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Globally divisive debate over a Syrian refugee crisis reached a fever pitch after 130 people were killed and hundreds more were injured in terror attacks on Paris by ISIS militants on 13 November 2015. In the aftermath of those attacks, old rumors about the purported chaos inflicted by refugees on continental Europe flourished, and in response to a rise in anti-refugee sentiment a number of American governors pledged not to allow Syrian asylum seekers to enter their respective states. Debate raged on social media, with one side holding that Syrian refugees were ISIS militants in disguise, the other maintaining that those fleeing Syria sought to escape the same horrors that ISIS had visited upon Paris. Members of both camps turned to previous events to solidify their positions. Those who welcomed the refugees claimed none had ever carried out such crimes on American soil, while their debate opponents suggested that Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were the perfect examples of how refugees might turn on the country that welcomed them and bring mayhem and death after years of enjoying safe harbor. In November 2015, many social media users shared a Washington Post article from April 2013 titled Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Were Refugees from Brutal Chechen Conflict, which reported that: That article was published on 19 April 2013. The Boston Marathon bombing perpetrated by the Tsarnaev brothers had occurred four days earlier, and the pursuit, gun battles, and standoff which resulted in the death of Tamerlan and capture of Dzhokhar took place on 18-19 April. Information carried by the Washington Post in the midst of those events was preliminary, published before the Tsarnaev brothers became household names. The intervening months between the Washington Post article and Rolling Stone's controversial 17 July 2013 piece Jahar's World saw the introduction of far more information about the Tsarnaev brothers and their early lives. According to the later, in-depth profile, the Tsarnaev family were technically not refugees when they entered the U.S.: they arrived in the country on tourist visas and later applied for political asylum: As the article explained, the application for political asylum was initiated after the Tsarnaev family had already arrived in the United States. The situation described was not strictly relevant to debate over refugees from Syria, Chechnya, or elsewhere, as the Tsarnaevs didn't identify themselves as refugees (subject to far more stringent screening than tourists) when they entered the United States: In December 2013, the local Boston Globe published a long-form piece about the Tsarnaevs titled The Fall of the House of Tsarnaev. The paper held not only that the family did not enter as refugees, but that their claim for asylum was possibly of dubious merit: While attention paid to the Tsarnaev family's manner of entry might seem to be nitpicking, the distinction is important. Refugees and political asylum seekers are tasked with proving claims of persecution in their homelands, whereas tourists can obtain entry visas issued with far less rigorous inspection: An April 2015 book published by Masha Gessen titled The Brothers, The Road to an American Tragedy described the Tsarnaevs as new émigrés: While it's true the Tsarnaev brothers were not infrequently described as refugees in media accounts, their resemblance to the flood of asylum seekers from Syria was passing at best. Like the Tsarnaevs, many Syrian refugees are Muslims, and many have endured seemingly endless war, death, and destruction in their homeland. The suspected attackers in Paris also had traits in common with the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: the younger Tsarnaev was a naturalized American citizen, and several of the identified attackers in Paris were French nationals. But the refugee question is largely semantic in nature when applied to the Tsarnaevs, with respect to whether current refugees present a homegrown terrorist threat. Given that the Tsarnaev family arrived in the United States as vacation-goers, their tourist visas were unlikely to trigger initial asylum-seeker-type screening (to which Syrian refugees are subject). Clamping down on the admission of refugees would not affect individuals like the Tsarnaev family, who entered the U.S. with a stated intent of leisure travel.
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