President Barack Obama's immigration and refugee policies will put the lives of "tens of thousands" of Americans in danger and provide additional burden to struggling American families while giving refugees a "paid vacation" to the U.S., a Republican lawmaker from Alabama charged.
U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks issued the scathing comments on Friday during an appearance on the Dale Jackson Show on WVNN radio in Athens, Alabama, as reported by al.com.
Brooks reminded radio audience that Islamist militants were the ones who killed more than 3,000 Americans during the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York and Washington. Other terrorist attacks that snuffed out numerous American lives like the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 were also the handiwork of these Islamic extremists.
Brooks said these killings could have been prevented if U.S. immigration policies were stricter that could have prevented the entry of the terrorists.
He cited two countries—France and Mali—that were recently victimised by their own lax policies on immigration.
"Look at what's happened in Mali where Muslim terrorists [killed] people in a hotel in the capital of Mali. And that follows on the heels of what happened in Paris where over 100 Parisians were killed because the French government did not implement sound immigration policies," Brooks said.
"Now the same thing is happening inside the United States of America. We've had a lot of Americans – I don't know the exact number off hand – that have gone to the Middle East to fight on behalf of the Islamic State. So we've got the issue," he said.
He warned that "thousands or tens of thousands ... will ultimately lose their lives" in the U.S. "if the president continues with this importation of people, some number of which will enjoy killing non-Muslims."
Brooks also blasted Obama's willingness to accept millions of refugees from all over the world as the president stated in a speech in Malaysia recently.
"We're paying these people to come to the United States of America and we don't have that money. We need to be thinking about the final cost to our country. For example, the 85,000 so-called refugees that Barack Obama wants to pay to come to the United States of America, do you know what the cost is going to be to America's taxpayers just in one calendar year? It would be in the neighbourhood of $1 billion. The president has paid 320,000 refugees to come to America over the past four or five years and the cost for that has been a little over $4 billion. That's money we don't have. And we're facing deficits and debt?" the Alabama lawmaker said.
He said the Obama administration should give priority to "struggling American families who are working for a living but don't make enough money."
But instead of helping them, the government will now be forced to burden them more by increasing the taxes they pay to support Obama's immigration programme among others, Brooks said.
"I'm one of those who think we need to quit paying these [refugees] to come here and we're paying them about $15,000 a year in free healthcare, free food, free shelter, free clothing, free transportation," he said.
"We're paying them to come here. A paid vacation."
