Texas
Related: About this forumGreg Abbott: Texas won’t accept Syrian refugees
Gov. Greg Abbott wrote President Barack Obama Monday, saying that accepting Syrian refugees irresponsibly exposes our fellow Americans to unacceptable peril and Texas wont be a party to it.
But it was not clear, beyond making a political statement, what practical impact the governors missive would have.
Given the tragic attacks in Paris and the threats we have already seen, Texas cannot participate in any program that will result in Syrian refugees any one of whom could be connected to terrorism being resettled in Texas, Abbott said in the letter. Effective today, I am directing the Texas Health & Human Services Commissions Refugee Resettlement Program to not participate in the resettlement of any Syrian refugees in the state of Texas. And I urge you, as president, to halt your plans to allow Syrians to be resettled anywhere in the United States.
In the letter, Abbott wrote that, a Syrian `refugee appears to have been part of the Paris terror attack. American humanitarian compassion could be exploited to expose Americans to similar deadly danger. The reasons for such concerns are plentiful. The FBI director testified to Congress that the federal government does not have the background information that is necessary to effectively conduct proper security checks on Syrian nationals, Director Comey explained: `We can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them.
Read more: http://www.statesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/abbott-to-obama-texas-wont-accept-syrian-refugees/npN3P/
Gothmog
(145,554 posts)The state of Texas does not have the right to block an immigrant. Greg is trying to block the state from spending state funds to help immigrants according the MSNBC report from Ari Melber that I just heard
Vogon_Glory
(9,128 posts)There are Maronite churches here in Texas (as well as mosques with expatriate Syrians and Lebanese). I'm sure there are hundreds of people thinking about their friends and family caught up in the throes of war in Syria and Iraq.
I wonder how they feel about Governor Greg's political grandstanding.
For my part, as odious as this may seem to some DU'ers, I'm very much in favor of moving Iraqi and Syrian Christian refugees to the head of the line. Those guys are the least likely to be ISIL supporters.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)They_Live
(3,240 posts)Yesterday I received an email stating that the Governor was asking for a minute of silence at noon for the victims of the Paris, France attacks. All I could think about was the uproar about "french fries" and how we had to change the name to "freedom fries".