This matter comes down to no policy on the war in Syria and the misguided, yet no less corrupt leaders in this matter include the National Security Council at the White House, Barack Obama himself and the failed control and management at the State Department which began with Hillary Clinton and now with John Kerry.
The United Nations is at the core of the mismanagement and Western countries are left to clean up the mess, while some are now saying NO.
U.N. Calls on Western Nations to Shelter Syrian Refugees
“In the case of Syrian refugees, our intelligence on the ground is alarmingly slim, making it harder to identify extremists,” said Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
The United Nations high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, has stepped up calls for industrialized countries, including the United States, to shelter 130,000 Syrian refugees over the next two years.
The figure is a fraction of the nearly four million refugees who have poured into the countries bordering Syria — chiefly Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey — straining their resources and plunging many displaced people into poverty.
So far, the high commissioner’s pleas have not been met. Governments around the world have promised to take in just under two-thirds of what the United Nations is urging, while a great many more Syrians have chosen to make perilous journeys by land and sea in search of asylum in Europe. More here from the New York Times.
McCaul Says Admitting Unvetted Syrian Refugees into the U.S. is “Very Dangerous”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Chairman Michael McCaul, of the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote a letter to President Obama last Thursday expressing concerns over the Administration’s announced plans to resettle some 2,000 Syrian refugees in the United States this year. Terrorists have made known their plans to attempt to exploit refugee programs to sneak terrorists into the West and the U.S. homeland. Chairman McCaul’s letter points out the potential national security threat this poses to the United States.
Chairman McCaul: “Despite all evidence towards our homeland’s vulnerability to foreign fighters, the Administration still plans to resettle Syrian refugees into the United States. The Director of the National Counterterrorism Center and the Deputy Director of the FBI both sat before my Committee this Congress and expressed their concern with admitting refugees we can’t properly vet from the global epicenter of terrorism and extremism in Syria. America has a proud tradition of welcoming refugees from around the world, but in this special situation the Obama Administration’s Syrian refugee plan is very dangerous.”
Read Chairman McCaul’s letter HERE.
The Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence will hold a hearing on June 24th to examine the refugee resettlement program and discuss vulnerabilities to our security exposed by the Administration’s plan.
It was last year that Barack Obama lifted restrictions on the refugee program.
U.S. eases rules to admit more Syrian refugees, after 31 last year
President Barack Obama’s administration announced on Wednesday that it had eased some immigration rules to allow more of the millions of Syrians forced from their homes during the country’s three-year civil war to come to the United States.
Only 31 Syrian refugees – out of an estimated 2.3 million – were admitted in the fiscal year that ended in October, prompting demands for change from rights advocates and many lawmakers.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been taken in by neighboring countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.
The rules changes granted exemptions on a case by case basis to the “material support” bar in U.S. immigration law, according to an announcement in the Federal Register signed by Secretary of State John Kerry and Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security.
That bar had made it impossible for anyone who had provided any support to armed rebel groups to come to the United States, even if the groups themselves receive aid from Washington.
The advocacy group Human Rights First said, for example, that the existing law had been invoked to bar a refugee who had been robbed of $4 and his lunch by armed rebels, and a florist who had sold bouquets to a group the United States had designated as a terrorist organization.
“These exemptions will help address the plight of Syrian refugees who are caught up in the worst humanitarian crisis in a generation,” Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, chairman of the U.S. Senate subcommittee on human rights, said in a statement.
It was not immediately clear how many Syrians would be affected by the rules change.
By early January, 135,000 Syrians had applied for asylum in the United States. But the strict restrictions on immigration, many instituted to prevent terrorists from entering the country, had kept almost all of them out.
Washington has provided $1.3 billion in humanitarian assistance to aid Syrian refugees. This year, the United Nations is also trying to relocate 30,000 displaced Syrians it considers especially vulnerable. Witnesses at a Senate hearing last month had testified that Washington would normally accept half.
