Presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is issuing a stark warning to newly-elected House Speaker Paul Ryan: “reject the importation” of Middle Eastern migrants or “step down today.”

Huckabee’s challenge to Ryan highlights a widening rift between Republican voters— more than nine in ten of whom want to see immigration reduced— and Republican leaders who want to increase immigration.

By the end of the year, Congress will have to pass a government funding measure, which will be advanced by Ryan, to appropriate funds for all federal operations. As of now, the Ryan’s spending package is set to include a blank check for Obama’s Muslim refugee resettlement program.

Huckabee joins a growing choir of prominent conservatives who are calling on Ryan to issue a moratorium on the importation of Muslim refugees.

Ryan could do this by using Congress’ power of the purse. On today’s Breitbart News Daily, Congressman Jeff Duncan declared that it was time “to hit pause” on refugee resettlement and declared that there would be an effort on Capitol Hill to “use this omnibus [spending bill]… to deny funding to the Administration to process these Syrian refugees… [and] use our Congressional power of the purse to hit pause and reset on this.”

Similarly, Congressman Brian Babin today issued a letter to House leadership demanding that the year-end omnibus spending bill defund, what Babin described as, the Administration’s “dangerous and foolish plans” to accept more Syrian refugees.

Huckabee’s challenge to Ryan exposes the turmoil that exists within the Republican Party and highlights a concern for conservatives, which first emerged after Ryan announced his bid for the Speakership position. Specifically, Paul Ryan’s pledge that he would not move immigration legislation until 2017 posed two problems for conservative voters, who overwhelmingly want to see immigration levels reduced: first, conservatives want to move immigration bills now to stop immigration, such as blocking funding for Obama’s Muslim refugees; second, instead of moving a large-scale amnesty bill in 2017, conservatives want their GOP leaders to lead the fight for reducing immigration— the opposite goal of Ryan, who has devoted his career to increasing the number of foreign nationals who can work and vote in the United States.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) observes that this challenge is often concealed by the corporate media’s habit of using the term “immigration reform” without defining what “immigration reform” means. For instance, the senator’s view of “immigration reform” differs sharply from the view of “immigration reform” voiced by Barack Obama, Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio.

As Sessions wrote in a recent op-ed in USA Today:

It is time to reclaim the words “immigration reform” — incorrectly used by lobbyists and politicians as code language for amnesty and mass immigration — and reapply them correctly to legislation that benefits Americans. Politicians keep talking about “when” we should do “immigration reform.” This is the wrong question. The question should be: “Who” is “immigration reform” supposed to benefit? There is never a bad time to move bills that protect and defend the core interests of the American people. And there is never a good time to move legislation that undermines struggling workers by replacing them with lower-wage imported labor.

The push to reduce visa allocations has received new focus in light of the Paris attacks. Every year the United States admits 280,000 migrants, temporary and permanently, from predominantly Muslim countries. This number includes more than 100,000 migrants who were permanently resettled with green cards, more than 100,000 as temporary students or workers, and almost 40,000 as lifetime refugees and asylees.

This means that the U.S. will admit two Muslim migrants this year for each one Republican primary voter in Iowa [121,503 Republican voters in 2012].

As a result of issuing so many visas to Muslim migrants, half a million U.S. girls are at risk of suffering Female Genital Mutilation. In Marco Rubio’s home state of Florida, there are more than 11,000 girls at risk of suffering the barbaric practice. However, Rubio has expressed his support and has co-authored legislation that would dramatically expand Muslim immigration into the United States. This would occur at a moment when more than 40 million people within the United States are foreign-born, and another 40 million have foreign-born parents.

According to Rasmussen, 65 percent of conservative voters believe the correct number of Muslim refugees that should be admitted into the country each year is zero. Yet, under current policy, in the next five years, the U.S. will bring in about 200,000 refugees and asylees from Muslim countries— with as many as 150,000 of those refugees coming from the Middle East. In the next five years, the U.S. will permanently resettle more than half a million migrants from Muslim countries including all forms of approved entry.

Many lawmakers, however, are not familiar with these immigration figures.

For instance, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan recently admitted that he had never “looked closely” at the nation’s federal immigration policy, which issues a quarter of a million visas to Muslim migrants annually.

