Gov. Chris Christie on Monday said the United States should not admit any refugees from the Syrian civil war — not even "orphans under age 5."
"I do not trust this administration to effectively vet the people who are supposed to be coming in in order to protect the safety and security of the American people, so I would not permit them in," the Republican presidential candidate said on conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt's syndicated radio show.
Christie's comments came after French authorities disclosed that one of the attackers who killed 129 people and seriously wounded another 80 in Paris on Friday evening had entered Europe through Greece on a forged Syrian passport last month, posing as a migrant.
A raft of governors have come out against the federal government's decision to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees, with some saying they would take action to prevent them from settling in their states.
Two who spoke out are Christie opponents in the Republican race for president. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal issued an executive order Monday seeking to prevent Syrian refugees from being resettled in his state. Ohio Gov. John Kasich will write a letter to President Obama asking him to stop resettling them in Ohio and is "also looking at what additional steps Ohio can take to stop resettlement of these refugees," said spokesman Jim Lynch.
On Monday night's radio program, Hewitt did not specifically ask Christie what action he'll take as New Jersey governor.
When asked what position Christie would take on Syrian refugee resettlement in New Jersey, spokesman Kevin Roberts declined to elaborate beyond what was said on the radio program.
Some 12 million Syrians have been forced from their homes due to Syria's raging civil war, with half of them children, according to the Christian relief charity, WorldVision. More than 4.2 million Syrians have fled for countries like Turkey, Germany, Jordan and Lebanon, according the U.N.
When asked about this on Monday night, Christie at first demurred, saying that "we can come up with 18 different scenarios."
Then, he said: "The fact is that we need for appropriate vetting, and I don't think that orphans under 5 should be admitted to the United States at this point."
"We need to put the safety and security of the American people first," Christie said.
Christie suggested that U.S. allies in the region were "not acting as strongly as they should" because Obama had not followed through on an offhand remark that the use of chemical weapons by Syria would constitute the crossing of "red line" necessitating military intervention.
"They don't believe they can count on the American leadership to back them up," Christie said. "This president has no history of keeping his word, from the red line in Syria on forward."
Germany, a nation of 80 million people, has accepted more than 800,000 Syrian refugees, while Lebanon — a country smaller than the size of Connecticut — has taken 1.3 million.
Meanwhile, the United States has accepted roughly 1,800 refugees between Jan. 1 and Nov. 15, according to a report from the State Department's Refugee Processing Center. Just 75 have settled in New Jersey.
Christie's position is a reversal from his original stance on Syrian refugees.
In early September, a shocking photo of the body of a 3-year old Syrian boy in a red T-shirt and blue shorts who washed ashore on a Turkish beach resort became one of the defining images of the Syrian refugee horror.
On Sept. 8, Christie, during an appearance on MSNBC, had specifically referenced the photo of the drowned Syrian toddler, saying that he would "sit down with our allies and figure out how we can help, because America is a compassionate country. We saw the image of that 4-year-old little boy drowned in Syria, and we can't have those kinds of things."
At that time, however, Christie said couldn't "come up with an exact number" as to how many refugees America should take.
"You'd have to sit with our allies and work together," he said at the time.
During an Oct. 8 campaign visit to U.S. Naval defense contractor Granite State Manufacturing in Manchester, N.H., Christie told NJ Advance Media that the U.S. should "continue to support" allies like Germany and Jordan as they take in refugees, adding that "I've said before that if there comes a time when the U.S. needs to take some refugees that we should."
However, a few weeks later the governor reversed course, telling Fox News host Sean Hannity that it would be a "danger" to accept even a single Syrian refugee into the United States.
On Monday, King Abdullah of Jordan, who Christie has called a "friend" ever since accepting a $30,000 luxury vacation in 2012, offered the U.S. a stinging if veiled rebuke for its humanitarian response.
"In Jordan, we have received our brethren Syrian refugees out of humanitarian and national duties," King Abdullah said. "Jordan has provided all possible assistance, medical aid and shelter to ease their suffering, while other countries with far more resources have turned their backs on them."
No comments:
Post a Comment