Democrats warn Syrian refugee ban would empower Islamic State
Congressional Democrats say discriminating against Muslims would harm war effort.
Democrats in Congress are warning that slamming the door on Syrian refugees would hurt the US-led campaign against the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS).
The argument comes as Republican leaders and more than half of state governors have announced their opposition to President Barack Obama's plan to admit up to 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next 10 months. Democrats on Nov. 17 denounced a knee-jerk reaction to the attacks in Paris that they say would undermine US efforts to build an international coalition against IS and feed into the terrorist group's ideology of a civilization war between Muslims and the West.
“Refusing to help those who have passed repeated vettings will not keep us safer,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Tom Udall, D-N.M., said in a statement. “It will fuel the terrorists' hateful anti-Western ideology.”
Sen. Martin Heinrich, a fellow New Mexico Democrat whose father fled Germany before World War II, slammed what he called the “anti-immigrant logic” of Syrian refugee opponents.
