The letter said the White House will also work to brief governors on the refugee resettlement process and discuss improving the program.
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Instead, the White House is putting its energies behind an overhaul of the visa waiver program, which allows 20 million visitors a year from 38 countries to enter the United States for up to 90 days.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission wrote to the International Rescue Committee in Dallas to express its disappointment in the group’s ongoing support of Syrian refugees in Texas.
Despite Abbott’s order, refugees and advocates in North Texas are preparing for the arrival of a Syrian family that is supposed to join family members living in Richardson, north of Dallas.
Lavinia Limon of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said blocking resettlement funding would cut resources to those who have recently arrived, including Iraqis admitted to the United States after supporting U.S. troops.
Matthew Soerens, spokesman for World Relief, one of nine nonprofit organizations authorized by the federal government to help resettle refugees in the USA, said, “The bill is more politically motivated than based on the facts of actual process involved”.
Of the challenge in verifying the identity of a Syrian refugee, he said, ‘And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show[ing] up because we have no record of them’.
All of these statistics prove that xenophobia and racism fuel the rejection of Syrian refugees, rather than any security or economic concerns.
The White House is proposing several steps to address concerns raised by more than half the nation’s governors, including North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, over the adequacy of screening refugees resettled in the U.S. In 2016, that number is slated to increase to 85,000 and to 100,000 refugees in 2017.
ISIS is one of the acronyms for the Islamic State group.
“The governor believes that accepting refugees from Syria is incompatible with an absolute commitment to the safety of Texans”, wrote Chris Traylor, executive commissioner of the state agency.
President Barack Obama’s administration, which plans to accept about 10,000 Syrian refugees in addition to the 2,500 who have settled here since 2011, said it already takes about 18-24 months for those refugees to make it into the United States.
After referral, refugees face screenings from federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, National Counterterrorism Center, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Department of Defense.
“Apart from swimming the Atlantic Ocean, the refugee resettlement program is the most hard way to enter the United States”, the group added.
As governors rush to close their doors to Syrian refugees, many experts are now pointing out the problems with this kind of posturing.
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Obama’s comments on the thoroughness of the vetting process is opposite of his own Federal Bureau of Investigation director, James Comey, who testified before Congress in October saying it was impossible to properly vet the Syrian refugees because his agency has no data to cross-check the identities and backgrounds on the vast majority of them.
