In far more eloquent prose than I’m able to muster, Malcolm Pollack at the waka,waka,waka blog dissects the refugee resettlement argument in an excellent blog post, “The “Refugee” Question: Further Thoughts” Malcolm writes:
“In the discussion thread under our previous post, a commenter directed our readers’ attention to an article by Megan McArdle on the question of settling “Syrian” “refugees” in the United States. Further discussion ensued.
Ms. McArdle’s essay is helpful in that it identifies six low tactics that proponents of Syrian refugee resettlement have been using: Bible-beating, mockery, falsehood, mawkish incomprehension, straw-manning, and Western self-flagellation.
She then presses her case for U.S. resettlement with familiar arguments: we’ve assimilated all sorts of others before now; previous waves of immigrants were also regarded with a wary eye, but look how well it all worked out; most Muslims aren’t terrorists; etc.
She then says this sensible thing:
As long as you believe that it’s a good thing to help strangers at some sufficiently small cost to yourself, then we can have a reasonable discussion about whether the costs outweigh potential benefits.
That’s fair enough, I think. I’ll be happy to reply on her terms.”
He then completely eviscerates McArdle’s arguments. Please read his entire post.
libertybelle diaries 
That was a good post by Malcolm. It appears you and I were on a similar track in reaction.