Senate Democrats want President Obama to speed up the resettlement process for Syrians fleeing civil war, and say the United States has received fewer than 1,800 refugees of the 10,000 Obama said he would allow in by the end of September.
“The international community’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis has been uneven,” 27 senators, including Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, wrote Wednesday in a letter to the White House. “We urge your administration to devote the necessary resources to expeditiously and safely resettle refugees from Syria.”
Obama promised to welcome 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States the 2016 fiscal year. But the Paris terrorist attacks led to complaints from Republicans who say they doubt the Department of Homeland Security can conduct adequate background checks to verify that no terrorists enter the country posing as refugees.
But the Senate Democrats argued that the screenings are sufficient and asked Obama to explain how his administration plans to pick up the pace.
“We are deeply concerned about the slow pace of admissions for Syrian refugees in the first seven months of the fiscal year,” they wrote. “During this timeframe, only 1,736 Syrian refugees were admitted to the United States … To fulfill the commitment you announced last year, at least 8,264 Syrian refugees would need to be admitted during the remaining five months of the fiscal year.”
They noted that Canada has accepted far more refugees. “Canada admitted 26,859 Syrian refugees between November 4, 2015 and May 1, 2016,” the letter says. “Other nations, including ours, can and should do much more.”
