America, welcome Syrian refugees

Editor’s note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Terrorists have made it clear that they intend to infiltrate this refugee population to reach the West and carry out other attacks.

There’s clearly real public concern about the issue.

“That, to me, is a more significant risk than a refugee process that takes close to two years before you ever get through to the end of the process”.

“In testimony before my Subcommittee, administration officials confirmed that our government has no access to Syrian government data to properly vet refugees and has no capacity to predict whether Syrian refugees are likely to join ISIS, as have many, for example, in Minnesota’s Somali refugee community”, wrote Senator Sessions. Of the millions of Syrian refugees around the world, the United States has admitted less than 2,000. Germany, for instance, has already accepted hundreds of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers, Canada has pledged to accept 25,000 refugees this year and France, in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks, pledged to accept 30,000 refugees. “Rather than taking the threat seriously, President Obama has doubled down on his unsafe open-borders policies by proposing to welcome thousands of refugees who have potentially been infiltrated by terrorists to the United States”. This legislation would introduce unnecessary and impractical requirements that would unacceptably hamper our efforts to assist some of the most vulnerable people in the world, many of whom are victims of terrorism, and would undermine our partners in the Middle East and Europe in addressing the Syrian refugee crisis. Right now, refugees wait 18 to 24 months while the screening process is completed.

For every applicant, the Department of State conducts biographic checks of the refugee’s name through several databases, including the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center and Interpol, which gives the Department information about the person’s criminal and immigration history. Earlier this week, Branstad ordered all agencies in Iowa to stop work on Syrian refugee resettlements. These refugees are also queried against a number of government databases to see if they might pose a threat.

Other governors who have expressed concern over the United States allowing Syrian refugees also received the letter.

In December 2001, British citizen Richard Reid took advantage of the visa waiver program when he attempted to bring down an American airliner flying between Paris and Miami with a bomb hidden in his shoe. That’s not who we are.

The backgrounds of Syrian refugees are hard to confirm because the United States does not have personnel in the country verifying applicants’ claims, Comey said in congressional testimony last month. While states do not have the legal authority to admit or deny refugees, they play an important consultation role and in making refugees feel welcome. Joseph A. Griffo said the states should still have their voices heard, and he’s calling for a moratorium on the admission of refugees from “specified regions”. “The only way terror wins is if they cause you to change your value system”.