US policies triggered Syria refugee crisis: Analyst

The maltreatment of a Christian Syrian refugee and his family at the US border unravels the “lies” American politicians have been telling their nation throughout recent years, says an American counter-terrorism analyst.

The Guardian reported on Thursday that a Syrian family, who arrived in the US a month ago, has been separated and are now being held at two different detention centers there.

According to the report, Samer and his family’s arrival was met with great cynicism in the aftermath of the deadly November 13 coordinated attacks in Paris that left more than 130 people dead.

The attacks sent American politicians into a state of panic and prompted them to question the vetting process of the Syrian refugees. At least 30 state governors went beyond that, saying Syrian refugees would no longer be welcome, Guardian noted.

“Essentially the asylum problem in America has been brewing for quite a long time,” Scott Bennett told Press TV on Friday. “Because the American public has seen the immigration processes and systems be transformed and perverted and corrupted by President [Barack] Obama into a mass immigration program.”

The counter-terrorism analyst noted that the American public is facing a dilemma, as on the one hand they are seeing an influx of Middle Eastern refugees rushing towards their borders, while on the other they have been told by their politicians that the countries these refugees come from have been “cultivated” by American policies in positive ways.

“The American citizenry has been told by [former] president Bush, has been told by President Obama, has been told by congressman, Senators and senior military leaders and the New York Times and the Washington Post; they have been told by all of these elites in the media and the government that the American policy has been cultivating ivory towers of intellectual thought and gardens of democracy and happiness and growth, and tyrants have been put on the run,” Bennett said.

“Americans are now seeing all of that was a lie,” he noted.

The analyst said that the refugee crisis has proven that “we were not doing good, but in fact we have actually destroyed into crumbling rubble and smoldering smoke all of the civilization in the Middle East.”

Nearly one million refugees and asylum seekers have crossed Europe’s borders in 2015, mostly fleeing the war in Syria, caused by foreign-backed Daesh (ISIL) Takfiri militants.

The United States has accepted only 1,500 Syrian refugees since the deadly conflict’s onset in 2011. However, the Obama administration announced in September that 10,000 Syrians will be taken in 2016.