Former Florida Congressman Allen West is joining the chorus of those slamming President Barack Obama's move to
ease the rules for asylum seekers and refugees who gave "limited" material support to terrorists or terrorist groups.
"When you understand the situation with national security, this is not the type of decision you should be making. And think about this: We're not even a year away from the Boston Marathon bombing, where you have the Tsarnaev brothers, and they were going back into Chechnya, and they were meeting with these individuals, and now we're going to relax the standards," West said in an exclusive interview with John Bachman on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV.
"But this is the wrong path to take because this is a threat to the sovereignty, this is a threat to our national security, and no one wants to think that we're allowing more terrorists to come into our country right now," he cautioned.
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West, a former soldier and defense contractor, took office in January 2011 as the first black Republican congressman from Florida since 1876, when Josiah T. Walls left office near the end of Reconstruction. West served on the Armed Services and Small Business Committees.
Redistricting after the 2010 census resulted in West switching to Florida's 18th congressional district from the 22nd congressional district for the 2012 election, when he lost to Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy.
West said he believes the GOP has a better chance of getting what it wants on immigration policy after the midterm election.
"If you can win the Senate and you can maintain the majority in the House, you can do immigration reform the right way and not have a repeat of what happened in 1986. Our economy is not over the hump yet. We are not at 6.6 unemployment rate. We have to get Americans back to work. We have to take care of Americans and so there are many people out there concerned about what happens with wages being depressed even further, what happens with unemployment getting even worse," he told Newsmax.
"So now why do we want to open up the flood gates with more people? But the president has given John Boehner an incredible piece of high ground because the president's not trustworthy, as he stated. And so what does the president do? He goes out and unilaterally decides we're going to allow people with terrorist connections and affiliations to come into the United States of America as a part of immigration reform."
But the Republican Party needs to have a clearer policy blueprint of his own, argued West, saying he is not impressed with the one House Speaker John Boehner has laid out.
"I'm not impressed with the framework whatsoever because it would be just the same as if I ask, 'OK, guys, we're going to go into a battle. Well, commander, where's the plan?'
And the response would be, "'Oh, we're just going to go into the battle, and we'll kind of make it up as we go along,'" he stated.
"You need to have some type of strategy that people can rally to and that they can understand it's based upon firm policy that really gets into everyone's living room and kitchen cabinet so that they can understand how you're going to help to improve their state in life right now."
West does not, however, support the Obama administration's push to raise the federal minimum wage.
"The unions want the minimum wage raised because, guess what, they can start to get more dues because they're suffering right now. This is what has to happen. The employer needs to have the right type of policies, tax, and regulatory policies that enable them to pay their workers good wages. They need to be the ones that are raising the minimum wage, not a government top down-driven thing," he argued.
"And you can look in and see what's happened in California. California's always the petri dish, as well as Vermont, for testing the progressive socialist policies. And it's going to fail because . . . business might not be ready to subsume that type of cost. And, on top of that, Obamacare costs. So someone's going to lose out. Either you're going to pass it to your customers, or you're going to cut back on your employment force. And that's just how it happens," West added.
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