Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN, 2nd District) says he would welcome Palestinians to the US and Tennessee during an interview with CNN on Thursday, February 6.
NBC affiliate WSMV Nashville says the interview came after President Donald Trump laid out a plan to relocate the Gaza population in other countries and have the US lead the clearing of debris and rebuild process.
A key group of Arab nations have said they “firmly” reject any efforts to resettle or evict Palestinians from Gaza, after US President Donald Trump said he wanted to “clean out” the enclave and move its population to neighboring countries.
“We already have Palestinians in America and some of them are the finest people that I know. They live in Knoxville, Tennessee, and they’re wonderful Americans if they want to assimilate and become Americans, but if they don’t, they wanna bring terrorism and hatred and things like that in this country,” said Burchett. “I don’t think we should, but we have a pretty good record with Palestinians at least in Tennessee, so I welcome them.”
Burchett added that the US would need a legitimate “litmus test” for anyone that comes into the country.
“There’s a pretty good litmus test that they should follow, and unfortunately, we haven’t been doing that in the past. I mean, we have 14 million people in our country. We don’t know where they are. We have members of the Taliban. We have Chinese communist spies working out of the capitol. We’ve got these people all over the place. We need to provide a legitimate litmus test for those folks,” he said.
Along with the litmus test, Burchett was also adamant that the US should not be sending any military into Gaza, says WSMV.
“I don’t want our military over there. I don’t want boots on the ground that gets our people killed, gets into another conflict which we don’t need to be in and we can’t afford. I think again if American entrepreneurs want to invest over there, I think it’s a great opportunity and I think you could turn that area around for those folks over there and get rid of some of their worthless leadership.”
