Washington: The far-right populist Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders issued a ‘warning’ to America on Thursday, saying that mass immigration from Muslim countries threatened the nation's security.
"I am warning America. Don't think that what's happening in Europe today will not happen in America tomorrow because it will," Wilders told reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington.
"Islamic immigration has proven to be a Trojan horse, the jihadists are among us," he added, warning of "enormous security problems" in the United States if Muslim immigrants are allowed to stay.
The firebrand politician, who heads the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, has long been accused of inciting racial hatred for his outspoken and sometimes extreme views.
Wilders was invited to America by Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa and his Texas colleague Louie Gohmert.
Wilders, a flamboyant-looking lawmaker who sports a shock of peroxide-blond hair, has called Islam a fascist religion and compared the Koran to Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf."
Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, two Democratic congressmen who are both Muslim, had tried to block Wilders from entering the United States. They wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry saying that Wilders was "known for perpetuating Islamophobia."
