Allowing Syrian refugees to resettle in the United States is just helping Islamic State militants "accomplish what they want" in the Middle East — while putting America's security at risk, GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum tells
Newsmax TV.
In an interview on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Thursday, Santorum says President Barack Obama "cavalierly" ignores the threat of accepting refugees from war-torn Syria.
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"This president just does not seem to care about the security of this country," Santorum said. "The insistence on bringing people into this country where ISIS has already been very clear that there are people in these refugee numbers that are ISIS sympathizers —we've seen that play out in Paris — and for the president to so cavalierly continue to push for something that frankly isn't even in the best interest of the region."
But Santorum says his objection to the resettlement program goes beyond outrage at Obama.
"I'm not for bringing these refugees in because by doing so we actually help ISIS accomplish what they want," he says. "There are people that are being relocated because ISIS doesn't want them in the region anymore — and many of them are Christians, many of them are ethnic minorities or moderate Muslims — and they're driving them out and we're helping them by relocating them to America so they'll never return to that region of the world."
"America should help them relocate in the region, support them in the region, but we should not be bringing them here to America," he adds.
Santorum created a stir Wednesday during a Fox News radio interview in which he said Obama was "in cahoots" with ISIS on Syria.
"The president's policy is to keep ISIS within their bounds," he said on
Fox News Radio.
"ISIS's objective is to keep their territorial integrity. What does that sounds like? It sounds like president Obama is in cahoots with the strategy of ISIS to maintain their territorial integrity."
The former senator from Pennsylvania praised a bill that passed the House Thursday that puts up new roadblocks to accepting Syrian refugees. Dozens of Democrats joined Republicans in passing the measure 289-137, a margin exceeding the two-thirds majority required to override a veto that Obama has promised if the legislation comes to his desk.
"It's not very often you see any Democrat vote against President Obama on anything," Santorum said, adding the Democratic support "is an encouraging sign that some sense is starting to drift into the American body politic that this president doesn't know what he's doing to keep this country safe and hopefully the Senate bill will be equally as strong."
Santorum also sounded off on fresh attacks in Israel, where a Palestinian fatally stabbed two people in a Tel Aviv office building and three people, including an American teenager, were killed in an
attack in the occupied West Bank on Thursday.
"I condemn what happened in Israel because what's happened in Israel is exactly what's happened in France," he says. "You have radical Islamists who want to destroy Western civilization."
"Whether it's Hezbollah, whether it's Hamas, whether it's Boko Haram, whether it's ISIS, al-Qaida — they're all radical terrorist organizations and they're all Islamic radical terror organizations," he said. "And to differentiate really shows again the lack of understanding or the willingness to be truthful [of the Obama administration], one or the other, with the American public about the threat that we confront."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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