Paris Attacks Intensify Debate Over How Many Syrian Refugees to Allow Into the U.S.

New York Times – by HAEYOUN PARK

Some countries, like Turkey and Germany, have accepted hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. But the United States has so far admitted only a tiny fraction of the estimated four million refugees who have fled Syria.  

Where the 1,854 Syrian Refugees Admitted
to the U.S. Since 2012 Were Placed

The refugees who have arrived from Syria since 2012 have been placed in 130 towns and cities. They are among the most vulnerable people in the war: single mothers and their children; religious minorities; victims of violence or torture.

Some of them have reached large cities like Houston, but most have been sent to more affordable, medium-size cities by the nine voluntary agencies that handle refugee resettlement. Boise, Idaho, has accepted more refugees than New York and Los Angeles combined; Worcester, Mass., has taken in more than Boston.

Under pressure from Europe and other countries confronting the global migration crisis, Mr. Obama has raised the number of Syrian refugees who will be offered legal status to at least 10,000 this fiscal year.

Some cities and towns have resisted. In Duncan, S.C., residents and elected officials argue that the federal government cannot possibly screen out terrorists, and some say that more Muslim immigrants would threaten American culture.But the United States has admitted only small numbers of Syrian refugees compared with other countries.

Syrians made up about 2 percent of the 70,000 refugees admitted during the last fiscal year. The three largest refugee groups were from Myanmar, Iraq and Somalia.The United States has also admitted far larger numbers in the past. In 1979, it provided sanctuary to 111,000 Vietnamese refugees, and in 1980, it added another 207,000. Around the same time, the country took in more than 120,000 Cuban refugees during the Mariel boatlift, including around 80,000 in one month alone.

The State Department said that the United States started to admit more Syrian refugees in the last year after the United Nations began submitting more referrals from refugee camps: 500 to 1,000 a month.

Refugees trying to reach the United States must apply through the United Nations, and before being accepted, they are screened by the F.B.I. and through databases run by the Defense Department and other federal agencies.

The additional 10,000 Syrian refugees this year would come from 18,000 referrals already submitted by the United Nations. State Department officials said that more than half of them were children.

More than 150,000 Syrians already live in the United States, according to census figures, and refugees who have relatives in the country are likely to be resettled with or near them. Those who do not have family in the United States are placed where jobs are more plentiful and the cost of housing is low.

Refugees receive help finding work and housing, but they are expected to become self-sufficient within a year. The agencies in charge of resettlement take into account how earlier waves of refugees often assist new arrivals with the moving process, with food and with explanations about the United States.

“It’s like taking someone from a very small, dark room to a very, very big world,” said Hussam Al Roustom, who arrived in Jersey City in June after fleeing Syria for Jordan. “This is why I want to help others go through what I have gone through.”

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/21/us/where-syrian-refugees-are-in-the-united-states.html

7 thoughts on “Paris Attacks Intensify Debate Over How Many Syrian Refugees to Allow Into the U.S.

  1. A news report on cnn tonight a man said over 5,000 passports were sold that were blank. He was in the middle east

    so as far as I feel send all Muslims back to the middle east and protect the free nations from terrorists and let the middle east people fight it out by them selves.

      1. We throw those scumbag joos in with ’em. Or, I have a better idea. All these FEMA Camps we load up with Muslims and Jews, (and that includes all these “wannabe” dual-citizen son’s of bitches too) open the gates between the two, and let God sort it out. I mean, look at what the Zionists are doing to Europe! What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

    1. Yes, all part of the plan for ‘greater israel’ from the nile to euphrates.
      The plan is to link arms (tentacles?) with their crypto ‘jew’ brothers, the house of saud. The saudi job is to get the sunni/shia civil war into full swing and clear those lands of resistance to ‘jew’ hegemony.

      -flek

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