Presidential Candidates Need to Get the Facts Straight on Syrian Refugees, World Relief Head Says
Trump has also made other egregious claims. Although the Obama administration is preparing to take in up to 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next fiscal year, Trump has claimed a few times that Obama is preparing to let in over 250,000 refugees with them being "mostly men."
Bauman points out that of the 2,200 Syrian refugees that the U.S. has resettled since the conflict began in 2011, 70 percent of them have been women or children under 14.
Another claim made by Huckabee during Wednesday night's debate was that only one in five of refugees in Europe who claim to be Syrian, are actually Syrian. Yet, statistics compiled by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees finds that Syrian refugees account for 52 percent of the 800,000 Mediterranean sea arrivals.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"It's hard for me not to think that the candidates are just making claims that are just not well founded and I don't know if it is intentional or not, they are trying to grapple with so many different issues," Bauman reasoned. "I am not going to impose that on Mike Huckabee or anybody else that they are intending to mislead, but when they don't get their facts right, it does mislead people and it is just not helpful to anyone."
Although Huckabee said that the U.S. needs to focus on fixing its own economy before helping people in suffering throughout the world, Bauman explained that there are actually quite significant economic benefits from allowing refugees in the country.
"People think refugees are a drag on our economy, when in fact the opposite is true. There has been good research out of the University of Texas in Austin and other places, research out of Europe and some of the more progressive countries there that have taken refugees over the years," Bauman stated. "People like one of the co-founders from Google was a refugee. You don't have to go back too far with Steve Jobs, who came from Syrian descent."
Although Bauman is pleased that the Obama administration is preparing to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees and as many as 85,000 total refugees into the U.S. in the next year, he thinks the U.S. should be willing to take in way more.
World Relief has been advocating for the U.S. to take in as many as 100,000 Syrian refugees in each of the next two years.
"It wasn't that long ago, in the Reagan years, when we were accepting well over 200,000 refugees a year," Bauman said. "Reagan was very progressive on the value of refugees and their benefit to our country, the investment in our country."
