SPRING ARBOR TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Wednesday he welcomes immigrants to America, but they cannot alter “who we are.”
The retired neurosurgeon, speaking at a Christian college in his native Michigan, said he wants to preserve the U.S. as “Judeo-Christian.” He has blamed political correctness for the fallout over his recent statement against electing a Muslim president, which he later clarified by saying he would be open to a moderate Muslim who denounces radical Islam.
“I have no interest in being like everybody else, and giving away all of our values and principles for the sake of political correctness,” Carson told a crowd at Spring Arbor University, about 75 miles west of Detroit. “There is such a thing as an American dream and the American way. Anybody is welcome to come to America, but they don’t get to change who we are.”
Carson has been among the leading GOP contenders in recent polls.
In his speech, he told of rising from poverty with the help of his single mother. He accused Democrats of dividing Americans, calling the “war on women” a “phony thing.”
