Leading up to the vote, Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress and one of only two members in the House, criticized the bill calling it “a big mistake”.
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Earlier this week, Republican Reps.
“Isis has sworn to bring its war against innocents here”, House Republican Trey Gowdy told colleagues, using an abbreviation for the Islamic State extremist group. Rep. Cedric Richmond, the only Democrat in the delegation, voted against it. Syrians are less of a threat, actually, because they’ve fled their country.
Opponents of the bill argued that there is already a vigorous 18-month to 24-month vetting process for refugees.
Richard said she was “very anxious about terrorists”.
The bill will not end the refugee program here in the United States, but rather, increase security measures, making it far more hard and time-consuming for refugees to actually resettle in the US. Voting no were 135 Democrats and two Republicans, North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones and Iowa Rep. Steve King.
President Barack Obama on Wednesday vowed to veto the bill, saying the proposed bill is untenable and would provide no meaningful additional security for the American people. The legislation still must be voted on by the Senate, where Democratic leaders say they will move to block the bill.
There is no consensus about whether to send US troops to Iraq and Syria, with 44 percent for the idea and 45 percent against it; or whether the USA has done enough to protect the homeland from a Paris-style attack. And though new House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., hasn’t ruled out any approach, it seemed unlikely he would relish escalating the fight into a holiday-season shutdown battle with the president. The concern is that standard of certification is a de facto halt, not a pause, to the program.
“While recognizing that security concerns must be fully addressed, we should not turn our backs on the thousands of legitimate refugees”.
“We used fear, but that only weakens our own institution, our own core values, our own constitution”.
The administration plans to accept about 10,000 Syrian refugees in addition to the over 2,000 who have settled here in recent years. Roughly 11 million Syrians, nearly half the nation’s population, have fled their homes since the civil war broke out in 2011, and about 4 million have left their country.
Republicans described the bill as an attempt to create an extra layer of certainty when accepting immigrants from Syria, a needed steps after it became clear that one of the Paris attackers entered France as a refugee. There was no evidence the Syrians had any connection to terrorism, US officials said. The U.S.is backing moderate rebels seeking to topple dictator Bashar Assad.
“We already have in place the most vigorous vetting process that we have for anybody who is admitted”, he said in Manila, Philippines, where he is attending an economic summit. It also requires the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general to independently assess the refugee approvals to prevent high-risk people from being admitted. “That’s not American”, Obama said. “But we owe it to the American people to know who these people are”. Senate Democrats are trying to shift the focus to other issues regarding travelers from overseas, and Minority Leader Harry Reid predicted Thursday’s bill would not be approved. It can also complicate U.S. efforts to check foreign government records for local arrests or lesser bureaucratic interactions, such as bank records, business licenses or civil filings.
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Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen.
