State Department officials hope to increase the number of Syrian refugees who can enter the country next year, but they can’t say by exactly how many.
“We don’t have a target number for a number of Syrians for next year,” Anne Richard, the assistant secretary of state responsible for refugee issues, told reporters Tuesday. “This administration has been very clear that we want to bring more Syrians. So, my own guidance to our staff is that we want to bring even more than we brought this year without having a target.”
About 12,500 people were brought into the United States over the last year, as part of an international effort to help the four million refugees displaced by the Syrian civil war. The State Department also announced $364 million in new humanitarian aid to help the Syrian people as well as neighboring countries that have borne the brunt of the refugee crisis.
“It will support desperately needed food, shelter, safe drinking water, medical care, and other urgent help to millions of Syrians and refugee hosting communities,” Richard said. He said U.S. taxpayers have sent $5.9 billion to help Syrians since the beginning of the crisis.
About three-quarters of the new money will be spent in Syria, although Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s regime is blocking humanitarian aid from reaching the places where it is needed most, such as the rebel-held portions of Aleppo.
Assad and the Russians attacked humanitarian convoys that attempted to reach the city under the terms of a cease-fire agreement two weeks ago; the Assad regime then attacked several humanitarian outposts within the city of Aleppo. “This is obscene,” Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council on Sunday. “These airstrikes on residential neighborhoods may well be war crimes.”
President Obama isn’t going to intervene militarily to stop the attacks, however, even though the State Department struggled to explain why the Aleppo crisis was provoking a different response than previous instances in which Obama agreed to carry out airstrikes to prevent a city from being taken.
“I don’t want to necessarily get in the habit of comparing different conflicts and different circumstances such as the ones you raised because every set of circumstances is a little bit different and in the case of Aleppo and the case of Syria it’s hard to find one that’s more complex,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.
In the meantime, the refugee program continues to alarm some lawmakers. One of Richard’s deputies will testify on Wednesday about the program before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee panel.
“It’s the most careful way of bringing anyone to the United States, of any visitor to the United States, so we have great faith in it to screen out people who don’t belong in the program,” Richard said. “Refugees tend to be very successful once they get to the U.S. — not in the short term but definitely in the medium and long-term and of course small kids become Americans fastest of any member of the family.”
