Sen. Jeff Sessions is worried that President Barack Obama would bring in more than 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States. The senator highlighted how 12 US vetted refugees turned out to be terrorists, claiming that it is very dangerous to welcome and embrace Syrian refugees into the country. He added that most terrorists in the past were refugees' children.
Sen. Sessions and other critics are increasingly worried about the Syrian refugee crisis, especially with the possibility that Obama would use all of his power vested in him to bring in more than 10,000 Syrian refugees he initially said that he would allow into the country. The critics are worried about the refugees later turning into radical extremists or jihadists, just like the 12 refugees this year.
Sen. Sessions is currently lobbying for Republican leaders in Congress to stop the president from allowing in foreign migrants.
Even though Obama reassured Americans that all refugees will be background checked and vetted, top security officials do not feel assured. They claimed that it is impossible for Syrians to be vetted out because it is hard to know what the refugees were doing back in Syria before they sought for refugee status.
Senator Sessions also claimed that it is not the Muslim refugees that are worrying. He pointed out that most terror experiences in the country were carried out not by the refugees but by their children who grew up in the country. He cited the two Chechen brothers, who were implicated for bombing the Boston Marathon. He also brought up Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was killed by a US missile airstrike when he escaped to Yemen, after his involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
In this Dec. 18, 2014, courtroom sketch, Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sits in federal court in Boston.
Seeing that the 12 vetted refugees became jihadists on 2015 alone, Sessions believe that welcoming refugees will not be safe for the country. A Capitol Hill aide, who refused to be named, also claimed this is an indication of the government's inefficiency.
"This illustrates just how incapable our government is of vetting refugees or predicting post-entry radicalisation," he said. "Yet the president wants a completely blank-check [in the appropriations bill] to fund not only all of these existing refugee programmes from across the globe, but to add a permanent Syrian resettlement programme to it - funded directly out of Americans' paychecks and retirement accounts."
The full list of the 12 refugees turned terrorist can be found on Breitbart.com. The site also reported the Obama Administration already welcomed 200,000 "low-skill immigrants" from Central America. Since then, the immigrants has vanished into the sea of 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the country.
In a related news, Obama's Thanksgiving address still highlighted the need for Americans to provide care and compassion to refugees. He stated that "What makes America America is that we offer that chance. We turn Lady Liberty's light to the world, and widen our circle of concern to say that all God's children are worthy of our compassion and care."
