Lawmaker Rants Against Accepting Refugees: ‘They Only Want The Free Stuff From America’
By Scott Keyes
We are living amid the largest refugee crisis in recent memory, but according to one GOP lawmaker, the United States shouldn’t resettle any migrants from war-torn areas because “they only want the free stuff from America.”
In an interview Thursday on Mickelson in the Morning, a conservative radio program, Iowa State Sen. Jason Schultz (R) went on a long-winded rant lambasting U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) for proposing that Iowa accept some refugees.
“This isn’t our problem,” Schultz, who has served in the Iowa legislature since 2009, began. “We’re already broke.”
The diatribe quickly descended into racism.
“We already have problems with concentrations of Middle Eastern refugees or migrants coming in and taking over communities,” Schultz said. “They don’t want to assimilate. They do not want to become Americans. They only want the free stuff from America.”
He went on to argue that refugees “practice a religion that orders them to dominate and they want to live under Sharia law which they will not subordinate under our law while they live here and enjoy our protections and our goodies.” Schultz called the prospect of resettling refugees in the United States “an invasion” to “[spread] their own theology by force.”
The Iowa Republican ended by underlining his devotion to the issue: “I will burn down what I gotta burn down. This country and the state need to be saved and it’s not going to happen unless we stand up and scream.”
Listen to it:
Such bluster unfortunately seems to have paid off. Just two days after Grassley called for Iowa to take in refugees, the longtime Iowa senator was singing a far different tune, accusing President Obama of wanting to “open the floodgates” and accept more Syrian refugees.
The White House announced this week that it was prepared to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees for the 2016 fiscal year, more than the 1,500 it has taken in thus far but significantly less than the 65,000 the United Nations has requested. By comparison, Germany, a country with one-quarter the United States’ population, has agreed to take in 800,000 refugees.
Even as a bloody civil war has left 250,000 dead and forced 4 million Syrians from their homeland, nativism and Islamophobia is preventing them from finding safe resettlement, both in the United States and abroad. It’s not just Schultz and conservative grassroots vocally opposing the acceptance of refugees, but also leading congressman like Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and various GOP presidential candidates.
