"The current crisis before us is not a migrant issue… it is a mass exodus of refugees who are fleeing conflicts that this [Obama] administration has refused to address for years," McCain stated, referring to the civil war in Syria.
Estimated 850,000 migrants from the Middle East will seek refuge in Europe in the next two years, according to the UN.
McCain described the humanitarian crisis as "the predictable result" of President Barack Obama’s policies. McCain has been a strong advocate of training and arming Syrian rebels, and continued to call for the removal of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
The fact that the Obama administration has "no policy, no strategy, no effective way of stemming this horror, the president should… reckon with the cold hard logic of mass graves," McCain said, paraphrasing a 2013 speech by Obama.
In 2013, Obama addressed the UN General Assembly arguing that the international community couldn't accept the notion of mass atrocities without taking action.
Over the past two years, the majority of refugees seeking asylum in Europe have been fleeing the four-year old conflict in Syria, according to the UN.
