Should we welcome Syrian refugees?

US President Barack Obama Thursday delivered a Thanksgiving message in which he compared modern refugees to the pilgrims whom the holiday celebrates, urging Americans to open their arms to the potential immigrants. “What makes America America is that we offer that chance”, President Obama said in his Thanksgiving address. “What makes America America is that we offer that chance”. It’s the federal government’s role to process applications for refugee status, and up to the federal government to decide who is let into the country.

Obama has committed to accept 10,000 refugees from war-torn Syria this year – but the plan has come under fierce assault from Republicans since the Paris terror attacks.

The federal government reaffirmed that refugees go through the highest level of security screening of any category of traveler to the United States.

Thanksgiving Day in the USA is traced to a feast in 1621 by the Pilgrims in which they gave their appreciation to god for their first successful harvest in the New World. He has said all refugees are thoroughly vetted before being brought to the United States.

The president said the USA situation is different from that in Europe, where refugees arrive and then have to be sorted out. Using homeland security as their main point, some Congress members wanted legislation that will tighten further the conditions in which refugees could be admitted to the country. That was the case before Paris, and that is the case now.

Simon Henshaw, principal deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, said at a November 19 media briefing that the USA resettled 1,682 Syrian refuges in year ending September 30.

The letter reassured states, as President Obama has been trying to do nearly daily, that refugees are subject to a thorough screening process before they enter the country. “To refugees without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex, or political opinion”.

US immigration system critic Julie Axelrod, director of investigations at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, said the onus should be on other Arab nations to do more for the refugees.

Now, the states can’t outright refuse them, but they can deny the release of federal funding for local refugee programs that serve Syrians.

Sanctuary cities burst into the news this summer with the death of Kathryn Steinle, 32, who was shot as she was walking along the San Francisco waterfront with her father. According to the International Refugee Assistance Project, those Iraqi translators are among the 58,000 or more Iraqis who worked with the U.S. They are still awaiting for visa processing.

Forty-seven House Democrats joined 242 Republicans in calling for such an action, though Obama has said he would veto the bill even if it passes the Senate.