Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis made it clear that he opposes President Joe Biden’s proposal to resettle Palestinian refugees in the United States.
According to a CBS News report, various U.S. federal agencies are exploring ways to facilitate the resettlement of Gazan Palestinians within the United States.
Central to this strategy is the collaboration with Egypt, which has so far declined to accept Palestinians and has constructed a giant wall barrier to prevent their entry from Gaza.
Under the proposed plan, those eligible would be relocated to the United States under refugee status, allowing them access to “permanent residency, resettlement benefits like housing assistance and a path to American citizenship,” as outlined in the report.
Our view in Florida on Biden’s reported plan to import people from the Gaza Strip is no. pic.twitter.com/gAaTOI2X76
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) May 1, 2024
During a press conference on Wednesday, DeSantis seemed shocked that Biden would be “crazy enough” to consider such a move, given the widespread support for terrorism and anti-U.S. sentiment among Palestinians.
“That is not in this country’s interest,” he stated. “You know, what we’ve seen over there — and we’ve seen the reflections in our own society of people out protesting in favor of Hamas terrorists, these are people that cooked babies in ovens while they were raping the baby’s mothers, executing elderly people.
DeSantis noted that the country seems to have forgotten the atrocities committed during Hamas’ unconscionable attack on Israeli’s on October 7, but made it clear that “that’s what we’re dealing with here.”
“And to take people from that part of the world and import those blood feuds to this country, that is not in your interest or your family’s interest,” he went on.
The Republican lawmaker staunchly stated that the U.S. shouldn’t be “importing people from the Gaza Strip,” and said that hopes the report detailing the Biden administration’s efforts to extend asylum to Palestinians “is wrong.”
“I think if he does that, it is not going to be something that benefits the United States of America. If anything, it’ll just exacerbate a lot of the problems that we’re seeing now,” DeSantis said in a nod to the nation’s southern border crisis.
The Governor also questioned what it says about American society that college students across the nation are “taking Hamas’ side in this,” which he called a sickness.
“And so I think part of what we need to do to unify the country going forward is to have people that actually want to assimilate into America,” DeSantis concluded. “That actually believe in our founding principles, not people that just want to replicate a lot of these blood feuds that we see in other parts of the world.”
“So our view in Florida on bringing in people from Gaza is no, we do not want to do that here in the state of Florida.”
