Obama chides anti-refugee politicians for being ‘scared of widows and 3-year

It was the late 1930s and there was a refugee crisis in Europe because of the rise of Nazism in Germany. Others include the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and the Church World Service. Politicians of all stripes and the leaders of all religious denominations (except for one) came together, and dozens of youngsters were welcomed, their futures suddenly bright although their families had been torn asunder.

Taking aim at Obama’s remarks, Cruz argued that it’s unfitting of a president to engage in personal insults and attacks.

“POTUS noted that there is “an entire apparatus of all our law enforcement agencies” devoted to screening the refugees, including the “center we use for counter-terrorism”. And it’s not that old prejudices die hard. It’s that we keep finding new ones.

After last week’s terror attack in Paris, a wide swath of Republicans stated their vociferous opposition to the U.S. accepting any refugees fleeing the violence in Syria. But when I’ve spoken to them about admitting Syrian refugees, nearly none of them do.

The political benefits of this are obvious; you get to simultaneously make irrationally panicked people feel like you’ve got their safety at heart, pander to the “good” Christian people in your base by identifying them as the good guy, while also pandering to the Pamela Geller types who hate Muslims even more than they love Jesus.

For starters, the overwhelming majority of “refugees” being brought into the United States are not just Muslim, but Sunnis-the one Muslim sect that the Islamic State is not persecuting and displacing.

DONALD TRUMP: The problem is we don’t know if they’re Christian or not and I would certainly say that would be superior.

Ironically, New Jersey may be the most diverse state in America.

Cruz spoke after a meeting of Republican lawmakers at the Capitol Hill Club where one of his newest supporters in Iowa, Rep. Steve King, pitched his colleagues on why the Texas senator is the best option for retaking the White House. On Tuesday, Bush said he wasn’t discriminating against other refugees.

“We should not be allowing Muslim refugees from countries where ISIS and al Qaeda have control of significant amounts of territory because of the inability of this administration, the inability of our intelligence sources to distinguish between who is and is not an ISIS terrorist”, Cruz said. In October, he called for the State Department to open the doors for 100,000 Syrian refugees.

Ted Cruz challenged President Barack Obama on Wednesday to a debate on Syrian refugees and said that if the president is going to insult him, he should do it to his face.

There’s a strong incentive for the GOP presidential candidates to stake out these hostile positions on the refugee question. Historically, half or more of all refugees who have been permanently resettled have gone to the United States. After all, ISIS-and most Islamic terrorist groups (Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Hamas, et al)-are all Sunnis. [To Karl] So, you put a religious test. You say no Muslim but we’ll allow the Christians in? “That’s not who we are. We can and must do both”.

His campaign says Bush supports accepting women and children regardless of their religion and does not exclude Syrian Muslims broadly, as long as the refugees can be effectively vetted.