Republican candidates and voters wrestle with the refugee question

Washington Post

By Dave Weigel

September 10, 2015

Republican candidates and voters wrestle with the refugee question 

The White House’s announcement that American would welcome 10,000 of the refugees now fleeing war-torn parts of Syria has started the latest debate that Republicans would rather not have. For most of the past two years, the people running to replace President Barack Obama have been satisfied to blame his leadership, and his failure to act early and decisively in Syria, for the rise of the Islamic State. The humanitarian crisis in eastern Europe has spawned a new question: What should Americans do to help?

Hugh Hewitt, the Orange County-based radio host who will lob some questions at next week’s CNN-sponsored presidential debate, has started asking candidates what they’d do about the refugees. When former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum called in, Hewitt – a fellow Catholic – asked if he agreed with Pope Francis’s call for Christians to welcome refugees into their homes.

“We already take in 70 percent of UN refugees in the world today,” Santorum told Hewitt. “The best thing we can do is to resettle them close to their homes. And that is in neighboring countries and camps and places so when the violence has abated, they can go back home.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who like Santorum will be relegated to CNN’s “undercard” debate, took a similar approach. “These are Christians leaving Syria because of genocide being committed in Syria,” he said. “If I’m President of the United States, we would come up with a plan so people wouldn’t have to leave Syria.”

There were so many more possible answers, though, and Hewitt would keep trying to elicit them. In other forums, Donald Trump had seemed open to the idea of welcoming more refugees. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) had suggested that any refugees needed to be screened for possible radicalism.

“I live near Little Saigon, where most of the refugees from the 1970s came. I remember the Haitian refugees, who did not get as warm a reception. If you go to the Twin Cities you see all of these refugees resettled from Somalia. It’s like a bad joke, to take people from equatorial Africa and put them in that climate – but we’ve done it again and again.”

On Wednesday, at a rally for presidential candidate Ben Carson, the refugee question rarely came up. Carson told an audience of close to 8,000 people that he’d consulted with unnamed generals who assured him that “we could easily take back all that land in Iraq and Syria” if politicians did not tie the hands of military planners.

That, it was assumed, could end the crisis, and that was fine by some attendees. Two Dutch immigrants who‘d driven more than an hour to see Carson, said that the refugee threat would grow if the Islamic State was not defeated.

“I think we should go there and put an end to it,” said Niesje Van Heusden, 71.

“I think it would be better in the long run for them to save their own country,” said Dibi Aberson, 75.

Kyle and Sonnet Murray, who’d come to the rally with their 7-month-old son, were similarly ready for America to intervene.

“It would be good to able to help them, but I think the most important thing we can do to help them is to stop ISIS,” said Sonnet, 27.

“I think of what I’d do in that position, of fleeing my home,” said Kyle, 30. “I’d want to go back, but there would be terrorists in my home who would kill me if I did. We need to get their homeland back for them.”

Eileen Adams, 65, offered a rare voice in favor of accepting more refugees, "though they should be screened" to root out any radicalism.

"We should send money to countries that harbor these people in the meantime," she said. "How can you not have compassion when you look at the people fleeing, doing exactly what you'd be doing?

She had not made any plans to harbor refugees herself, but she had been making donations to the Christian relief organization World Vision. Republican presidential candidates, meanwhile, had to wrestle with the national response.

"I think we need to let refugees in," former Florida Governor Jeb Bush told reporters in Exeter, NH today. "A lot of people may not know this, but there’s an ample process of making sure that people that come are truly refugees. That’s important. But equally important – because this is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions – there’s 11 or 12 million people that have been displaced in a country of 23 million."

In Bush's view, the refugee crisis would end when there was "a strategy to rid the world of Assad and ISIS," but the refugees themselves could become valuable members of any country.

"Germany has committed to 300,000+ annually," said Bush. "So to put it in the right scale, we have been a country that has allowed refugees to come in and over the long haul it’s been to our benefit. If you see the vibrant Vietnamese community, for example, you get a sense that this can get done the right way and I’m confident our government can do this."

In an interview with the Washington Post, Carson praised Pope Francis's call for Christians to welcome in refugees.

"I'm very disappointed that our government is not willing to speak out when Christians are threatened," said Carson. "Of course Christians are going to help other Christians who are being persecuted."

But when it came to America's hospitality, Carson wanted to ensure that no refugee groups "infiltrated by ISIS" made it into the United States. He had no problem with allowing refugees in, once they were vetted.

"Obviously a very significant screening process should occur," Carson said. "And that screening process should apply to everything -- to people who come across the Southern border. That screening process takes, on average, more than a year. So there's not going to be a flood of people coming in here."

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