US House Leader Urges ‘Pause’ in Syrian Refugee Program

Governors from 34 states participated in the 90-minute call, led by White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, and 13 governors asked questions about the program, the White House said in a statement.

Supporters place a sign welcoming Syrian refugees outside the Arizona governor’s office Tuesday in Phoenix.

State Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, Tuesday requested an opinion from state Attorney General Ken Paxton on whether its legal for Texas to conduct its own security verifications on refugees before allocating federal resettlement funding.

And while localities don’t have much of a role in deciding where refugees go, Henshaw stressed that the USA government has a laborious, security-conscious process in place.

In a readout of the call Tuesday night, the White House said that several governors “expressed their appreciation for the opportunity to better understand the process and have their issues addressed”.

It was only two months ago that photographs of the body of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi lying in the surf of a Turkish beach shamed European nations and the United States into promising to accept more Syrian refugees and framed the Syrian refugee crisis as a moral imperative.

The legislation, which sets high hurdles for refugee admissions, including FBI background checks and individual sign-offs by top federal officials, “would provide no meaningful additional security for the American people, instead serving only to create significant delays and obstacles in the fulfillment of a vital program that satisfies both humanitarian and national security objectives”, the White House said.

Abbott also directed the DPS to “work with state and local officials to ensure any refugees already in this state do not pose a risk to public safety”.

Refugee resettlement in the U.S.is completely funded by the federal government.

A number of Republican presidential candidates and Senate Republicans issued similar calls, pointing to indications that one of the perpetrators in Friday’s terror attacks might have entered France with a Syrian passport.

The White House said that of 2,174 Syrians admitted to the USA since the September 11, 2001 attacks, none has been arrested or deported because of allegations they harbored extremist ambitions. While promising to consider what Brown and other senators had said, he emphasized that the administration had no plans to increase information sharing on refugees with states as of now.

A few Republicans are pushing back against aggressive opposition in their party to Syrian refugees resettling in the US, offering fresh evidence of a rift within the GOP that could complicate the party’s outreach to minorities heading into the 2016 presidential contest. McConnell said “the ability to vet people coming from that part of the world is really quite limited”.

US President Barack Obama says he’s open to ideas for enhancing the screening process of refugees. Still, Obama said the idea of only allowing Christians in amounted to “political posturing” that runs contrary to American values. He pointed to the millions of foreign visitors who enter America each year. “But we want to make sure that the people that are coming here are not going to do us harm”. “Let us not just single out the refugees as the potential source of danger in the United States”.