Former Ambassador to UN: US Has ‘No Obligation’ to Accept Syrian Refugees

John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday that the U.S. has “no obligation” to accept Syrian refugees.

“We have no obligation to bring them into this country,” Bolton told Fox News’ Justice host Jeanine Pirro.

He added that the U.S. can refuse to allow Syrian refugees entry “without in any way violating our humanitarian obligations.”

Bolton also dismissed White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes’ statement Sunday that the refugees are being vetted in Iraq before they are brought to the U.S.

“I don’t know who else believes this other than the White House,” Bolton said in response to Rhodes’ assertion that the U.S. has “very robust vetting procedures for those refugees.”

The former ambassador to the U.N. pointed out that “there are international conventions on how to handle massive numbers of refugees” from war-torn areas, adding that “this system has completely broken down.”

The U.N.’s 1951 Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, which was amended in 1967, defines a refugee as “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”

The convention affirms the right of such refugees “to seek asylum from persecution.” But Bolton noted that many of the refugees flooding into Europe “are not even from Syria.”

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