Ben Carson OKs Syrian Migrants–if Screening Is Improved

GOP candidate Dr. Ben Carson said he would allow entry of Syrian migrants into the United States, but only after new border screening rules were in place.

“We have to recognize that this is a splendid opportunity for the global jihadists to infiltrate those numbers with members of their own organization,” Carson warned Sunday on ABC’s This Week show.

“We would have to have in place a very excellent screening mechanism. Until we had such a mechanism in place, we should not be bringing anyone in,” he said.

“We have to be extra cautious,” he said. “The typical mechanisms that we use for screening people, perhaps, have to be enhanced.”

The former neurosurgeon cited the Tsarnaev brothers, who killed three people with bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon and then shot a cop. They were allowed into the country as child refugees, and were welcomed and aided by many Americans. But instead of integrating into American culture, they reverted to their parents’ brand of violent Muslim and Chechen cultures.

Since the start of 2014, at least 66 jihadis in the United States have been identified by U.S. security forces. Most are immigrants, some are native converts, but some are the U.S.-born children of migrants who adopt an activist form of their parents’ Islamic culture. The most notorious of the American jihadis is Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born child of two Yemeni immigrants. He aided the 9/11 hijackers and was subsequently terminated by a U.S. missile while living in Yemen in 2011.

Obama has already committed the nation to taking at least 10,000 of these unscreened and low-skilled refugees out of Turkey. Aid groups and Democratic politicians want the federal government to invite 100,000 migrants, nearly all of whom will be poor, uneducated, and Muslim.

In a 2007 international test, only 3 percent of Syrian students passed the “high benchmark” of skills. In contrast, 30 percent of Americans and 26 percent of Czech students reached that level.

Carson also recently visited riot-torn Ferguson, Missouri, and said that the nation needs to “de-emphasize” race. Carson also accused Obama of dragging the nation backwards on issues of race.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.