Published time: August 09, 2013 20:27
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A Syrian refugee woman speaks to media at a camp in Terbol in the Bekaa Valley (Reuters)
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More than two million Syrians have fled their war-torn country, with many settling in nearby Lebanon and Jordan. Now, the US will open its doors to 2,000 of “the most vulnerable” Syrian refugees – as long as they pass a lengthy background screening.
Two thousand Syrians will be granted the opportunity to live in the US, marking a significant increase from the approximately 90 Syrian refugees the US admitted over the last two years, according to Foreign Policy’s
The Cable.
The United Nations estimates that nearly 3.5 million Syrian refugees will be in the neighboring countries of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt by the end of the year, with 1.9 million more in desperate need of assistance. The death toll in Syria continues to rise, with over 4,400 people killed during Ramadan this year.
The Obama administration is responding to the rapidly deteriorating conditions by agreeing to take in 2,000 Syrian war victims who will be given permanent residence status. Even though the number will represent only a fraction of a per cent of Syrian refugees in need of assistance, the administration’s decision marks a major shift in policy.
“Referrals will come within the next four months. We will need to interview people and perform security and medical checks,” Kelly Clements, the State Department’s assistant secretary for Population, Refugees and Migration, told Foreign Policy.
But the chosen victims – many of whom are expected to be women and children – won’t be leaving the country anytime soon. Due to the time it takes to process their applications,
“we’re not likely to see Syrian refugees into those numbers before well into 2014,” Clements said.
That means the applicants will be forced to endure
another cold winter and several more months in a country plagued by violence and bloodshed.
“It’s 90 degrees now, but in a few months it’s going to snow and people are going to be freezing,” said Noah Gottschalk, Oxfam America’s senior humanitarian policy advisor.
The application process is expected to take months because of the State Department’s extensive background screenings. US officials will carefully select refugees who appear to have no ties to anyone with terrorist sympathies. Even though infants and young children are unlikely to be terrorists themselves, the concern is that they might have relatives in Al-Qaeda who would then have an easier chance of entering the US.The CIA this week
announced that the greatest threat to US national security would be the prospect of having Al-Qaeda replace the Bashar Assad regime.
Refugees must also show signs of vulnerability, and Clements said that the most eligible applicants are those
“exposed to everything from torture to gender-based violence to serious medical conditions.” They must also have no intentions of ever returning to Syria.
"Refugees are subject to an intensive security screening process involving federal intelligence, law enforcement, defense, and homeland security agencies," a State Department official said.
"The US government makes every possible effort to uphold and enhance the security screening aspects of the US Refugee Admissions Program. Refugees are among the most carefully screened of individuals traveling to the United States."
About 6.8 million Syrians are currently in need of humanitarian assistance. Although permanent resettlement will help 2,000 lucky victims, it will hardly make a dent in the overall suffering of the millions who are fighting for survival, and it will hardly compare to the 564,000 registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon and the 454,000 in Jordan.
“We are exceedingly frustrated to be quite honest,” Clements said.
“Because we can’t keep up with the humanitarian need especially inside Syria.”
Thursday, August 08, 2013
Importing Jihad: US will allow thousands of Syrian Refugees into the United States
More resettlement jihad.
U.S. Will Now Let in Thousands of Syrian Refugees
The Obama administration is making a major policy shift by agreeing for the first time to allow thousands of new Syrian refugees into the United States. And it will be a lot more than a couple of thousand, as the UN is working on Syrian immigration into the US as well, under "
refugee resettlement."
The State Department helps resettle refugees from war-torn countries like Somalia in the United States. The resettlement project is one part of a taxpayer-funded refugee aid program with a billion dollar budget. Immigrants are chosen from UN refugee camps.....the U.S. takes in more refugees than any other nation--with a cap of about 80,000 this year...(
more)
We know how well these resettlement programs from jihad-plagued countries, i.e. Somalia, have worked out. The fact is that Obama should be resettling religious minorities here. Christians from Egypt, Syria, Nigeria should be brought over under a "Religious Persecution Act" or the "Sharia Free Act."
Importing jihadists brings ..... jihad.
UNHCR Guterres looking to resettle tens of thousands of Syrians …. by Ann Corcoran, Refuggee Resettlement Watch
UNHCR Socialist Antonio Guterres just licking his chops to pressure US into starting the Syrian migration to America.
Antonio Guterres also told The Guardian that he expected the resettlement to be as large as the one they undertook with Iraqis. (hat tip: Mike)
Guterres compared the Syrian refugee issue to that of Iraqis during the last decade, when more than 100,000 were resettled away from the region. “If things go on for a prolonged period of time then resettlement will become a central part of our strategy,” he said. “We would like when the time comes … to be able to launch a resettlement programme as massive as the one for Iraqis.”
From 2007 to this spring, the US resettled 84,902 of the Iraqis resettled anywhere in the world, so expect the UN to put the screws to the US State Department to lead the way again. Surely that is on-going at this very moment with the resettlement contractors busy lobbying behind-the-scenes for the State Department to bring them some Syrians to add to their diversity stew. Incidentally, that 84,000 figure doesn’t include the earlier waves of Iraqis who came to the US as refugees, like the guy who bombed a federal building in Arizona, here.
