It does not call for ending the refugee program or require religious screenings, as a few Republicans have demanded.
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“The fear, the anger, the prejudice and the isolationism that are driving the current debate on Syrian refugees remind me of a few of the darkest and ugliest chapters of American history”, said McGovern, a reference to US moves to bar a few fleeing Hitler before World War II.
Over and over, Nedal Al-Hayk and his wife traveled up to three hours by bus from their temporary home in Jordan to an office where U.S. Homeland Security officials put them in separate rooms and asked them many questions in many different ways: Where were you born?
Republicans were bringing the bill to the House floor on Thursday, less than a week after a burst of bombings and shootings killed 129 people in Paris, wounded many more and revived post-9/11 jitters in the USA and other countries.
The White House labored Thursday to keep Democrats from joining an embarrassing rebuke of President Barack Obama as House Republicans pushed legislation toward approval that would erect fresh hurdles for Syrian and Iraqi refugees trying to enter the U.S. Obama promised a veto, but his top aides struggled to limit Democratic defections as last week’s attacks in Paris showed signs of splintering the lame duck president’s party.
That’s exactly the kind of message Republican leaders hoped to avoid after a disastrous 2012 election in which minority voters shunned GOP candidates in near record numbers.
A total of 31 states are led by Republican governors.
“This is about safety”, Barbour said.
“It would effectively deny refugee status for Syrians and Iraqis who are victims of terrorism in their own homelands”, Conyers said.
“A specific group of refugees is being treated differently due to their country of natural origin and faith”, he said.
It’s not exactly like rounding up Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II, Culllen continued, “but it’s the same line of thinking” that feeds “immigrant bashing”. People who have taken part in the process say that the administration leaves it up to private groups, mostly faith-based groups, to determine where refugees should go, with the decision based on family links, the availability of language resources locally and the ability of local groups to handle the new workload – not politics.
The administration announced that goal earlier in the fall after a photograph of a little Syrian boy washed up on a beach sparked calls for compassion, including from a few congressional Republicans. Sen.
Through its social media feeds, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed back on suggestions the refugees could post a risk to the USA, posting photos of Google co-founder Sergey Brin and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as examples of refugees to the U.S, using the hashtag #RefugeesWelcome. “We’ve safely welcomed 3 million refugees since 1975”. Donald Trump said the USA should increase surveillance of mosques, consider closing any tied to radicals and be prepared to suspend a few civil liberties. “We might as well take down the Statue of Liberty”, said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. Regarding Syrians already in the US, he added: “I would watch them very carefully”.
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“This is common sense”. “They ache to come to a country like America because they know the kinds of opportunities it grants to people”.
