Posted on 11/15/2015 7:16:44 PM PST by Isara
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| Ted Cruz speaks to reporters on the campus of Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. on Nov. 14, 2015. (Photo by Abby Livingston) |
"There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror. If there were a group of radical Christians pledging to murder anyone who had a different religious view than they, we would have a different national security situation," Cruz told reporters in a middle school gym here.
"But it is precisely the Obama administration’s unwillingness to recognize that or ask those questions that makes them so unable to fight this enemy. Because they pretend as if there is no religious aspect to this," he said.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also said Sunday that any assistance going to refugees from the Middle East should be concentrated on Christians.
"We should focus our efforts as it relates to refugees on the Christians that are being slaughtered," he told CNN's State of the Union.
Cruz did not say how he would determine that refugees were Christian or Muslim. He reiterated his assertion that it is "lunacy" to allow Muslim refugees into the U.S., saying that there is no way to know if they are aligned with the Islamic State.
"We can’t roll the dice with the safety of Americans and bring in people for whom there is an unacceptable risk that they could be jihadists coming here to kill Americans," Cruz said. "We just saw in Paris what happens when a country allows ISIS terrorists to come in as refugees and the result can be a horrific loss of life," he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.
The assertion is a shift for Cruz, who in early 2014 told Fox News that America should allow Syrian refugees to come to the U.S. Now he is saying that Muslim refugees should be resettled in majority Muslim countries in the Middle East.
"We have welcomed refugees, the tired huddled masses for centuries. That’s been the history of the United States. We should continue to do so,” he said. “We have to continue to be vigilant to make sure those coming are not affiliated with the terrorists, but we can do that."
Cruz said Sunday that the landscape has changed since early 2014.
"We’ve seen a number of things change. We’ve seen the rise of ISIS, we’ve seen the manifest evil of their terrorism, we’ve seen also the enormous failures of the Obama administration’s intelligence operations," he said, including that U.S. Central Command is "cooking intelligence" to please the White House. Cruz said the administration "does not have the information" to determine who among refugees might be a terrorist.
"Sadly, it appears that at least one of the terrorists who committed these attacks in Paris came as a refugee in Syria," he said. "So what does President Obama and Hillary Clinton want to do? Bring tens of thousands of them to America and put them here."
The issue of Syrian refugees has loomed large during the Republican primary, with concern about the refugees growing among conservatives in recent months. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said borders should be sealed. Ben Carson said accepting the refugees is a "suspension of intellect." Donald Trump has promised to kick Syrian refugees out and not let any more in. On Sunday, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the country cannot absorb any more Syrian refugees.
"It's not that we don't want to; it's that we can't because there's no way to background check someone that's coming from Syria," he said on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
Cruz was asked by a woman here if Congress could halt immigration for two years. He did not answer the question, instead stating that Christians should be let in but Muslims should not.
"We need to be working to provide a safe haven for those Christians who are being persecuted and facing genocide, and at the same time we shouldn't be letting terrorists into America," he said.
Lavinia Limon, the president and chief executive of the U.S. Commission for Refugees and Immigrants, said she is surprised the once-nonpartisan cause of helping refugees fleeing violence has become so politicized. She said it takes about three years for refugees to go through stringent security screenings.
“The definition of a refugee is someone fleeing oppression. They’re fleeing terrorism,” she said. “They’ve experienced what happened in Paris on a daily basis.”
Limon said she is dismayed that presidential candidates want to separate refugees by religion.
"That's the same distinction that ISIS makes between Muslims and Christians. It's playing into their hands," she said.
Ken Knight, 54, a heating and cooling technician from Florence, S.C., said he agrees with Bush and Cruz that only Christian refugees should be let into the country.
"I wouldn't bring the Muslims. They cut your head off. You can't trust them. I'm sure there are good ones, but they're like the mob. Once you get in, you can't trust them," he said after a church service Cruz attended in Florence.
Paulette Heckman of Florence said she believes the situation in Syria is creating a humanitarian crisis and feels sympathy for those fleeing. But she is leery of allowing many people into the United States until the nation's security screening systems are made more robust.
"As Christians we do have to be compassionate and empathetic," she said in Florence. "But I just believe as a country we've got to have a system in place to ensure safety to the best of our ability."
