Francois Hollande says France will still welcome refugees into the country despite the Paris massacre. Speaking at a gathering of the nation's mayors, he said France will keep its commitment to take in 30,000 refugees over the next 2 years. Hollande added that France will remain a country of freedom.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Because they think it's worth the risk. And it's frankly not ideal that François Hollande, a man who broke up with his partner of 30 years in order to shack up with a lover who looks exactly like her, just 10 years younger, only to quickly leave that lover for another lover who looks exactly like the second lover, just 10 years younger again. That man is currently functioning as an effective moral compass for our politicians.

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Refugee Crisis: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)