Here in the U.S., the Paris attackers

touched off a ferocious debate about Syrian refugees.

You might remember, President Obama had pledged to accept at least 10,000

over the next year but after news broke that one 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.

REPORTER: Thirty-one governors now oppose,

are refusing or suspending the resettlement of Syrian refugees into their states.

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

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

And two, even if they could, Syrians can't just walk between states like anyone else.

The lines on maps are not crocodile-filled moats.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

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

Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio

called for halts to all Syrian refugees entering the country.

And others like Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush argued we could take some if they were Christian.

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

What, you're a Christian, I mean, you can prove you're a Christian. It's--

-How? -I think you can prove it.

I think you can prove it,

I'm pretty sure you can prove it.

You see, I'll tell you how. You see...

a Christian has ears that protrude out from their heads,

whereas non-Christians lack external ears all together.

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.

REPORTER: Mayor David Bowers wrote:

(REPORTER READING LETTER)

Wow!

Did he not realize that Japanese internment camps

are one of this nation's greatest sources of shame?

It's one of the parts of FDR's legacy

his family would most like you to forget.

And bear in mind, this is a man who's own biopic featured

featured a scene of him getting a hand job

from his distant cousin.

♪ (ROMANTIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

Did I have to show you that? No.

Did I want to? Absolutely, I did!

But 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 hand job 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 newsrooms at the time

tried to put a positive spin on.

NARRATOR: Nine hundred-seven Jewish unfortunates

without a country permitted to land

in Belgium after five weeks of suspense afloat.

Through American generosity, they will find at least

temporary shelter in France, Holland and England.

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, Nanna."

"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 it's 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 one 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.

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.

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

There are no government records.

We don't know who these people are.

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 one percent of refugees worldwide

end up being recommended for resettlement.

But, if you're one of them, you might 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 in-house review,

which may include a further check

by a special part of Homeland Security,

the USCIS Fraud detection, and National Security directors.

And don't relax yet, 'cause 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,

'cause 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 makes 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 18-24 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 efforts.

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.

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 one 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?

The answer is no.

Yeah, of course it's no.

For starters, you should give your kids and 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 five pounds of peanuts and we counted them.

There are about 1,000 nuts in there.

So if 10 of them are poisoned,

Mike Huckabee is essentially suggesting

that about one 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 three 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 one in 100.

It's one in roughly 261,000.

Peanuts themselves have killed far more people

in the last decade than terrorist refugees.

Oh, I'll go one step further!

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 reasonably 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.

Twenty Americans every year are killed by cows.

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

We're happy just taking them out one 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.

'Cause 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 has just suffered a terror attack

and has far less ability to police its borders,

did this.

REPORTER: French President Francoise 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 two years.

Hollande added that France will remain a country of freedom.

Yeah, because they think it's worth the risk!

And it's frankly not ideal. Francoise 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 your politicians.