Buddy Carter, U.S. House of Representatives, Georgia First District

As you know, President Obama is attempting to allow more than 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States for resettlement. While we are a nation of immigrants and lead the world in humanitarian assistance, the attacks in Paris confirmed our worst fears: ISIS can and will use refugee resettlement to infiltrate countries they wish to do harm.

The Obama Administration’s own officials have even said that the federal government does not have the ability to conduct thorough background checks on all of the refugees that the Administration plans to allow into our nation.

FBI Director James Comey stated, “we can only query against that which we have collected. And so if someone has not made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interests reflected in our databases, we can query our databases until the cows come home but nothing will show up because we have no record of that person.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said, “it is true that we are not going to know a whole lot about the Syrians that come forth in this process…That is definitely a challenge….We know that organizations like ISIL might like to exploit this [Syrian refugee resettlement] program…The good news is that we are better at [vetting] than we were eight years ago. The bad news is that there is no risk-free process.”

I refuse to sit idly by and expose the American people to what amounts to no less than a Trojan horse.

To quickly address this situation, the House passed the American Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act this week with my support to put in place the most robust national-security vetting process in the history of refugee resettlement. The legislation requires the nation’s top security officials to certify before admitting any Syrian or Iraqi refugee into the United States that the individual does not represent a security threat.

The number one responsibility of the federal government is to provide for the common defense. It is clear allowing refugees into our nation right now is playing a dangerous game with the safety of the American people. As our Commander in Chief continues to flounder on a strategy to destroy ISIS, this legislation is critical to ensure threats are kept out of our homeland.