Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul told
Newsmax TV on Tuesday that he introduced legislation to prevent terrorists from entering the United States as refugees because the government needs to "put a moratorium on it all."
"Not just the refugees — but all immigrants, visitors and students until we know what's going on," the Kentucky senator told "The Hard Line" host Ed Berliner. "We should put a stop to it if they're coming from countries that have large jihadist movements, and it's about 35 countries that we've listed in the bill."
Paul said that his bill would "not admit people who hate us and want to do us harm."
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He cited the two Chechen-born Tsarnaev brothers, who masterminded the Boston bombings in 2013, and two Iraqi refugees in Kentucky — one of whom was later found to be in the database of terrorism suspects.
"If we have a vetting process, it's not a very good one because we let a known bomber on the watch list in as a refugee," Paul said, referring to the Kentucky suspect. "The problem is that we're not doing a very good job.
"We have 11 million people in our country illegally, 40 percent of them are overstays on visas. If we know that why don't we call them up and say: 'You've overstayed your visa. It's time to go home.'
"We don't have the ability to do it," he told Berliner. "I would say why keep adding more people to a situation that we're not in charge of now?"
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