Republican Congresswoman Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has suggested that the U.S. government should focus its efforts to helping Christians, ethnic groups, and other religious minorities who are facing persecution and brutality from extremist groups, including Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Syria.
Rohrabacher made the suggestion during a hearing by the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and Africa as he insisted that able-bodied young Muslim men of military age should return to their country and fight the ISIS instead of finding refuge in other countries, particularly the West, reported Breitbart.
The lawmaker added that the U.S. government should prioritize on helping refugees who are being "targeted for extinction," particularly Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East who are being killed because of their faith.
"This is what makes us America," he noted. "We know that the Christian community in Syria and in Iraq and in that part of the world has been targeted for what most of us would consider genocide," he explained. "They take the Christians out and they just massacre them now."
Rohrabacher added, "The Sunnis and Shiites kill each other, that's clear... Should we not then try to prioritize so that we take care of those people who are targeted for extinction rather than just people who are caught up in a horrible situation?"
The California representative was reacting to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees from conflict-torn areas in the Middle East who are walking into Western Europe to escape the on-going war and the brutality of the ISIS/ISIL.
The California Republican noticed that some of those fleeing were "military-aged people who, if they are against radical Islam, they should be there fighting radical Islam." He said these very strong and capable young Muslim men should return to their country and fight the extremists.
Indeed, there were reports that men of fighting age have abandoned their families, exposing women and children at the mercy of the ISIS/ISIL militants.
President Barrack Obama has approved to increase the number of refugees to be allowed entry into the U.S. to 85,000 in fiscal 2016, including at least 10,000 Syrians. In the fiscal year 2015
(Oct. 1, 2014 thru Sept. 30, 2015), the Obama administration has admitted 70,000 refugees from 67 different nationalities for permanent resettlement, including 1,700 Syrians.
During the hearing, Rohrabacher asked a U.S. State Department official, who was testifying, "Of the people that we are bringing in, are they going to be Muslim men like the ones going into Europe or is there some way that we are trying to see that we have a better definition of refugee - helpless people who are in need - rather than bringing more Muslim men into the United States?"
But Anne Richard, assistant secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration at the State Department replied, "Of the 1,700 [Syrian refugees] that we've brought [in], only 2 percent were young men... of course we bring men... we bring families that have had terrible things happen to them.
"I would question, I guess, some of the thinking behind your statement about the young able-bodied Muslim men walking to Europe," she continued. "I think the reason that they are able walk to Europe is because they are able-bodied (laugh)."
