Sen. Murphy said the call from several Republican governors to exclude Syrian refugees is presenting a false choice between security and compassion.
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy is calling for the U.S. to demand higher security from its European partners around the visa waiver program.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Murphy said stricter scrutiny of the 20 million people who fly into the U.S. with no requirement for a visa is a much more effective anti-terrorism measure than shutting out Syrian refugees.
"With several of the Paris attackers bearing EU passports," Murphy said, "making them eligible for the visa waiver program, this sense of security that we’ve had with these countries has been shattered. And so if we want to have a real conversation about changing our immigration laws to better protect this country, then focusing on 20 million lightly vetted visitors rather than 2,000 highly vetted visitors, sounds like the better approach."
Murphy said he’d like to see the U.S. demand that information sharing agreements be signed with European partners, and that every EU nation modernize its protocols for uploading security information into common databases.
Earlier in the speech, Murphy said the call from several Republican governors to exclude Syrian refugees is presenting a false choice between security and compassion.
"Not only are these two priorities not mutually exclusive, they are actually interdependent," Murphy said. "There is simply no choice to be made between protecting this country and helping the victims of terror.... The story of the Christian world's marginalization of the Muslim world is the nourishment that feeds the growth of ISIS."
