Fusion
By Nidhi Prakash
October 1, 2015
More
than four million Syrian refugees have fled the war-torn country
fearing their lives. The U.S. government recently agreed to take in more
Syrians over the next two
years, starting with 10,000 refugees in the coming year.
Presidential
candidate Donald Trump says he’ll send refugees back if elected. “I’m
putting the people on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of
this mass migration,”
he said during a rally Wednesday evening in New Hampshire, ABC News
reports. “If I win, they’re going back.”
Trump
is apparently concerned that refugees fleeing Syria could actually be
terrorists working for the Islamic State trying to get into the U.S. by
posing as refugees.
“They could be ISIS, I don’t know,” he said, later adding, “This could
be one of the great tactical ploys of all time. A 200,000-man army,
maybe. That could be possible.”
As
Al Jazeera points out, Trump’s comments in New Hampshire Wednesday
appear to run counter to what he said just three weeks ago on Fox News’
The O’Reilly Factor: “Something
has to be done, it’s an unbelievable humanitarian problem…It’s living
hell in Syria. There’s no question about it. They’re living in hell, and
something has to be done.”
To
enter the United States, asylum seekers looking for refugee status go
through a strict application process, especially since 9/11. The U.S.
government has recently
eased rules for Syrians because legitimate refugees were being denied
protection if they had almost any interaction with fighters, the
Guardian writes:
Representatives
from a handful of refugee aid groups said they were still waiting for
the the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to release guidelines
on how to
apply the rule change. Until then, they said, Syrian refugees applying
for residence in the US were at risk of being denied entry for an act as
small as selling sandwiches to rebel fighters.
Human
Rights Watch and other non-profits have said there is currently no
evidence of terrorists trying to pose as refugees, and that terrorists
would more likely choose
an easier path if they were trying to cross borders.
The
latest decision from the State Department is that America will also
increase the total number of refugees the country takes in every year,
from the current cap of
70,000 to 85,000 next year and 100,000 by 2017.
“Refugees
go through the most robust security process of anybody who’s
contemplating travel to the United States,” White House spokesperson
Josh Earnest said while making
the announcement. “Refugees have to be screened by the National Counter
Terrorism Center, by the F.B.I. Terrorist Screening Center. They go
through databases that are maintained by D.H.S., the Department of
Defense and the intelligence community. There is
biographical and biometric information that is collected about these
individuals.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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