Republican presidential candidate and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) on Tuesday said that the U.S. should stop taking in refugees from Syria, adding that the U.S. should even bar Christians from Syria.
“We should not be admitting either Muslims or Christians, and you’ll say, ‘Whoa why won’t you want to admit Christians?’, because in so doing we would be accomplishing exactly what ISIS wants to accomplish, which is to rid the area of Christians, which is to rid the area of moderate Muslims,” Santorum said on Pittsburgh radio show “Rose Unplugged,” according to an audio clip highlighted by Buzzfeed News.
“By bringing them here to the United States, they will resettle here and they will never go home, which is exactly what ISIS wants. They want to decimate the Christian communities and take them over and them have controlled by the more radical Muslim elements,” he continued
Following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, numerous Republican lawmakers pushed for the U.S. to bar Syrian refugees from entering the country, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that the country should only admit Christian refugees from Syria.
Lawmakers have been reacting to reports that one of the attackers in Paris was a refugee from Syria. One of the attackers in Paris was carrying a Syrian passport that was likely fake and had been posing as a refugee. Many of the attackers were French and Belgian nationals, and the suspected mastermind of the attacks is a Belgian national.
