In a letter to President Obama, Christie says the state of New Jersey will no longer accept Syrian refugees in the wake of last week’s Paris attacks.
Advertisement
“I’d sit down with our allies and figure out how we can help, because America is a compassionate country”, Christie said after the death of Aylan Kurdi, 3, who drowned off the Greek coast with his brother and mother as the family tried to reach relatives in Canada. This comes as it was discovered that one of the terrorists involved in the attack may have been posing as a refugee.
He added that he doesn’t “trust this administration to effectively vet the people that they’re asking us to take in” and said that “we need to put the safety and security of the American people first”. But Lavinia Limon, president and CEO of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigration, told the Associated Press that under the Refugee Act of 1980 governors can not legally block refugees.
“The fact is that we need appropriate vetting”, he continued, “and I don’t think orphans under five are being, you know, should be admitted into the United States at this point”.
A mayor from Passaic County is decrying Gov. Chris Christie’s comments about Syrian refugees.
“As a result, New Jersey is left to depend upon the broken federal monitoring system described by the FBI director to ensure that a person places here is not a threat to our resdients”, Christie wrote.
The letter cites a New Jersey man who pleaded guilty in September to conspiring to provide information and resources to ISIS.
When Hewitt suggested “orphans under the age of five”, Christie didn’t budge.
Advertisement
His support was backed up by the numbers: Approximately 75 Syrian refugees have settled in New Jersey since the start of the year, the ninth most of any state in the US, according to the U.S. State Department.
