Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and other Republicans have said the Syrians, most of whom are Muslim, could pose a security threat and therefore should be barred from the U.S.
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CNN first reported the administration’s new push on Wednesday morning.
“Despite opposition by the American people, a documented link between terrorism and individuals admitted to the United States as refugees, and over trillion in debt, the Obama Administration has committed the United States to admitting 110,000 refugees during Fiscal Year 2017”, Sessions said in a statement.
Secretary of State John Kerry announced on August upon welcoming the 10,000 refugee that the us has hosted over 3.2 million refugees since 1975. A Rasmussen Reports survey survey found 49% of likely voters say no to any and all alleged Syrian refugees, while 20% said they would only support taking in 10,000 total.
In the Northeastern U.S., only New Haven, Conn., has accepted more Syrian refugees than Buffalo.
The administration did not release a country-specific breakdown.
“Ahead of hosting the “Leaders’ Summit on Refugees” at the United Nations on September 20, “[Obama] is trying to send a signal to other countries that they should increase the number they resettle”, said Jennifer Quigley, a refugee protection advocacy strategist with nonprofit group Human Rights First, to the Wall Street Journal.
Views on the topic divide sharply on partisan lines.
Democrat Hillary Clinton has said she would expand President Barack Obama’s refugee program to accept about 65,000 Syrian refugees.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that interviews refugees, insists its screeners are trained to ask probing questions and spot fraud, and have built up enough expertise in the country that they can detect bogus stories from applicants.
“Once we invite them into our communities they serve as remarkable voices to show what America stands for”, Haines said.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia, slammed the Obama administration, saying it “continues to tune out the American people’s concerns on this issue”.
The number of refugees admitted into the USA will increase to 110,000 in the upcoming fiscal year, according to an annual refugee report to Congress cited Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal.
Resettlement agencies count on MI as a destination for refugees from the Middle East because of the close familial ties shared to that region by many in southeast Michigan’s large Arab-American community and an infrastructure ready to help refugees from that part of the world. A year ago- before terror attacks in Europe and in the USA spurred fears about the U.S.’s ability to properly vet refugees-there was increased pressure for the Obama administration to accept thousands more Syrian refugees.
Another 35,000, would be approved to arrive from Africa while 14,000 were marked as not allocated.
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While the number of Syrians coming to the U.S.is on the rise, overall it is a drop in the bucket. A lot of them ended up in refugee camps in Thailand and have been resettled in countries around the world, including the U.S.
