Mass. Rep. Seth Moulton Demands Obama Admit 400% More Syrian Refugees, Now

A Massachusetts left-wing congressman in a closely-held letter passed to Breitbart News called on colleagues to ramp up the flow of Syrian refugees less than 48 hours after terrorist Omar Mateen executed 49 revelers at Orlando’s Pulse gay nightclub and wounded at least 50 more.

President Barack Obama promised to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees before October, but so far there have only been 2,805, complained Rep. Seth Moulton (D.-Mass.), a former Marine officer, decorated for his multiple deployments to Iraq. Moulton is a go-to veteran on Capitol Hill often used by the Obama White House to give the president cover, such as when the congressman led the defense of the president’s Iran Deal.

“Successfully resettling refugees from the Syrian civil war is consistent with our values as a nation, with our role as a global leader, and with the historic precedents of similar periods of conflict,” the congressman wrote.

Moulton, along with fellow progressive Rep. David Cicilline (D-.R.I.) circulated a “Dear Colleague” letter looking for other congressmen to sign on. The congressmen have until the close of business Wednesday before the letter will be publicly released and presented to Secretary of State John F. Kerry. Moulton is a close ally of Kerry, who invited his fellow Bay Stater to join him on a trip to Havana, where Kerry reopened the American embassy in that Marxist-held country.

It would be very unusual for Moulton to circulate this letter without guidance from Kerry and/or the White House, especially given that the purpose of the letter is to highlight congressional support of the president’s policy.

Perversely, Moulton and Cicilline argue in the letter that because the Syrian refugees claim to be fleeing ISIS and the Assad regime in Syria, not giving them sanctuary is supporting enemies of the United States. “We must not let these adversaries win by denying safe haven to those fleeing their savagery.”

Unless Obama and Kerry admit another 8,000 Syrian refugees by October, there will be great harm to our national security, they said.

Moulton also offers praise for our NATO ally to the north: “Our close neighbor, Canada, admitting nearly 27,000 in a six-month period alone, we urge you to devote more resources and institutional priority to fulfill the stated level of commitment for 2016.”

But, the congressman seems to have even bigger plans.

“There is ample historic precedent for U.S. leadership in times of refugee crises driven by war. In the years during and immediately after the Second World War, the United States admitted nearly 400,000 Jewish refugees. Later, during the Vietnam War, the United States resettled 130,000 refugees in 1975 alone, and in the following decade and a half, resettled roughly 900,000 more refugees. More recently, the United States has admitted over 140,000 refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina, over 130,000 from Iraq since 2002, and nearly 160,000 from Burma,” he wrote.