Similarly, Mick Muvaleny recently said he has “no idea” how many green cards the United States dispenses annually. While Jordan and Mulvaney frequently invoke the immigration talking point emphasizing the need to “follow the law” and encourage foreign nationals to enter the United States, “the right way,” they seem unaware that current immigration law is what is responsible for Muslim immigration— i.e. the Kennedy-backed immigration bill in 1965 opening up U.S. immigration visas to the world.

In other words, “following the law,” means distributing visas to Muslim countries as we currently do. Immigration works like spending or taxes: Congress has to pass a new law to reduce it. That is why conservatives don’t say: “follow the law on spending”, but instead say “cut spending”.

Thus, there will continue to be large-scale immigration from Middle Eastern countries unless Congress passes a new law to curb visa issuances. In fact, according to a census data report authored by the Center for Immigration Studies, immigration from the Middle East represents the fastest growing bloc of immigrants admitted into the country on visas.

The Senate Immigration Subcommittee, Chaired by Senator Jeff Sessions, has documented how much of the domestic terror activity in the United States has been caused,part by the nation’s federal policy of importing migrants from Muslim countries with anti-Western views.

In a letter issued to his colleagues today, in which he calls for cutting off funds for the President’s refugee resettlement project, Sessions writes that his Senate Immigration Subcommittee, “has identified at least 26 foreign-born individuals inside the United States charged with or convicted of terrorism over approximately the last year alone.”

Separate data compiled by the Senate Immigration Subcommittee further reveals the terror threat posed by the nation’s federal immigration policy:

  •  An Uzbek refugee living in Idaho was arrested and charged with providing support to a terrorist organization, in the form of teaching terror recruits how to build bombs.
  • The Boston Bombers were invited in as refugees. The younger brother applied for citizenship and was naturalized on September 11th, 2012. The older brother had a pending application for citizenship.
  •  A Bosnian refugee, along with his wife and five relatives, donated money and supplies, and smuggled arms, to terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq.
  • Six members of Minnesota’s Somali-American refugee community have recently been charged with trying to join ISIS. TheWashington Times reported that “the effort [to resettle large groups of Somali refugees in Minnesota] is having the unintended consequence of creating an enclave of immigrants with high unemployment that is both stressing the state’s safety net and creating a rich pool of potential recruiting targets for Islamist terror groups.”
  • An immigrant from Yemen, who applied for and received U.S. citizenship, along with six other men, was charged with conspiracy to travel to Syria and to provide material support to ISIS.
  • A Somali immigrant with lawful permanent resident status, along with four other Somali nationals, is charged with leading an al-Shabaab fundraising conspiracy in the United States, with monthly payments directed to the Somali terrorist organization.
  • A Kazakhstani immigrant with lawful permanent resident status conspired to purchase a machine gun to shoot FBI and other law enforcement agents if they prevented him from traveling to Syria to join ISIS.
  • An immigrant from Saudi Arabia, who applied for and received U.S. citizenship, swore allegiance to ISIS and pledged to explode a propane tank bomb on U.S. soil.
  • A Uzbek man in Brooklyn encouraged other Uzbeki nationals to wage jihad on behalf of ISIS, and raised $1,600 for the terror organization.
  • An immigrant from Syria, who later applied for and received U.S. citizenship, was accused by federal prosecutors of planning to “go to a military base in Texas and kill three or four American soldiers execution style.”
  • A college student who immigrated from Somalia, who later applied for and received U.S. citizenship, attempted to blow up a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Oregon.
  • An immigrant from Afghanistan, who later applied for and received U.S. citizenship, and a legal permanent resident from the Philippines, were convicted for “join Al Qaeda and the Taliban in order to kill Americans.”
  • An Iraqi immigrant, who later applied for and received U.S. citizenship, was arrested for lying to federal agents about pledging allegiance to ISIS and his travels to Syria.
  • Two immigrants from Pakistan, who later applied for and received U.S citizenship, were sentenced to decades-long prison sentences for plotting to detonate a bomb in New York City.
  • An immigrant from Yemen, who later applied for and received U.S. citizenship, was arrested for trying to join ISIS. He was also charged with attempting to illegally buy firearms to try to shoot American military personnel.
  • An immigrant brought here by his family from Kuwait at a young age, and who was later approved for U.S. citizenship, carried out the Islamist attack that recently killed 4 military personnel in Chattanooga