The U.S. House of Representatives, defying a veto threat by President Barack Obama, overwhelmingly passed Republican-backed legislation on Thursday to suspend Obama’s program to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year and then intensify the process of screening them. The Homeland Security secretary would subsequently have to certify, with the concurrence of the Federal Bureau of Investigation director and the director of national intelligence, that the refugee posed no security concerns.
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The sweeping majority of the House vote was a rejection of Obama’s moral appeal on the issue and the most vivid manifestation of the rapidly shifting politics within the United States, where Americans are at once war tired yet also frightened by the threats made by the Islamic State.
The 289-to-137 vote came in the aftermath of the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129 people.
Yet dozens of Democrats joined Republicans in supporting the legislation, a few fretting openly of being put in the politically untenable position of opposing what they considered a reasonable anti-terror bill in the wake of a horrendous tragedy. Voting no were 135 Democrats and two Republicans, North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones and Iowa Rep. Steve King.
Obama even tried to persuade members of Congress during his trip to Asia on the issue by sending Twitter messages. “That doesn’t stop us from focusing our program to make sure that nobody comes in who might be a terrorist”. In a sign of the conflicting political undercurrents confronting Democrats, senior House Democrats said they did not push rank-and-file lawmakers to oppose the bill.
The global response to IS has been a dominant theme in Obama’s meetings with world leaders in both countries, and as he met with the Philippine leader on Wednesday, Obama mocked GOP leaders for talking tough and said their offensive rhetoric could be a potent recruitment tool for terrorists.
Rep. Raul Ruiz sided with Republicans on Thursday to halt the admission of Syrian refugees into the us until they undergo a more stringent vetting process – the strictest ever required for people fleeing a war-torn nation.
“We must balance safety against just being a humanitarian”. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and Democratic Sen. Twenty-seven governors have come out publicly to say they would refuse new refugees from Syria, but in a conference call this week, top White House officials told governors they did not now have that right. While many Americans see the United States historically as welcoming to immigrants, accepting refugees from Syria has raised concerns the newcomers may pose a national security threat in a country where about 3,000 people were killed by al Qaeda militants in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
“This is an area where additional screenings and reforms could be useful in enhancing the national security of the United States”, Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One as Obama flew to Malaysia.
Feinstein and Flake hope to force anyone who has been in Iraq or Syria in the past five years to go through the traditional visa process, including an in-person interview, fingerprinting and tamper-proof passport security. There was no evidence the Syrians had any connection to terrorism, United States officials said.
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“A Syrian child is not going to have an intel record, but precisely for that reason, we believe that this is not the pool of individuals who are most likely to be ISIL operatives”, Rhodes said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.
