Richard Hudson: “America is a compassionate country. We are a good country. We have a long history of accepting refugees, people fleeing…”

“America is a compassionate country. We are a good country. We have a long history of accepting refugees, people fleeing oppression and violence. But we also have an obligation to the American people. As we welcome people into this country who are seeking asylum, we owe it to the American people to know who these people are. And when you have got a terrorist group like ISIS, who has said that they will exploit this refugee crisis to infiltrate America--this is an organization that has said their goal is to come to America and kill Americans--I take them at their word. The number one responsibility of this body is to protect the American people. It is not me saying that we have challenges with the current vetting process; it is experts from President Obama's administration. I draw your attention to the first quote here from Jeh Johnson: ``It is true that we are not going to know a whole lot about the Syrians that come forth in this process.'' That is definitely a challenge. That is the Secretary of Homeland Security. I draw your attention to the next quote from Director James Comey of the FBI: ``We can only query against that which we have collected, and so if someone has not made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our databases, we can query our data until the cows come home, but nothing will show up because we have no record of that person.'' This is not me saying that.…”