Pete Hoekstra: UN Finger-Pointing on Refugees 'After the Fact'

The Mideast refugee crisis reflects "a failed strategy" to address the many problems of the region and efforts by the United Nations to lay blame are "very much after the fact," former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra told Newsmax TV on Tuesday.

"The problem is (the U.N.) had a very inconsistent and  very ineffective dealings with the crisis in the Middle East — starting in northern Africa, starting with Libya, starting with Egypt then with Syria, then with Iraq providing inadequate relief to the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of refugees," Hoekstra told "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth. "Not only in Syria but also in Iraq.

"The Kurds, a region of roughly 5.5 million people in northern Iraq. They're housing almost two million refugees and they've never gotten the support.

Regarding U.N. efforts Hoekstra said "A failed strategy to begin with in the front is what's creating this chaos."

Story continues below video.


Watch Newsmax TV on DIRECTV Ch. 349, DISH Ch. 223 and Verizon FiOS Ch. 115. Get Newsmax TV on your cable system – Click Here Now

Hoekstra, who represented Michigan as a Republican from 1993 to 2011, told Hayworth that he had visited Budapest nearly three weeks ago.

"There were about 14 people in the station, got through the process no difficulty at all."

But "there's been a flood of refugees growing almost exponentially in the last few weeks of people recognizing that the West is not going to try to bring order out of chaos in the Middle East. That we're not going to confront ISIS, we are not going to confront Iran, one of the major troublemakers there," Hoekstra said.

"The people are saying, 'We're getting out while the getting is good and we're going to go to Europe.'

"It's going to create huge problems in Europe for the short, medium and long term," he said.

Many of these refugees could end up in the United States, too.

There's been "an inability and an unwillingness to care for the refugees in their homelands while they're still there," Hoekstra told Hayworth.

It is, as a result, "leading all these people now to say now we're going to move the problem from the Middle East — and we're going to move it to Europe, and some are now encouraging the U.S. to open its borders to more of these refugees."

Related Stories:

• Carly Fiorina: US Has 'Done Its Fair Share' on Syrian Refugees
  
• Michael McCaul: Syrian Refugees Could Bring ISIS Threat