Wells said the target of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S.in the 2016 fiscal year will be reached Monday, as several hundred Syrians depart from Jordan over 24 hours.
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The Syrian refugee resettlement program aimed to accept 10,000 refugees for the entire 2016 fiscal year.
Rice said the number represented a ‘six-fold increase from the prior year, ‘ and called it ‘a meaningful step that we hope to build upon’.
The top destination for Syrian refugees arriving in the U.S.is the state of MI.
The Syrian government’s onslaught against rebel forces opposing Bashar al Assad’s authoritarian rule has killed an estimated 400,000 people while displacing millions of refugees since March 2011.
Two of the Syrian refugee families coming to the US this week will live in San Diego through the International Rescue Committee, one of the agencies that handle resettlement. “The U.S. can and should be doing a lot more, so meeting this 10,000 shows – especially given the majority came in only in the last few months – that when we have a the political will and the funding in place we can scale up this program”. The commander of Jordan’s Border Guard Forces says the number of Syrian refugees amassed in remote desert areas on the Jordanian border and waiting to enter has risen to a new high of 59,000.
“The Obama administration will hit its target for bringing 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States on Monday, a top official said, clearing a key self-imposed benchmark more than a month before a deadline”.
Officers with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services travel to the country where the refugees fled to interview them.
More than half of the nation’s governors said they didn’t want Syrian refugees in their states in the wake of those attacks, and Republicans in Congress repeatedly voted to make it more hard for the government to approve them for resettlement.
However, if the refugees are not able to find a job in those first three months, or are precluded from doing so due to a disability, they are eligible for many welfare programs, including Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), and Supplemental Security Income.
There is also a case to be made the U.S. could accept even more refugees.
“I think the president would like to see a ramping up of those efforts, but I think the president is also realistic about how quickly that can happen”, Earnest said.
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News of the 10,000th arrival is bound to once again spark controversy about an issue that has made its way to the presidential campaign as Donald Trump and some of his allies have alleged the refugees could be a potential security threat.
