But now he says it would be “un-American.”
by Hannity.com Staff
President Obama has offered some heated rhetoric in response to suggestions that the U.S. might want to reconsider it’s policy as it concerns accepting refugees from Syria. The president has called Republican plans to put a hold on accepting Syrian refugees a “potent recruitment tool” for ISIS and “un-American.”
Just today, the President tweeted out:
Slamming the door in the face of refugees would betray our deepest values. That’s not who we are. And it’s not what we’re going to do.
— President Obama (@POTUS) November 18, 2015
But this wasn’t always the president’s attitude. As it turns out, what the president calls un-American has been part of his administration’s policy.
The Obama administration actually stopped processing Iraqi refugee requests for six months after two Iraqi-refugees were arrested on terrorism charges in Bowling Green, Kentucky in 2011.
As TheFederalist.com points out, the U.S. State Department stopped processing the requests from Iraqi refugees in order to review and revamp security screening procedures. In 2013 ABC News wrote:
As a result of the Kentucky case, the State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News – even for many who had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence assets. One Iraqi who had aided American troops was assassinated before his refugee application could be processed, because of the immigration delays, two U.S. officials said. In 2011, fewer than 10,000 Iraqis were resettled as refugees in the U.S., half the number from the year before, State Department statistics show.
So, President Obama slammed the door in the face of the very Iraqis who put their lives on the line to aid us during operation Iraqi freedom.
The Federalist’s Sean Davis asked the relevant question here:
If it wasn’t evil when Obama paused that refugee program in 2011, why is it evil to do the exact same thing now? https://t.co/47jHl181eF
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) November 18, 2015