Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled that country to escape the ongoing civil war there. Migrants have trekked across Turkey, landing first in Greece, before making their way into Europe. So maybe a bipartisan solution could center on Visa Waver Program reforms, plus a few kind of compromise around changes to the Syrian refugee program that are watered down enough to allow Obama and Democrats to support it (because they don’t effect a meaningful pause to the program), but also represent enough of a change to allow Republicans to claim they forced Dems to get serious about protecting the country already.
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Trey Gowdy, the Republican chairman of a subcommittee on immigration and border security, said no matter how secure the vetting process is, letting in any of these refugees still presents a risk to the United States.
U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. This group includes people fleeing violence, religious persecution and war.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican presidential candidate, introduced legislation Wednesday that would prohibit refugees from entering the US from any country that has territory controlled by a terrorist organization, such as Iraq and Syria. The overall group is nearly evenly split among men and women. Refugees submit to in-person interviews overseas, where they provide biographical details about themselves, including their families, friendships, social or political activities, employment, phone numbers, email accounts and more. But Mr. Obama and his aides also hinted that they had been caught off guard by the uproar over refugees. Syrians are subject to additional, classified controls, according to administration officials, who briefed reporters this week on condition that they not be identified by name to publicly discuss confidential details about the process. The Associated Press had been seeking details about the vetting process since September. And USA officials can hardly be expected to predict who may already be or will become radicalized. “That’s the challenge we are all talking about, is that we can only query against that which we have collected”.
“There is a new sense of urgency; and I think we do want to take that… and make it concrete”.
However, even if the bill gets vetoed, the fight surrounding the Syrian refugee issue is not expected to be solved soon.
On Thursday, though, Anne Richard, assistant secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration for the Department of State, stressed that while the FBI may not have access to such information, other agencies and the intelligence community may.
The Obama administration plans to accept an extra 45,000 refugees in the next two years, including a minimum of 10,000 Syrian refugees, which will result in a total of 200,000 refugees.
“We need to suspend this program until we can certify with certainty it’s only refugees, not terrorists, who are coming into this country”, MacArthur said. We therefore urge the inclusion of a provision in any omnibus spending bill that makes it absolutely clear that no refugee resettlement will take place without a separate, affirmative Congressional vote to authorize any resettlement and offset its huge costs.
On the floor just ahead of the vote, Pelosi said, “I have a problem with the bill that is on the floor today” and said a alternative proposal developed by Democrats would apply tough scrutiny to all refugees, not just Syrians and Iraqis. “Attorney General Loretta Lynch told lawmakers this week that roughly 70 people have been charged with crimes related to foreign-fighter activity and homegrown violent extremism since 2013”. That means it won’t address the House bill until the week after next.
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The measure, quickly drafted this week following the Islamic State attacks in Paris on Friday that killed 129 people, was approved on a vote of 289 to 137, with 47 of Obama’s 188 fellow Democrats breaking with the White House to support it.
