Thanks, but no thanks.
That was essentially the blunt response of at least two Christian leaders in the Middle East to the recent pronouncement of U.S. President Donald Trump that his administration will give priority to persecuted Christian refugees seeking to resettle in the U.S.
"We don't want him to take us," Habib Ephrem, secretary general of the Gathering of Christians in the Middle East, told CBN News. "That's the wrong message and the wrong policy."
Ephrem said prioritising Christian refugees would only help the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group in attaining its goal of purging the region of Christians.
"ISIS expels people from their homeland and then you take them to the West," he said. "So what? You are doing the policy of ISIS?"
CBN News also spoke with a Lebanese pastor who requested for anonymity for security reason. The pastor agreed with Ephrem, saying that instead of attracting Christians in the region to resettle in foreign lands, they should be encouraged to stay where they are.
"How could the Church have a great future if the Christians are leaving? Of course living in the West or anywhere else would be better than living in Lebanon and the Middle East, but if we leave, who's going to be the salt and light?" he asked.
If the West truly wants to help Christians in the Middle East, the pastor said Western governments should invest in creating jobs in the region so that these Christians would have a good reason to stay and provide for their families.
However, Trump said he wants to help the persecuted Christians so that they will not suffer anymore.
"They've been horribly treated," he told CBN News last month, referring to the persecuted Christians in Syria and Iraq. .
"Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States?" Trump said.
"If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair—everybody was persecuted, in all fairness—but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair."
Data gathered by the non-partisan Pew Research Center supports Trump's contention. It says 99 percent of the nearly 12,600 Syrians granted refugee status in the U.S. last year were Muslim and less than 1 percent were Christian. The disparity is still evident even though Syria's population is 87 percent Muslim and 10 percent Christian, according to the CIA World Fact Book.
