The United States looks on its way to reaching its target of taking in 10,000 Syrian war refugees in the 2016 fiscal year this week, according to the US ambassador to Jordan.
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Following the terrorist attack past year in Paris, more than 30 governors said Syrian refugees were not welcome to resettle in their state.
The White House announced that the Obama administration has met the goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country one month ahead of schedule.
“The President understood the important message this decision would send, not just to the Syrian people but to the broader global community”, Rice said. Millions have been forced to flee Syria to escape the country’s civil war and persecution.
Here in the Shenandoah Valley, Harrisonburg was recently designated a “Welcoming America” city, part of a national network of communities that are working together to make it easier for newly arrived immigrants and refugees to adjust to their new life.
The resettlement of refugees caused controversy previous year when governors from at least 31 states said they would refuse to allow refugees into their states, given the glaring lack of security screening.
Last summer, as the globe was fixated on scenes of desperate migrants fleeing over the Mediterranean Sea in shoddy vessels, the White House announced that the US would accept at least 10,000 refugees from Syria and increase the total intake of refugees to 85,000 by the end of the fiscal year in September.
California and MI have taken the largest number of those fleeing Syria, with each resettling more than 1,000. He first said he would ban all Muslims from immigrating to the USA, refugee or otherwise, and later modified the ban to cover people from countries “compromised by terrorism” ― a broad designation that would include Syria. In the 2015 fiscal year, the USA admitted 70,000 refugees.
US admission of Syrian refugees has been a hot button issue in the 2016 race for the White House, with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump warning that violent militants could enter the country posing as refugees.
Today I am happy to announce that we will achieve this a month before the date (September 30, end of the budget year, Ed), she added, announcing the arrival of the 10,000th Syrian refugee in the United States on Monday afternoon.
Many allies of the United States have taken in more refugees than the USA has. The refugee program includes stringent background checks by the State Department, which take between 18 and 24 months to complete.
Now the US has already admitted more than six times the number of refugees from the civil war-torn Mideast country it took in the previous fiscal year.
Obama announced last fall that his administration meant to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees during fiscal year 2016 as the migrant crisis overwhelmed Europe and the Middle East last summer.
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In addition to resettling some of the most vulnerable refugees, we have always focused on providing humanitarian assistance and protection to refugees in the places to which they have fled, so they can return home when the conflict ends.
