Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson visits Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, claims it is ‘quite nice’

He claimed refugees are ‘satisfied’ with living in the camps if they are adequately funded

'They are satisfied to be in the refugee camps if the refugee camps are adequately funded,' Carson claimed (Getty)

Ben Carson, the Republican presidential candidate who caused uproar when he appeared to liken refugees to rabid dogs, has visited a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan and told the media he found it to be "really quite nice".

Mr Carson, 64, who is one of the leaders in the polls for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, made the comment during a round of TV interviews given while in Jordan.

Speaking to CNN, the candidate said that refugees’ "true desire is to be resettled in Syria".

"But they are satisfied to be in the refugee camps if the refugee camps are adequately funded.

"Recognise that in these camps they have schools, they have recreational facilities that are really quite nice. And there [are] all kinds of things that make life more tolerable," he said.

Speaking to ABC’s This Week programme, Mr Carson said: "We’re hearing that they all want to come here to the United States, and that’s not what they want. They want to go back home."

He also defended his comments from earlier this week in which he had appeared to compare refugees to rabid dogs, claiming "people here completely understood" his meaning.

Last week Mr Carson had reportedly told a campaign event in Mobile, Alabama, that allowing Syrian refugees into the US could pose a risk to Americans, and had said: "If there is a rabid dog running around your neighbourhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog.

"By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly."

President Obama has said 10,000 Syrian refugees will be admitted into America over the next year.

Speaking from Jordan, Mr Carson said in the ABC interview that "The Syrians here completely understood what I was saying.

"It’s only the news media in our country that thinks that you’re calling Syrians dogs. They understand here that we’re talking about the jihadists, the Islamic terrorists."

He added that he believes the right policy is to support the refugee programme currently in place, which works "extremely well" but does not have adequate funding.

"If you do that, you solve that problem without exposing the American people to a population that could be infiltrated with terrorists who want to destroy us," he claimed.

Additional reporting by Reuters