Even accounting for the difference in population size, the religious breakdown of Syrian refugees settling in the United States is slanted towards Muslims.
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“It’s not surprising that President Obama is attacking me personally”, Cruz said. Officials conduct in-person interviews at refugee camps and subject applicants to what the State Department describes as its highest-level security checks for people entering the country.
On the other side of the aisle, leading Democratic politicians were quick to dismiss a religious test as contrary to the values on which the country was founded. “Mr. President, if you want to insult me, you can do it overseas, you can do it in Turkey, you can do it in foreign countries”.
During testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October, the head of the United States’ Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Refugee Affairs Division, Chief Barbara Strack, also noted that the agency had implemented additional security protocols for Syrian refugee applications, referring many cases to fraud detection officials for additional review and research.
The Texas Republican often mentions how his father fled Cuba for the United States as a young man. Cruz was asked on CNN on Monday how he could bar refugees from the United States given his father’s story.
“I would encourage you, Mr. President, if you want to insult me, come back and insult me to my face”, Cruz said of Obama, who is in the Philippines. “Or Christians”, he suggested.
More than half of the nation’s governors are now against a plan to accept 10,000 Syrians refugees into the country next year because at least one of the suspects believed to be involved in the Paris terrorist attacks entered Europe among the current wave of Syrian refugees.
Jeb Bush says only the Syrian refugees who are Christians should be allowed into the USA, and he thinks Christians have a way to prove their faith.
It’s possible that the United Kingdom will also unintentionally discriminate against Syrian Christian refugees because of the method it’s using.
For the rest, he argued for a clear, rigorous vetting process that does not exclude Muslims, whom Bush recognized in the past as victims of persecution, too, by the Islamic State group in Syria.
“The sympathies and prayers of all Americans go out to the people of Paris and France, and we will stand by our allies in the fight against terrorism”.
Refugees already feared a backlash after a passport in the name of Syrian Ahmad Almohammad, 25, was found near the body of one of the suicide attackers who killed 129 people on Friday.
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“There is no doubt we would need to vet anyone coming in, but there is no indication that we have Muslims pretending to be Christians in the coming refugee wave”, Cruz said before an event at the College of Charleston, concluding his three-day swing across the Palmetto State.
