Before letting more Syrian refugees into the U.S., Sen. Roy Blunt told reporters Thursday: "We definitely need to hit the "pause' button here, until we can figure out a way that you can determine that the refugees don't put Americans at risk."
And, the Missouri Republican said, "I think this is a case where there are lots of humanitarian ways we can help, and bringing refugees here to the United States, at this point, is not in the best interests of either the refugees or Americans, and so, hopefully, we can find other ways to help."
During a telephone conference call, Blunt noted he prefers the idea of Syrian refugees staying in Europe and the Middle East, because it will be easier for them to return to Syria when the current civil war ends, so they can help rebuild their country.
"I think we also ought to be thinking about how much more difficult we make it," he explained, "for Syrians ever to return to their homeland, when stability, hopefully, is restored there, if we put them on this side of the Atlantic Ocean."
President Barack Obama has pledged to accept 10,000 refugees fleeing from the ongoing Syrian wars.
Even after last weekend's terrorist attacks in Paris, France's President Francois Hollande said his country would keep their commitment to accepting about 30,000 refugees.
ISIS - which calls itself the "Islamic State" - has claimed credit for the Paris attacks that killed at least 129 people, and for the recent mid-air explosion of a Russian jetliner flying from Egypt to St. Petersburg, Russia, that killed 224.
After Blunt spoke with Missouri reporters, the U.S. House passed and sent to the Senate a bill requiring three federal agencies to confirm each Syrian or Iraqi applicant for emigration to the U.S. poses no threat to the country before being admitted. Obama has threatened to veto the measure.
A poll released by the group Missouri Alliance for Freedom said 76 percent of Missourians are concerned federal officials can't guarantee the refugees coming to the U.S. aren't part of a terrorist effort to get into this country and cause trouble.
But Mee Moua, president and executive director of the national group Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said in a statement: "Asian Americans know first-hand from the Japanese American Internment the damage that comes when we let unfounded and irrational fears drive national security.
"We cannot let fear and prejudice blind us and dismantle the founding values of this nation of immigrants."
Others, including state Rep. Stacey Newman, D-Creve Couer, have pointed to America's blocking immigration in the 1930s by Jewish refugees seeking escape from the growing Nazi presence in Europe, and how many of those people refused admission to the U.S. eventually died in German death camps.
"I think it's almost never fair to try to draw a comparison to death camps or the Holocaust," Blunt said. "I think that's almost always a mistake - because here you've got, largely, refugees that are almost all of the same faith as the people sending them out of the country -or creating such a lack of stability that they're leaving the country."
As he's noted before, Blunt accused the Obama administration of failing to take steps - such as a "No-Fly Zone" over Syria or international forces operating "secure zones in Syria that people could get to, so they wouldn't be fleeing at numbers that now exceed anything that's happened since World War II."
And Blunt would support committing American troops' "boots on the ground" in Syria only if they're part of a larger coalition, including "significant numbers of troops who are clearly Muslim and Islamic in faith.
"That's an important part of that equation - I don't think those who oppose ISIS or (Syrian President) Assad are going to be successful without the people there."