House passes bill to block Syrian refugees, require more vetting

Thirty one governors, all but one of them Republicans, have indicated that they will not accept the settlement of the refugees in their states.

Forty-seven Democrats joined 242 Republicans to create a veto-proof majority voting for the bill.

“…We are deeply concerned that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria may have exploited the generosity of the refugee system to carry out Friday’s terrorist attack in Paris”.

The most severe of the Republican proposals would suspend all US government support for resettling refugees in the USA and would aim to guard against certain refugees entering the USA through the southern border who are suspected of ties to terrorism, designating them “special interest aliens”.

Is the White House doing enough to ensure security with the Syrian refugees?

Gov. Bill Walker says we have no say in the decision. For him, seeking asylum in the US was far more time-consuming but less risky than attempting to go to Europe.

On the Senate floor, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who hasn’t yet scheduled debate on the issue, said Thursday it is time “to press pause” so policy makers could decide whether adequate vetting procedures are in place, calling it “the most responsible thing for the administration to do”.

Still, it was a humbling week for Obama, who has set a goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees to the USA during the next year.

If the House passes the bill, it is not clear if the Senate will take it up.

“If our law enforcement and our intelligence community can not verify that each and every person is not a security threat, then they shouldn’t be allowed in”, he said.

The issue has challenged America’s image of itself as a nation that welcomes downtrodden newcomers, with a few lawmakers suggesting all Syrians should be barred, or that Christian Syrians should be favoured over Muslims.

Loretta Lynch, Mr Obama’s attorney general, called the proposed screening impractical and impossible: “To ask me to have my Federal Bureau of Investigation director or other members of the administration make personal guarantees would effectively grind the program to a halt”.

“Syrians are not terrorists”, he told reporters, speaking on the same day that the House of Representatives voted to ban Syrian and Iraqi refugees from entering the United States without tougher screening measures.

They must undergo a screening process that can take almost three years, during which they are fingerprinted and required to submit other biometric information, subjected to criminal and terrorist background checks and put through repeated rounds of questioning about their families, friends and political activities, authorities said.

Mr Obama said refugees already faced the most vigorous vetting process for anyone admitted to the country.

If the president was not so self-righteous, he would see that by addressing Americans’ security concerns, Congress’ actions will likely strengthen support for accepting desperate refugees.

Talks between the administration and Capitol Hill on reforming the program are “a fruitful area for possible bipartisan discussion in pursuit of reforms that actually will have an impact on strengthening national security”, Earnest said.