Some Arab immigrants in Dearborn, Michigan are supporting Gov. Rick Snyder's move in rejecting the entry of Syrian refugees.
"We don't need no more troubles, you know?" Hicham Dawil, who came to the U.S. three decades ago, told NBC News. "I feel bad for the people. On the other hand, look what's happening in France. This is crazy, you know. It's just evil."
Dawil knew the fallout has affected him as an Arab immigrant.
"We just cannot afford being looked at like, 'Oh, well, you are one of them.' Let's say I walk into a lounge ... I can see people look at me," he said.
Snyder earlier asked to pause the U.S. efforts to bring in the refugees to Michigan and has requested the State Department of State and Department of Homeland Security to take a full review of the security clearances and procedures for all refugees.
"The issue that I said we should hit the pause button for is, one, these horrific terrorist events that have sort of coincided. We have Paris, we have Lebanon, we have the Russian airline bombing. Again, I have not criticised the federal system at all. What I said was, it'd be great if we had more transparency and awareness of the review processes," he told NPR.
He added, "When you have terrible events like these in other countries, isn't it appropriate that you just pause to make sure that you do an appropriate review and look at what lessons learned you can see from these other events to see if processes should be improved and enhanced in some fashion?"
Ali Berry, who came from Lebanon, also supports Snyder's ban.
"It's a great idea because we have a bunch of refugees coming from overseas and we don't know what they're about yet, we don't know what they're bringing with them," he said.
Arab immigrants began arriving in Dearborn in the last century. Now half of the city's population are Arab, mostly Lebanese and large numbers of Iraqis, Yemenis and Syrians.
While most are Muslims, they are generally Shiites, making them enemies of ISIS, who are Sunni Muslims, NBC News reported.
Reem Akkad, who was born in Michigan from Syrian immigrants, said, "For us here as Syrians, as members of the Muslim community, it is literally our worst nightmare. ISIS is not only killing our people, but it's already hijacking our image."
Badi Dabjan, a Syrian-American volunteer in Michigan, said 30 Syrian refugee families have settled in Michigan since April.
"People are more nervous about them since Paris," Dabjan said. "But they shouldn't be because these are people who have been in refugee camps for years. They've been interviewed over and over again. To me, I don't know what the governor will gain from trying to stop them from coming here."
