Ben Carson meets Syrian refugees, opposes them coming to US

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, who last week compared Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs,” met with refugees in Jordan on Saturday and urged the U.S. government to do more to help but did not endorse bringing them to the United States.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who has faced scrutiny over his foreign policy credentials, visited the Zaatari camp for refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war, and said he also spoke with medical personnel, humanitarian workers and government officials.

Speaking to NBC’s Meet The Press a day later Carson said that Syrians wanted to return to their own country .

“The Syrians want to be in Syria. They want to be repatriated in their own country and they are looking for a mechanism to get there, but in the meantime, the facilities that have been offered to them here in Jordan are very satisfactory and when I asked them what Americans can do, they said if Americans could support those facilities to a greater degree, because they have much more capacity here in Jordan and I suspect in some of the other countries as well,” Carson said on Sunday (November 29).

Journalists were not invited to join Carson, one of the leading contenders for the Republican nomination in the November 2016 presidential election. He arrived in Jordan on Friday.

His campaign released a statement and posted photographs on its website showing Carson meeting with refugees, including a black-and-white image showing him placing his hand atop the head of a baby apparently sleeping in a bed.

On Nov. 20, Carson said at a campaign event in Alabama that allowing Syrian refugees into the United States would endanger Americans. Carson said of Syrian refugees: “If there is a rabid dog running around your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog.”. On Sunday’s show he said his words had been misinterpreted.

“The Syrians and the people completely understood what I was saying. It’s only the news media in our country that thinks you are calling the Syrians dogs. They understand here that we are talking about the Jihadists, the Islamic terrorists and it’s very obvious to most of them, the reception was quite warm, so maybe they can teach us a little bit about how to interpret language,” Carson said.

President Barack Obama’s administration has said it will accept 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States over the next year, a plan sharply criticized by many Republicans. Canada has said it will accept 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February.

Several state governors, mostly Republicans, have expressed opposition to having Syrian refugees resettled in their states, expressing concern in the wake of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, claimed by Islamic State, that Islamist militants might try to enter the United States under the guise of being refugees.