USA president Barack Obama’s administration announced this week that it had fulfilled its objective of allowing 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States. After a slow start, the administration was able to hit the goal about a month early and just a few weeks before Obama convenes a summit on refugees during the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly.
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A policy director at Church World Service, who has worked closely with the USA government and nonprofits to resettle Syrian refugees, described the 10,000-benchmark as sort of bitter-sweet.
“This demonstrates that where there’s a will, there’s a way”, Smyers continued.
“We will admit at least 85,000 refugees in total this year, including vulnerable individuals and families from Burma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, El Salvador, Iraq, Somalia, Ukraine, and many other countries”.
The top destination for Syrian refugees arriving in the U.S.is the state of MI.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the United States will also seek to admit about 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming fiscal year that begins October 1.
Only a small percentage of Syrian refugees have been resettled to third countries. She said the US has committed to working with the worldwide community to increase funding for humanitarian assistance and double the number of refugees afforded the opportunity to resettle.
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. Germany, the favored destination for many people fleeing the Middle East and Africa, instituted an open-door policy.
When the plan was announced in 2015, more than half the nation’s governors opposed the program, citing security concerns. Canada has resettled more than 30,000 Syrians since last November. 12,000 have been accepted so far, the report said. Sweden and other Scandinavian countries that initially welcomed refugees have been trying for months to stem migration by rejecting asylum claims and deporting refugees.
“IRC encourages the White House to consider this 10,000 milestone ‘a floor and not a ceiling, ‘” he said. Back then, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton called the program “a good start”, and said the US should accept 65,000 refugees.
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Americans’ opinions on accepting refugees shifted after the Paris attacks, according to polling from Bloomberg. Instead, donor countries are trying to invest more in job creation and education for refugees in regional host countries to encourage them to stay there instead of moving onward, including to Europe.
