Obama: No Contradiction Between Accepting Refugees, National Security

There is no contradiction between welcoming refugees and ensuring national safety, US President Barack Obama said Saturday amid the growing anti-refugee sentiment in his country.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Obama told reporters in Kuala Lumpur after meeting refugee children at a local humanitarian center that they were "indistinguishable from any child in America."

"The notion that somehow we would be fearful of them, that our politics would somehow leave them to turn our sights away from their plight, is not representative of the best of who we are," Obama said, as quoted by The Washington Post newspaper. "We have shown that we can welcome refugees and ensure our security — that there’s no contradiction."

On Thursday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would block the presidential administration from resettling some 10,000 Syrian refugees as well as Iraqi refugees to the United States in 2016, as was announced by Obama earlier in the year.

Following the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris by the Islamic State on November 13, US lawmakers and state governors quickly warned they would fight Obama's resettlement plan and prevent the refugees from coming into the United States.