House, Senate GOP REJECT accepting Palestinian refugees into US after Hamas attack on Israel

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 has led to a humanitarian crisis after the retaliatory response from Israel swiftly reduced much of Gaza to rubble. Israeli Defense Forces issued evacuation warnings to those in Gaza, instructing them to leave the north and head south, where they would be out of range of the aerial bombardment.

Progressives in the American government have said that the US should take in these Palestinians. Many Republicans have said absolutely not.

Reps. Tom Tiffany and Andy Ogles, of Wisconsin and Tennessee respectively, have taken up a bill called "Guaranteeing Aggressors Zero Admission Act," or the GAZA Act, to prevent the Biden administration from giving any visas to Palestinians seeking refuge in the US. 

"We can't let President Biden abuse our parole and visa rules to bring unvetted Palestinians into American communities the way he did with thousands of unvetted Afghans," Tiffany said.

"Following the horrific attack by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists on innocent Israeli civilians, the last thing America ought to do is trust identity documents issued by the radicals that oversee these territories," Tiffany said in a statement. "We need to put our security at home first and that starts by closing the door to bad actors who might be seeking to enter our country."

"At a time when the threat of terrorism is not only grotesquely on display but being encouraged and justified, it is critical that we do our best to ensure the security of our nation," said Ogles.

The House of Representatives is currently without a House Speaker as the GOP continues to sort out who it will elect to fill the seat after Rep. Matt Gaetz led the ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy last week. The House cannot pass a bill without a speaker, meaning that the GAZA Act won't be considered until a speaker is in place. Ohio's Jim Jordan has so far received the most support from his party, which holds the majority in the House.

"The U.S. is the most generous nation in the world, but we are in no position to accept additional refugees, especially from a region with as high a risk of terrorism, given our nation’s inability to secure our own border or vet those who are already here," Florida Senator Marco Rubio told the New York Post.

Tim Scott, who is  running for president while serving as a South Carolina senator, said "the entire focus of the United States right now should be on rescuing American hostages, and making sure that Israel has every resource needed to defeat Iran backed-Hamas and defend its homeland."

Texas Senator Ted Cruz said he would oppose the resettlement of Palestinians in the US, as did Tom Cotton of Arkansas who laid some of the blame on Iran, saying "Iran should take responsibility for any Palestinian refugees caused by its proxy . . . war with Israel. Iran is responsible for the death and destruction — it should be responsible for refugees as well."

Reports from The Wall Street Journal indicated that the attack by Hamas, which was in the planning stages for two years, was helped along and greenlit by Iran. 

Some 2.2 million people live in Gaza. As homes and businesses are reduced to rubble due to Israeli attempts to destroy the tunnels and hideouts used by the terrorists who launched the attack, Gazans, who elected Hamas to power in 2006, are searching for safe passage out of the country.

The US border crisis under Joe Biden has seen 2 million encounters between illegal immigrants and border control entities in 2023, which is the highest number on record since 2022, which was 2.3 million.

Jon Levine of the New York Post reports that predictions indicate 1 million refugees may spill out of Gaza into the rest of the world. Brooklyn's Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who is part of the Congressional "Squad" of far-left progressives including Reps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and others, believes it is America's responsibility to take these people in. He also believes the US has an obligation to take in much of the rest of the world.

"Fifty percent of the population in Gaza are children. The international community as well as the United States should be prepared to welcome refugees from Palestine while being very careful to vet and not allow members of Hamas," Bowman said.

Perhaps he is not aware that in recent years 151 people who are on the FBI's terror watch list made their way across the US-Mexico border amid the literal millions of others who came across, along with countless others who sneak past without being counted, apprehended, or noticed by border enforcers.

In addition to the basic massive illegal immigration problem, the US brought in more than 25,000 refugees in 2022, which was a 123 percent increase from 2021, per the State Department, Levine reports. 100,000 of those who arrived in 2021 were Afghans who were displaced after Biden's disastrous military withdrawal from that nation in August 2021. Nearly 200,000 Palestinians already make their home in the United States.

Bowman's hometown New York is bursting apart due to the migrant surge, which has seen 10,000 illegal migrants land in the Big Apple every month with expectations of food, shelter, resources, and even work. Migrants who cross the border and apply for asylum are given court dates far into the future, while the Biden administration continues to distribute illegal immigrants across the domestic US.

Protests erupted across the US after the Hamas attack on Israel killed 1,300. Many of those protesters were in favor not of Israel, the nation that was attacked, but of Hamas, Gaza, and Palestinians, which did the attacking. Joyous rallies saw people screaming praise for Hamas and the slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians. They chanted antisemitic and anti-Israel slogans that called for the total eradication of Israel.

Bowman believes it would be possible to distinguish those who hate Israel and want to see it eradicated by their own hands from those who hate Israel and simply encourage others to take up arms to complete that task.