After spending Thanksgiving weekend visiting refugees in Jordan, Ben Carson called on the US to support Syrians displaced by the war there, where he said facilities in the camps were “really quite nice”, rather than bring them to America. While arguing that the US could do more to help, the Republican presidential candidate maintained that did not mean taking in more refugees.

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Journalists were not invited to accompany Carson but in a round of TV interviews on Sunday morning, he said he had been “pleasantly surprised” by how welcoming the refugees in Jordan had been.

The retired neurosurgeon made the trip after facing skepticism over his grasp of foreign policy at a time when the Republican primary has shifted toward national security. Asked on ABC if by making the trip he was acknowledging such criticism, he said: “I’m acknowledging that I like to know what I’m talking about.”

In the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris earlier this month, a national debate has emerged over whether the US should accept more Syrian refugees. The majority of Republican contenders oppose such a move.

Carson argued on Sunday that the refugees wanted to be resettled in Syria.

“The thing that I really learned in listening to the refugees themselves is their intense desire is to return to their country and be repatriated,” he said on CNN.

“There’s so many people who think the ideal for everybody is to come to America and be resettled here, but that is not the ideal for everybody.”

He continued: “But they are satisfied to be in the refugee camps if the refugee camps are adequately funded. Recognize that in these camps they have schools, they have recreational facilities that are really quite nice. And there are all kind of things that make life more tolerable.”

The outsider candidate, who surged to the top of the polls after a late summer breakthrough, recently drew heat for likening Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs” while warning that Islamic State might use the crisis to infiltrate the US.

Carson pushed back on the criticism during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, saying it was “only the news media” in America that interpreted his comments as being directed toward all Syrians.

“[The refugees] understand here that we’re talking about the jihadists, the Islamic terrorists. And it’s very obvious to most of them,” Carson said.

In an interview with ABC, Carson said he didn’t know if terrorists were among the refugees he met. But he said the US should focus its efforts on boosting funding for refugee camps overseas.

“If you do that, you solve that problem without exposing the American people to a population that could be infiltrated with terrorists who want to destroy us,” he said. “If you can eliminate the possibility of terrorists infiltrating them and wanting to destroy us, you have a different argument. But I don’t see that being eliminated.”

Most Republicans have cited the threat posed by Isis as the primary reason the US should not open up its borders to more refugees. Some have suggested the country only accept Christian refugees.

The Texas senator Ted Cruz introduced legislation two weeks ago that would specifically bar the entry into the US of Muslim refugees from Syria. The Kentucky senator Rand Paul has also pushed legislation against refugees, including a measure that would stop refugees from “high-risk” countries receiving federal social welfare assistance.

Others have taken a less hard line – former Florida governor Jeb Bush said the US should not close the doors on refugees, although he did indicate his preference for giving priority to religious minorities and said safe zones should be created within Syria.

“I think we ought to do what we can to provide support for the refugees,” Bush said during an interview with CBS on Sunday. “The best means to do it are safe havens inside of Syria. That is ultimately what we need to do, and this president hasn’t led in that regard.”



The Florida senator Marco Rubio initially responded to the attacks in Paris by saying it would not be possible to accept more Syrian refugees, but has since signalled he is open to certain categories of people.

“If it’s a five-year-old orphan or a child, or if it’s a 90-year-old woman who’s coming to this country, if this is an established leader of the Chaldean religion, someone that we know about that you can vet, common sense says, OK, you can vet them,” Rubio told the Guardian in an interview last week.

“If it’s someone that you know nothing about – they’re presenting you documents that may or may not truly be them, there’s no database to compare them off of, that’s a different story, and that’s the point that I’ve made.

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“It’s not that we don’t want to accept refugees, it’s not that we’re going to have a religious test. It’s that you may not be able to fully vet everyone and if you can’t vet someone, you can’t let them in.”

The Obama administration has stood by its plans to accept at least 10,000 more Syrian refugees over the next year and has requested that the UN high commissioner for refugees prioritize children, women, the elderly and those in need of medical treatment.

That task has been made more complicated by the tragedy in Paris, after which more than half of American governors – all Republican bar one Democrat – said they would not allow refugees into their states.

Congress is also moving legislation that would prevent Syrian and Iraqi refugees from entering the country. The bill passed the House of Representatives but is expected to be blocked by Democrats if it comes up for a vote in the Senate.

