On Tuesday, Florida Governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said that the United States can’t take in refugees from Gaza because we would be “importing” a culture that would increase anti-Semitic and anti-American sentiment.
DeSantis made his comments during an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
“The reason why I said, with the Gazans I mean, one, you pointed out we have an open border. We have massive numbers of people flooding in; we have no idea who they are,” DeSantis said, according to RealClearPolitics. Notably, illegal immigration in 2023 is on track to set a new record high, beating the record set in 2022.
“So, we just don’t have the capacity to do it,” DeSantis continued. “But also importantly, you know, bringing people in, in mass numbers, you’re also bringing in the culture that they’re coming from and the pathologies in Gaza with how they’re taught to hate Jews and all these other things. We don’t want to be importing that into our country. So, when you have massive numbers, you’re importing them in from cultures that are different from ours in ways that may clash with our values, you know, that’s not strengthening the United States. And so, I look at these things as, you know, are these things benefiting our people or are they not? Clearly when you talk about bringing in hundreds of thousands of people from Gaza that is not benefiting the United States of America; that would increase anti-Jewish sentiment in this country and increase anti Americanism. I don’t want to be a part of that.”
“Over the weekend, [Nikki Haley] was taking issue with what I said, saying that you can separate someone who’s Hamas in Gaza with somebody who’s more of a freedom lover,” DeSantis added, referring to one of his opponents in the race for 2024 Republican nominee.
“So why would she be talking about that we can vet these people if she wasn’t saying that they should come to this country?” DeSantis continued. “We would have no role in vetting them unless you’re bringing them to this country. And so, she changed her tune. But here’s the thing, I don’t think that we can successfully vet when you have a lot of this that’s just endemic to the culture. You don’t have to be a member of Hamas, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be a good fit in the United States of America. So the proper answer is no and we don’t want to get into this thing because there’s some people and Laura you know, they’re more of the corporate Republicans, more of the open borders type, they think that anyone should just be able to come in and they claim that somehow we’re going to vet people from all over the world. You just can’t do that. That’s not the way it works.”
