Financial Times
By Demetri Sevastopulo and Barney Jopso
November 16, 2015
President
Barack Obama said it was “shameful” that some US politicians were
urging his administration to halt a programme to bring Syrian refugees
into the country, arguing
that it was “not American” to institute a religious litmus test for
refugee policy.
Speaking
in Turkey after the G20 summit, Mr Obama was responding to criticism of
his plan to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees over the coming year, up from
1,500, under pressure
from Europe. Since the Paris attacks, Republican presidential
contenders have hammered him over the plan, which was announced in
September, with Donald Trump saying that he would deport all Syrians.
In
recent days, sixteen state governors have said they would block Syrian
refugees coming to their states — the leaders of Alabama, Arizona,
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia,
Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New
Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin.
“When
I hear folks say that, well, maybe we just admit the Christians but not
the Muslims; when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would
be a religious test
for which a person fleeing from a war-torn country is
admitted . . . that’s not American, that is not who we are. We don’t
have religious tests to our compassion,” Mr Obama said.
In
criticism aimed at Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, two Cuban-American
senators running for president, Mr Obama said it was “shameful” to
espouse such policies when “some
of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from
protection when they were fleeing from political persecution”.
The
Paris attacks have sparked fear-mongering in a number of countries,
including the US, and bolstered critics of refugee policy.
On
Friday, just as the top EU official for migration was urging the White
House to be “more generous” in accepting Syrian refugees, Paris was
struck by a series of attacks
that immediately boosted political opposition to his stance.
Many
Republican presidential contenders and other party members now want the
White House to scrap or defer the refugee programme.
Frank
Luntz, a pollster, said that the refugee issue would have an even
greater impact on the 2016 campaign after the attacks, particularly for
the Republicans, but stressed
that both parties were “stoking it for their own political purposes”.
“I
will not stand complicit to a policy that places the citizens of
Alabama in harm’s way,” Robert Bentley, the governor of Alabama, said on
Sunday. Greg Abbott, governor
of Texas, added on Monday: “A Syrian ‘refugee’ appears to have been
part of the Paris terror attack. American humanitarian compassion could
be exploited to expose Americans to similar deadly danger.”
Peter
Shumlin, the Democratic Governor of Vermont, offered to take in Syrian
refugees, accusing those who did not as “stomping” on American values.
Ben
Carson, the retired brain surgeon leading the Republican field with
Donald Trump, said that allowing refugees from the Middle East into the
US was a “huge mistake”.
On
Capitol Hill, Republicans ramped up existing efforts to introduce new
controls on refugee resettlement. Michael McCaul, chair of the House
homeland security committee,
and Chuck Grassley, chair of the Senate judiciary committee, are both
working on bills to ensure stringent vetting of Syrian arrivals, said
congressional aides.
In
a defensive speech on Monday, Mr Obama called on his critics to return
to what he said were American values. “The people who are fleeing Syria
are the most harmed by
terrorism" he said. “It is very important . . . that we do not close
our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating
the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism.”
Mr
Obama reminded Republicans that when Pope Francis recently spoke to the
US Congress, he urged compassion for all people, and not just
Christians.
Over
the weekend, Mr Trump said it was “insane” that Mr Obama wanted to
accept 250,000 refugees, using a wildly exaggerated figure. Other party
contenders have voiced
worries about the US’s ability to screen refugees.
“We
won’t be able to take more refugees. It’s not that we don’t want to,
it’s that we can’t,” said Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American senator.
“There’s no way to background
check someone that’s coming from Syria.”
Ben
Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, rejected those claims, saying
that authorities had “very extensive screening procedures”. James
Stavridis, a retired US admiral
and former Nato supreme allied commander, said that the US had both the
technology and capability to vet Syrian refugees “safely and
appropriately”.
“We
should continue to take a substantial number of Syrian refugees because
it is the right thing to do for the international community and because
over time they will
prove to be citizens of real capability and true grit, like many who
immigrated before them in troubled times, said Mr Stavridis. “The key is
serious vetting using all the tools at our disposal.”
But
some officials in charge of vetting applicants have conceded that there
is a risk of infiltration. James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, recently
told Congress that while there were challenges screening Iraqi
refugees, the process was tougher for Syria. “If we have no information
on someone, they’ve never crossed our radar screen . . . it will be
challenging,” he said.
A
senior administration official told the FT that it was important to
look at the entire vetting programme. The official added that the US had
a rigorous screening programme
and that Mr Comey was simply referring to the FBI component, which is
mostly focused on people with criminal records.
Protests
have flared around the US over the issue. Some counties in South
Carolina have passed resolutions against the so-called “Refugee
Resettlement Project”. While
some concerns have been sparked by the rise of Isis and images of
Syrians fleeing into Europe, there have been cases, including one in
Kentucky, where refugees in the US were convicted of providing support
for terrorists.
In
the wake of the Paris attacks, the White House is caught between
European allies who want the US to bear a bigger burden and Republicans
who say the administration
must prioritise citizens’ safety.
Larry
Sabato, a University of Virginia politics expert, said the attacks
would make Republicans “even more anti-immigration” and force more
moderate candidates, such as
Mr Rubio and Jeb Bush, to take a tougher stance, which could hurt the
party’s standing with non-white voters in the general election. But he
said the Democrats also faced a conundrum since it was “hard to see how
they can continue to support absorbing 10,000
Syrians into the US”.
The
US has long been a magnet for refugees, attracting everyone from
Vietnamese after the Vietnam war to Cubans escaping the communist regime
of Fidel Castro. While the
number of refugees entering the US fell after the 2001 terror attacks,
it has since edged up again. John Kerry, secretary of state, recently
said that the US would boost its annual quota of refugees from 70,000
now to 100,000 by 2017.
While
that would mark a 43 per cent rise, it pales in comparison to the
response in much of Europe. Sweden, which is taking the highest
proportion of refugees per capita
in Europe, is expected to accept 190,000 people this year, equal to 1.8
per cent of its population.
Even if the US took 100,000 refugees that would only equate to 0.03 per cent of its total population.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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