We knew Jeb Bush has been getting desperate lately amid evidence that his presidential hopes are circling the drain. However, we didn’t know just how desperate until Sunday morning, when he offered his solution to the Syrian refugee crisis. If it were up to Jeb!, Christian refugees would move up several spots in the line.
Jeb! was the first guest on this week’s edition of CNN’s “State of the Union.” Watch the full interview here.
Host Jake Tapper asked Jeb! what he would do in response to the refugee crisis, which has, in Tapper’s words, turned into a “heartbreaking humanitarian imperative.” Jeb! started out reasonably enough, saying that we need to “do thorough screening and take a limited number” of refugees.
But then he went off the deep end. He said that a number of those refugees are Christians who “have no place now.” Rather than leave them to the mercies of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad or ISIS, Bush believed that immigration officials should make it a priority to help “the Christians that are being slaughtered.”
I hope I’m hearing this wrong. I really am. Jeb! seemed to be saying that we should screen each refugee based on religion, and let Christians in ahead of everyone else. Tapper seemed to come to the same conclusion as I did. He wondered how Customs and Immigration could be expected to tell “which refugees are Christian and which ones are not?” Jeb! replied that under normal conditions, it can take a year for a refugee to be fully cleared.
If I’m hearing Jeb! right, he’s proposing something that is not only fundamentally un-American, but would potentially violate international law. Refugee screening systems solely based on religion could potentially run counter to the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, to which this country is a party. The message Jeb! is sending is obvious–if a refugee is Christian, he shouldn’t be presumed to be a terrorist. Then again, we already knew that Jeb! shares his brother’s disregard for basic standards of civilized behavior among nations. Jeb! has already let it be known he wouldn’t rule out waterboarding as an interrogation tactic for terrorism suspects.
Moreover, Jeb! doesn’t want us to know that ISIS is actually killing thousands of Muslims because they aren’t willing to follow ISIS’ ultra-strict interpretation of Islam. The corollary is obvious–chances are that if a Syrian Muslim is forced into refugee status, he isn’t exactly willing to take part in jihad. But in Jeb!’s world, that doesn’t matter.
News flash, Jeb! We should be making every effort to get every refugee settled safely, regardless of religion. That is the only humane and Christian response to this tragedy.