Abby Livingston of The Texas Tribune contributed to this report.
{”Drop the word “meaningful”, Ted. It makes you seem weak and vacillating. Quit talking like a lawyer! “}
Being clear is not a bad thing. Some of us appreciate his concise use of language.
Actual Syrian Christians almost certainly have provably Christian relatives in either Lebanon or the U.S. who could vouch for them.
It would also be easy to pick out fakes by observing their behavior at a Divine Liturgy or Mass (depending on which Christian confession they profess): real Christians will have the service essentially memorized and will fluidly cross themselves at all the right places even if it’s being served in English when they only speak Arabic or Aramaic. (And fluent Aramaic or Assyrian is hard to fake so the real Jacobites and Nestorians should be easy to pick out — my fellow Orthodox and the various Uniate groups who only speak Arabic will be a little harder to verify.)
Islam isn’t a religion. It’s an all encompassing system of governance.
Sure. What's not to misunderstand when Trump talks plainly.
Trump: I love the Muslims. I think they're great people.
“We just saw in Paris what happens when a country allows ISIS terrorists to come in as refugees and the result can be a horrific loss of life,”
So-called Syrian refugees were only a small subset of the terrorist attackers last Friday. One of the killers shouted a statement that this was because of France’s actions on Syria.
Islam is the unifying cause.
This cell had ties to Belgium.
And more were stopped in transit to France (one coming from Germany).
Europe is infested with a malignant subculture.
Give them a BLT sandwich and don't forget the blessing before you eat.
Sounds like a simple enough background check to me.
But that's all besides the point. The point is that Trump speaks in common language, language that the average Joe can understand. Much like Reagan did. Cruz speaks as a lawyer. He's just not connecting with the average Joe. That's not a knock against Cruz. It's just some unasked-for advice.
Because the GOp nominee, whoever that is, must connect with the average Joe to beat Hillary.
Exaggerating the plight of refugees by invoking Paris, when we already have strong suspicions, if not confirmation, that jihadists posing as refugees were involved.
Three years to pass their security screening? Another lie. And coincidentally (not) parrots the administration's lies from this morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA8rU3nWzyg
“…Catholics begin every Mass with the sign of the cross. It is the sign the priest makes over a penitent at that mysterious moment when one’s sins take flight. But the president seems to find Christianity’s defining symbol a hoot. The first time President Obama made the gesture, the crowd laughed appreciatively. “I like doing that,†the president said and then did it again. Try to imagine any previous president of the United States publicly funning with the sign of the cross.†- Charlotte Hays
You’re right and Ted is delusional on this. If the most of the horde has LIED about being a “refugee”, why wouldn’t they also lie and claim to be a Christian?
There is always the bacon test, Or the pork chop test or the Mohammed joke. Show a cartoon of Mohammed and read a retina scan. Muslims will always fail that test!
I saw a report that said some of the refugees in Europe were claiming to be Christian or to ha e converted to Christianity so that they wouldn’t be sent back,
I kinda suspect that Syrian Christians, indeed ALL Middle-Eastern Christians would know, and live their faith much better than most Western Christians because they have HAD TO depend on Jesus for their survival.
I recall hearing a story many years ago, of a Christian in East Germany. Some Christians were having a meeting in an apartment when the meeting was broken up by several machine gun toting secret police. The police told them that any non-Christians could leave but the Christians would be shot. A few people left, but some stayed. The secret police closed the door and asked the people to join them in prayer. When asked why they did that, the secret police wanted to ensure they were meeting with ‘real’, fellow Christians.
O’Venal and Turd-owe (and Hollande and Cameron and Merkel, et al, for that matter) may well be our ‘chastisement’ for following ‘our’ will rather than His will. And yes, I definitely put myself in that category.
Make asylum seekers take a crap on the Koran. If they refuse, back they go.
Won’t work. Taqiyya, you know.
And we stopped profiling for what reason ?
Ohh yeah so we won’t hurt peoples feelings instead of leaning on truth.
Can I just say? People who follow the teachings of Jesus, and that includes, among others, all practicing and informed Catholics, have no interest in killing innocent people. Never have never will.
Period
I’ll bet they won’t chow down with gusto on a pulled pork sammy offered to them during their interview.
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