The crisis in Syria has been slowly escalating over the last few months and has caused millions of Syrians to flee their homes. The wars wars ravaging region has tacked up countless civilian casualties, and whatever education and medical systems they had have all been destroyed. The Syrian people are fleeing the country because of the violence and destruction. Thousands and thousands of families have become refugees in a world that is hesitant to trust them after the string of ISIS attacks in recent months. President Obama has welcomed these displaced innocents into America – after all, our nation was founded by refugees and immigrants.
But state officials are making it hard for refugees to settle anywhere as many red states are refusing entry to these helpless people. Members of the Republican party, particularly the presidential candidates, are firmly against taking in refugees claiming that they are worried that the refugees could be dangerous Islamic terrorists.
Stephen Colbert recently criticized these Republican politicians and laid waste to their poorly founded arguments. In response to Trump’s claims that Syrian refugees should not come here because they would be miserable in the cold, Colbert replied:
“It’s a tough call for refugees. Do I want to stay in a war zone where my family faces almost certain death or do I want to go somewhere where I have to put on a jacket before I go to the mall?”
In addition to Trump’s nonsensical reasoning and hateful biases, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush have both suggested that the nation should only allow Christian refugees to enter the nation. Not only does this violate the United State’s policy of keeping government and religion separate, but it also violates basic principles of the very religion that Cruz and Bush claim to follow.
To make his point, Colbert quotes Republican’s favorite book, and uses their own faith’s wisdom against them in classic, clever, and searingly truthful Colbert style:
“If you want to know if somebody’s a Christian just ask them to complete this sentence: ‘Jesus said I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you _____’ And if they don’t say ‘welcomed me in’ then they are either a terrorist… or they’re running for president!”
Normally trying to aid starving, suffering refugees escaping a war zone is a unanimously generous and noble thing to do. But many Republicans don’t seem to understand that and are content to wallow in their own little puddles of xenophobia while the helpless masses beg for refuge outside their state borders.