“Given the lives at stake and the critical importance to our partners in the Middle East and Europe of American leadership in addressing the Syrian refugee crisis, if the President were presented with H.R. 4038, he would veto the bill”, said the White House. With that in mind, it’s not really shocking to hear that Texas officials have threatened to sue a humanitarian aid group if it continues to help relocate Syrians to the state.
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“As part of our mission and mandate from the U.S. Federal government, we will continue to resettle refugees in Texas and other states”, a spokeswoman for the International Rescue Committee said in response to a Reuters email.
“The IRC understands Governor Abbott’s commitment to the safety of the people of Texas”.
This comes as multiple governors across the country, including Gov. Mike Pence, have said they will stop Syrian refugees from resettling in their states after the Paris attacks linked to ISIS.
Of Syrians surveyed in their homeland who said they wanted to move, a mere 6 percent chose the United States and Canada as their desired location, according to the poll by Gallup, a global polling and research firm based in Washington, D.C.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott does not want to welcome Syrian refugees.
Fellow GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson joined Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM Tuesday morning and told host Stephen K. Bannon that Congress should fight to defund the Obama administration’s refugee resettlement plans.
He also urged Barack Obama to halt his plans to let 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States before the end of the financial year. A previous ABC News investigation in 2013 found that two Iraqi refugees resettled in Kentucky turned out to be terrorists with links to al Qaeda, and dozens of other suspected terrorists may have been allowed into the United States as well. Under the Refugee Health Program, the state contracts with city and county health departments to provide refugees with initial health screening, vaccinations and referrals for medical treatment.
Anne Marie Weiss-Armush, president of DFW International, a network of internationally focused groups in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, said her organization’s Refugee Support Network has helped furnish the apartment and stock the kitchen.
Once approved by the resettlement program a refugee will go on to process into American communities through one of nine national voluntary agencies that oversee a network of some 250 affiliates in 49 states.
Though some in the field remain open to Syrian refugee resettlement across America-whether it be the ones already here, or those coming in the future.
Not only are the background checks and application process thorough, but, according to the Department of State, more than half of the 18,000 Syrian refugees who have applied to the USA are children. The group receives federal funding and operates through the state’s refugee resettlement program within its Health and Human Services Commission.
From a Jewish perspective, however, we don’t see how the United States (and Georgia and other states that have announced their meaningless refusal to take refugees) can say no to the few refugees the Obama administration has agreed to take.
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Last month, a coalition of civil rights and refugee groups filed a lawsuit against Indiana Governor Mike Pence, claiming that he is violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause – a passage in the 14th Amendment that says states can not deny citizens “the equal protection of the laws” – by discriminating against refugees based on their nationality. It leads the country in the number of refugees given safe haven.
