All Turned Around on Syrian Refugees

A moratorium and tighter restrictions seem awfully reasonable. A religious test for refugees, not so much.

I suspect that many Americans agree with the proposition that the United States should let in only those Syrian refugees who are Christian because, as GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz put it after the Paris attacks, "there is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror." Cruz said it's "lunacy" to continue to admit Muslim refugees because it's impossible to determine whether their allegiance lies with the Islamic State.

It would be nice to be able to sort through the refugee issue without taking the abominable shortcut of discriminating against the desperate and the downtrodden based on their religion.

Obama was quick to shoot down the idea of a religious test, and even went so far as to insist that Syrian refugees are no more dangerous to the United States than "all the tourists who pour into the United States every single day."

In recent days, the president has also repeatedly driven home the message that America is a better country than this conversation would suggest, and that it is at moments like this that our national principles must be adhered to.

What just happened? This can't be the same Barack Obama who, only last summer, seemed to be in such a great hurry to get images of thousands of Central American refugees -- the majority of them women and children -- off the front pages of newspapers by either hustling them out of the country or dumping them into detention facilities in Texas and New Mexico. Likely concerned about how a humanitarian crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border would impact Democrats in the midterm elections, that version of the president displayed no interest in adhering to any set of principles or displaying even a little common decency.

There is no doubt that, given how they treat refugees, Republicans deserve a scolding. But Obama lacks the moral standing to deliver it.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com.