Joe Biden: Turning Away Refugees Is Giving ISIS What They Want

President Barack Obama has not backed away from his plan to increase the number of Syrian refugees potentially accepted into the USA over the next two years and has said refugees are only accepted into the country after a rigorous vetting process. They can be admitted under the visa waiver program if they haven’t made it onto a US government watch list.

This grandstanding over refugees represents a gross deviation from American ideals.

Those in favor of closing the door claim they want to be sure that refugees do not constitute a security threat. Welcoming refugees is smart policy – and the right thing to do.

“With these measures in place, we believe that we are able to protect … the American people”. The disconnect is alarming to Congress and to the American people.

As Ryan puts it, “We can be compassionate, and we can be safe”.

Syrian refugees must also give up their biometric data, submit their detailed biographic histories and are also interviewed at length. For us to turn back now… on refugees, is turning our back on who we are. Consider that these are people who have risked their lives escaping violence in their homeland.

Syrian refugees also undergo “enhanced reviews” in which specially trained officers examine each case biography for accuracy and authenticity. “Where will they go?”

Yet this entire kerfuffle doesn’t make much sense – because pretty much the last approach that any sensible ISIS terrorist would take would be to infiltrate the United States as a Syrian refugee. The added level of security does not diminish our commitment to helping the innocent men, women and children fleeing the grips of Islamic State militants or the Assad regime, rather it strengthens our defense and will enable us to move forward through a safer and more secure process to relocate refugees.

Again the vote was 289-137, with 47 Democrats, exceeding the two-thirds majority that would override President Obama’s veto. This would involve a tremendous waste of time and resources and likely create a bureaucratic backlog.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said last week, “We will be working to ensure that Syrian refugees are not going to be allowed into the state of Texas and… that Texans are protected from those refugees coming into the state”. However, Abbott and his fellow governors are misguided. But it is disturbing that Virginia and national politicians would curb the admittance of refugees, whether or not they have the power to do so.

“Anybody who had a chance to see those kids, hopefully you understood the degree to which they’re just like our kids”.

So any possible state bans on Syrian refugees would be unconstitutional, and Obama is on solid legal footing for proceeding with his plan. Behind the scenes, Republicans are preparing several bills that are more drastic, aiming to close American borders to asylum seekers.

The public is split along party lines on the issue, with Democrats largely supporting the President.

Some, including Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, have advocated giving preferential treatment to Christian refugees from Syria.

But Syrian refugees are not the problem.

PARIS/WASHINGTON French President Francois Hollande hopes to spur Washington to greater action against Islamic State, but it is unclear to what extent he can overcome the White House’s reluctance to get sucked further into the Syria conflict. “The USA can be proud of what we’ve done, but we could do more”.

“We had the federal government sending in what they said were Cuban refugees without adequate security and without adequate checks, with their assurances that ‘Everything is fine.’ And yet we later find out that Fidel Castro had actually opened up a few of his prisons and the people had mental health problems, they had criminal backgrounds, they were violent”, he said.