The governor of the midwestern USA state of MI said yesterday that he had chose to suspend arrivals of Syrian refugees under a program announced President Barack Obama.
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“I think to not allow the Syrian refugees to come to America”, Yang said.
Obama administration officials stressed that criminal history is only part of the process and consideration, but acknowledged there are limits to what’s available.
Governors from 34 states participated in the 90-minute call, led by White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, and 13 governors asked questions about the program, the White House said in a statement.
Speakers said of the more than 4 million Syrians who have fled their country, fewer than 2,000 have been resettled in the United States since 2011.
Many Democratic governors continue to support the refugee plan.
“I want to protect the people of Minnesota every bit that the governors of those states want to protect the people of their state”, Dayton said.
Many people are wondering if state governments actually have the right to deny Syrian refugees.
In Cuyahoga County, four agencies work together directly with the State Department to process up to 800 refugees a year.
“Authorities need to investigate what happened in Europe before this problem comes to the United States”, Jindal wrote to Obama.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services define a refugee as one who is outside of his or her homeland and has been persecuted on account of race, religion, or nationality. “We don’t have religious tests to our compassion”, he said.
“Certainly there has always been resistance to accepting refugees or immigrants”, Collins said.
The president also mocked Republicans for expressing concern about whether these refugees could pose a threat to Americans, when they have also criticized him for not taking an aggressive enough stance against Russian President Vladimir Putin or Islamic extremists.
“The prudent, the responsible thing is to take a pause in this particular aspect of this refugee program in order to verify that terrorists are not trying to infiltrate the refugee population”, Ryan told reporters on Capitol Hill.
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But naivete is not the likely reason Peeler, fellow legislators, members of Congress and various governors have taken this stand. The more probable reason is the cynical calculation that there is potential political gain to be made from exploiting fears of terrorist activity in the wake of the Paris attack. According to Us Together, so far one Syrian was placed in Columbus, 47 in Toledo, and a family of 5 was resettled by Catholic Charities in Cleveland.
