Recently. the Obama administration opened additional refugee processing centers in Iraq and Syria to speed the vetting of the extra 10,000 Syrians that they wish to bring to America.

That was before the Paris terrorist attacks and the revelation that at least one of the terrorists arrived in France as a refugee last month.

Seeing an opening, several Republican presidential candidates called on the administration to halt the process of resettling most Syrian refugees in the US - the exceptions being Christians who are being persecuted in the region.

Reuters:

"President Obama and Hillary Clinton's idea that we should bring tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees to America, it is nothing less than lunacy,” Senator Ted Cruz said in an interview on Fox News.

“Now on the other hand, Christians who are being targeted for genocide, for persecution, Christians who are being beheaded or crucified, we should be providing safe haven to them," Cruz added.

Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for the Paris attacks, saying it sent militants strapped with suicide bombing belts and carrying machine guns to various locations in the heart of the capital.

The White House announced plans in September to increase to 10,000 the number of Syrian refugees accepted in the United States during fiscal year 2016, which began Oct. 1, up from the less than 2,000 accepted last year.

Globally, the United States will accept 85,000 refugees in 2016, and 100,000 in 2017, up from 70,000 in each of the previous two years, Robert Jenkins, a U.S. AID official, told a Washington forum on Friday.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said Syrian refugees should be provided a safe haven, but it does not have to be in the United States.

"We need to have a better process,” Huckabee said on CNN. “We don't just have open borders like they do in Europe,” he added.

The FBI has already said they don't have the resources to vet tens of thousands of Syrian refugees. Nor do they have the manpower to keep track of potential violent extremists that would be coming into the country.

The only conclusion we can draw is that the Obama administration is willing to risk the lives of Americans that we'll get lucky and the jihadists will go someplace else. To deliberately open our door to perhaps dozens of terrorists is mindblowingly stupid. But the administration is far more concerned about appearing to be tolerant and open minded than in securing the homeland.

Congress can refuse to appropriate funds to bring the Syrians here. And that's something they should do immediately.