All refugees must undergo extensive background checks by the departments of State and Homeland Security and several US intelligence agencies, and Syrian refugees receive additional vetting.
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The United States has officially achieved President Barack Obama’s goal of accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees in fiscal year 2016 with more than a month to spare.
According to Rice, Obama’s decision to admit these 10,000 refugees “represented a six-fold increase from the prior year, and was a meaningful step that we hope to build upon”.
Back in April, it didn’t appear that US would reach it’s goal of resettling 10,000 refugees.
The program emerged as an issue in the US presidential campaign, with Republican nominee Donald Trump alleging in the past that displaced Syrians constitute a potential security threat. Though the United States has accepted thousands of refugees-and, according to Wells, contributed almost $5.6 billion in humanitarian aid over the past four years-much more remains to be done to help the war-torn country and those who have been displaced.
Snyder spokeswoman Anna Heaton told NBC News the governor “never suspended refugee resettlement” and is not opposed to more Syrian refugees settling in MI.
The White House said in September that the USA would accept 10,000 refugees from Syria, and increase the total intake of global refugees above the the bar of 70,000 people.
Wells emphasized the exhaustive screening process refugees go through ahead of departure.
Among developed Western countries, the number of refugees received by the U.S. has always been decried as pitiful Germany, for example, has already received more than 1 million refugees.
USA officials say that the refugees have gone through extensive vetting, which not only involved numerous interviews but also intelligence-driven vetting and reviews of their social media accounts. The refugee is among the 85,000 the US will admit this year from countries across the globe.
The Obama administration had set the goal a year ago as the refugee crisis in Europe had reached its peak and worldwide leaders called on the U.S. to do more to resettle refugees.
According to the White House, Syrian refugees are the most aggressively vetted of all admitted to the United States, facing in-person interviews and stringent biographical and biometric vetting before they enter the country, a process that takes up to 18 months.
Germany has taken in hundreds of thousands and Canada admitted almost 30,000 refugees between November previous year and May 1.
The Jouriyeh family, which attended Sunday’s short ceremony, is headed to San Diego.
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David Miliband, CEO and president of the International Rescue Committee, said on Monday: “IRC encourages the White House to consider this 10,000 milestone a floor and not a ceiling”.
