Secretary of State John Kerry told lawmakers to expect 110,000 refugees to be resettled in the United States next year, a figure that accounts for an unknown increase in the number of refugees from the Syrian civil war.
Kerry met with Judiciary Committee lawmakers from both sides of the Capitol Tuesday and informed them that the refugee cap for next year would exceed previous projections, which had been set at 100,000. The new cap is “a roughly 57 percent increase in the number of refugees the United States admitted as recently as [fiscal year] 2015 and a roughly 29 percent increase from the administration’s target for FY 2016,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said following the meeting.
The Republicans reiterated their belief, buttressed by administration officials who have acknowledged the difficulty of vetting Syrian refugees to ensure that no Islamic State loyalists enter the country, that the refugee program is a potential national security threat. “The common-sense concerns of the American people are simply ignored as the administration expands its reckless and extreme policies,” Sessions said.
Kerry’s revelation comes just weeks before Congress has to pass a short-term funding resolution to avoid a government shutdown, a spending stopgap that is expected to set up a larger negotiation about funding the government during the lame-duck session. Those talks could provide a forum for negotiating reforms to the refugee program, just as last year’s omnibus spending bill included language that revised the visa waiver program.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., who attended the meeting, touted the Refugee Program Integrity Restoration Act, which has passed out of his committee, as a means to curb such policies.
“We must remain compassionate toward refugees but we also need to make sure that we use common sense,” Goodlatte said Tuesday. “Unfortunately, President Obama unilaterally increases the number of refugees resettled in the United States each year and gives little thought as to how it will impact local communities… Given that the Obama administration continues to tune out the American people’s concerns on this issue, it’s time for Congress to take up this legislation so that the refugee program works in their best interest.”
