Another self manufactured crisis.
President Obama vowed on Saturday to keep America’s borders open to the world’s refugees “as long as I’m president,” even as he met with kid migrants and refugees here and his administration refused to yield in a long distance feud with his critics over the matter.
Mr. Obama chatted with elementary-school-age kids, all aggressively dressed in navy-and-white uniforms, at a humanitarian centre that serves young people who’ve fled violence in Myanmar, Pakistan, Syria, Iran and elsewhere.
They were representative of the faces of each of the world’s persecuted minorities, the president said, adding that such children must not be turned away by nations such as America due to what mr. insisted was an unfounded fear of a terrorist threat from their presence.
“They were indistinguishable from any kid in America,” Mr. Obama said after kneeling to look at their drawings and math homework. “And the notion that somehow we’d be afraid of them, that our politics would somehow leave us to turn our sights away from their plight, isn’t representative of the best of who we are.”
A 10-day trip by the president to Turkey and Asia has been overshadowed by a constant clash with Republican presidential nominees, lawmakers and governors about whether to block the entry of Syrian refugees into the United States.
In the wake of the terror strikes in Paris, House lawmakers this week passed bipartisan legislation to dramatically tighten screening for refugees seeking to go into America from Syria. Calls for restrictions on Syrian refugees have resounded across the political landscape, from governors and Republican presidential hopefuls to a lot of lawmakers from the president’s own party.
He accused Republicans in the United States of cowardice for seeking to block Syrian children and families who are fleeing the violent civil war in their own state.