Sanders and Rubio Face-Off Over ISIS and Refugees At First Debate
The first debate between the two candidates for the 2016 Presidential Election was held on Monday, November 30. Democrat Rebecca Sanders and Republican Jordan Rubio debated a number of topics including foreign policies, police brutality, education, and immigration.
Sanders’ opening statement addressed mass incarceration, the reality of climate change, wealth inequality, and the vital statistic that 90% of the the country’s wealth is being funneled to the top 1%.
Rubio chose to focus his opening statement on immigration, skill-based education reforms, and foreign policy. He also spoke about the imminent threat of ISIS, recommending that he would send U.S. air troops into Syria to monitor ISIS activity.
Stemming from his plan to send U.S. air troops into Syria, Rubio also shared that he would send money to Sunni muslims so they could help fight ISIS. He believes that the threat of ISIS will come to America, unless we attack and isolate it.
Sanders, however, suggests that the U.S. should ally with our Muslim counterparts and that we must be careful in attacking ISIS due to the fact that it is not affiliated with any specific country. Also, she believes that we do not need to increase our military budget, because the country already devotes such a large sum of money to it.
Piggybacking off of the ISIS threat, Sanders shared that she is entirely in support of bringing in 65,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S. and that by not bringing them in, we are potentially creating more world enemies.
“If this is a humanitarian crisis, it’s time for us to start acting like humans,” said Sanders.
Amidst concerns of terrorism, Sanders spoke about the vetting program that the U.S. would impose to ensure that the refugees we bring in will not be dangerous. She also introduced some statistics to back up her viewpoints- only 2% of refugees are men, the rest are woman and children trying to protect their families.
Rubio countered Sanders view, saying that there is no specific way to be able to tell terrorists from non-terrorists, comparing this to how one of the suicide bombers in the attacks on Paris was an immigrant who was on watch. He connected the Syrian refugee crisis to immigration coming from Mexico, saying that we must secure our Southern borders as well.
