House of Representatives votes to toughen refugee screening

A copy of the letter, dated Friday, was obtained by The Associated Press.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks and controls vast swathes of Syria and Iraq, despite a growing military campaign against them by the USA and other nations.

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said the bill would pause the program the White House announced in September to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year.

The administration is countering that the vetting process is thorough and can take almost three years.

Michael McCaul, Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the bill passed by the House would create “the most robust national security screening process in American history for any refugee population”.

Overall, more than four million Syrians have registered with the United Nations refugee agency.

In any event, Obama’s veto pledge is unfortunate because the House bill addressed the public’s fears about jihadists slipping into our country without simply blocking access to legitimate refugees.

This suggests Americans do not have an anti-Syrian refugee issue, but rather an issue with refugees in general.

The House bill would bar admission of an Iraqi or Syrian refugee until the Federal Bureau of Investigation certified to the Homeland Security secretary and the director of national intelligence that the person would not be a threat.

“That somehow [Syrian refugees] pose a more significant threat than all the tourists who pour into the United States every single day just doesn’t jibe with reality”, Obama said during a trip to Asia Thursday. Dozens joined Republicans in supporting the legislation, some fretting openly of being put in the politically untenable position of opposing what they considered a reasonable anti-terror bill in the wake of a horrendous tragedy. “Instead of focusing on the 2,000 highly vetted [Syrian refugees], we should be focusing on the lightly vetted [visa-waiver visitors]”, Murphy said.

Obama met several young refugees Saturday, bending down to ask their names and ages as they worked on art projects at the center. I introduced the bill immediately last Monday because of reports that at least one of the terrorists in Paris entered Europe as a Syrian refugee. “The recent terrorist attacks in Paris have Americans understandably concerned”.

The U.S. through the decades has struggled with taking in refugees; the U.S. shamefully refused visas to most of the Jews fleeing Nazis in the 1930s.

-A referral to U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services at the Homeland Security Department, which oversees refugee status interviews and additional security vetting with a focus on security checks. “And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing that will show up because we have no record of them”.