WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Dec. 1 (UPI) — GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson says a trip to a refugee camp has not changed his mind about opposing refugee resettlement in the United States.
Carsontold the Today show Tuesday morning that accepting Syrian refugees into the United States would not solve the crisis, but would put the nation in danger.
The remarks come after Carson’s tour of refugee camps in Jordan last week. He called the camps “really quite nice” and said that officials should look to them as a long-term solution. He added that many of the refugees he spoke with wished to return home to Syria.
“What can nations like the United States do?” Carson said. “They can support the efforts of places like Jordan and other places that might offer them a safe place to inhabit until such time as they can return home.”
In another interview on Tuesday with Breitbart News Radio, Carson said that the overwhelming anti-refugee sentiment in the United States would increase the likelihood of radicalization.
“You bring a lot of people here from another culture and what they will tend to do is congregate together, that’s a natural thing, which makes them much easier targets for radicalization,” he said. “Particularly if you bring them into an environment where a lot people of are resentful of the fact that they are here. That’s just going to create incidents that will increase further the likelihood of radicalization.”
Carson, whose foreign policy credentials have been criticized from within his campaign, used the trip as an opportunity to beef up his credibility in the matter. Earlier this month, Duane Claridge, a top adviser on terrorism and national security to Carson told The New York Times: “Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East.”