“We are not well served when, in response to a terrorist attack, we descend into fear and panic”, Obama said in the Philippines on Wednesday.
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Still, Republicans, including several 2016 presidential candidates, have charged that the country would be imperiled if refugees were to step foot on US soil, especially if the administration is unable to vet them to a satisfactory degree.
The bill now heads to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain, but it sets up a clash with President Barack Obama, who has threatened to veto the bill and has criticized Republicans for “hysteria” and falling short of their humanitarian duty to take in the oppressed.
Lawmakers said they simply didn’t believe arguments that the bill would take the vetting process from tough to impossible, but that personnel and funds could solve the problem.
“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.
“The margin for error is zero”.
“In short, the security vetting for this population – the most vulnerable of individuals – is extraordinarily thorough and comprehensive”, Secretary of State John Kerry and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson write in letters sent to all state and territorial governors and to the mayor of Washington. D.C.
We are concerned that the reaction of a few elected officials and others to the tragic terrorist attacks in Paris is a call for an end to the admission of refugees from Syria, or to limit admission to Christians only. House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters “this is urgent”.
The vice president said refugees have to wait 18 to 24 months while the screening process is taking place before they are admitted to the country. Without reservation, I’m a staunch supporter of accepting refugees from all countries and faiths who are fleeing violence and persecution. “Parisians opening their doors to anyone trapped in the street, taxi drivers turning off their meters to get people home safely, people lining up to donate blood”, he said.
The attacks in Paris last week remind us again of the unsafe world we live in. “Where is our mercy?” congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee pleaded.
To be sure, the refugee issue didn’t cleave cleanly on party lines. “The process is multi-layered and intensive, involving multiple law enforcement, national security, and intelligence agencies across the the federal government”. More than two dozen of those governors have also said that they wouldn’t allow Syrian refugees to settle in their states.
In the words of Leon Rodriguez, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who also testified at Thursday’s hearing, of all the tens of millions of people who are trying to get into the States every year, “Refugees get the most scrutiny and Syrian refugees get the most scrutiny of all”. Rights groups warned that such positioning merely plays into the hands of extremist groups.
But the vice president fought back against the concern, saying that Syrian refugees must already go through “the most rigorous screening of anyone” entering the United States.
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-An interview with the United Nations high commissioner for refugees to determine if the applicant meets the definition of refugee and to see if any “red flags” would render the applicant ineligible. Democrats said the measure in effect targeted Muslims, who comprise the majority of Iraqis and Syrians.