Here is more from The Guardian:
Western countries including the US and Britain may be asked to accept tens of thousands of Syrian refugees because the exodus from the civil war is overwhelming countries in the region, the UN’s refugee chief has warned.
With no end to the war in sight, the flight of nearly 2 million people from Syria over the past two years is showing every sign of becoming a permanent population shift, like the Palestinian crises of 1948 and 1967, with grave implications for countries such as Lebanon and Jordan, UN and other humanitarian aid officials say.
[....]
In an interview with the Guardian, António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said the situation was already far more than just a humanitarian crisis. If a resolution to the conflict was not found within months, the UN will look to resettle tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in countries better able to afford to host them, including Britain. Germany has already offered to take 5,000, but other offers have been limited, Guterres said.
I’m beginning to think these Muslim conflicts in the Middle East are about getting Muslim migrants spread around the Western world, or at least that is the side-benefit for Socialists like Antonio Guterres.
Reminds me to mention the Palin Doctrine—-when both sides in a conflict are shouting ‘Allahu akbar‘ and killing each other, let Allah sort it out!
Let your Senators and Members of Congress know how you feel about Syrian immigration to America during their August recess. They will be amazed that you are on top of the news (because they likely are not!). And, tell them that the Iraqis that came before them are heavily dependent on welfare and are suffering from high unemployment rates.
‘It’s Brutal’: Refugee crisis mounts as Obama administration weighs Syria options
By
Barnini Chakraborty
Published July 23, 2013 FoxNews.com
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Syrian refugees pose for a photograph after their tents flooded from the rain, at a temporary refugee camp, in the eastern Lebanese town of Al-Faour near the border with Syria.AP
More than a month after President Obama called for arming the Syrian opposition, a key committee has given a tentative green light to the effort. But the Capitol Hill victory surely will be tempered by the reality on the ground -- not only is the Assad regime seen to be gaining, but the stream of refugees from the war-torn country is at crisis level.
"It's brutal," Daryl Grisgraber, a senior advocate at Refugees International who has visited refugee camps in the countries surrounding Syria, told FoxNews.com. "It doesn't appear that there are people starving to death, but they have just about every other problem you can imagine."
Last week, the United Nations said Syria's civil war has led to the worst refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide two decades ago. Close to 2 million Syrians have been forced to flee their own country and relocate in makeshift refugee camps at the border.
The accounts from the refugee camps, one of which Secretary of State John Kerry visited last week, paint a dire picture of what is happening not just inside Syria's borders, but beyond.
And they add urgency to the Obama administration's and Congress' protracted deliberations over how and whether to get more involved. The House Intelligence Committee tentatively gave its okay this week on arming the opposition, while continuing to voice serious reservations. The panel had delayed the administration from implementing its plan, Fox News has learned.
Even with the committee's sign off, Congress is deeply divided. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the intelligence committee, continued to oppose arming the opposition, warning of the U.S. getting "entangled" in a civil war.
If the U.S. were to get more involved, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey revealed a range of options in a letter late last week to the Senate Armed Services Committee. They include "limited" strikes as well as options involving "thousands" of troops on the ground.
But the U.S. and allied nations are faced with two distinct challenges -- how to check Assad's gains, and how to handle hundreds of thousands of refugees.
There are now more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees in five host countries - Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, according to the U.N. Syria Regional Response Plan.
Around 330,000 Syrians have sought shelter in Lebanon and close to 320,000 in Jordan, the refugee agency reported, with more than 185,000 in Turkey, 105,000 in Iraq, 43,500 in Egypt and around 8,000 across North Africa. Thousands of others have fled to Europe.
Those numbers are expected to jump to 3.5 million by the end of the year with Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey taking in the most refugees.
Grisgraber says the conditions beyond the crammed border camps are the worst.
"The refugee camps get the most attention and there are problems with hygiene, water and sanitation, but it's almost twice as bad outside the U.N. camps," she said. "The residents of these countries have been extremely generous with Syrians but the bottom line is that things are getting tense."
Last week, Kerry met with six pre-selected refugees at the 115,000-person Zaatari camp near the Syria-Jordan border. He sat uncomfortably as they pressed him on what they see as the U.S. standing on the sidelines while Assad inches closer to victory.
"Where is the international community?" Reuters reported one female refugee asking Kerry. "At least impose a no-fly zone or an embargo."
Kerry insisted the Obama administration wasn't ignoring the problem -- but spoke more of future options than what's currently happening.
"We are trying to help in various ways, including helping Syrian opposition fighters have weapons," he said. "We are doing new things. There is consideration of buffer zones and other things, but it is not as simple as it sounds."
In the 11 months since Obama made his first reference to Syria crossing a "red line" -- defined as using chemical weapons -- U.S. assistance has mostly added up to humanitarian and other nonlethal support.
Over the weekend, David Shedd, deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, issued a dire warning about the situation in Syria and the strength of the Assad regime and its supporters.
"The reality is that, left unchecked, they will become bigger," Shedd said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. "Over the last two years they've grown in size, they've grown in capability, and ruthlessly have grown in effectiveness."
In recent weeks, rebel groups have been dealt a series of demoralizing blows after losing ground on the battlefield and being out-manned and out-armed by Assad's army and loyalist militias.
On Monday, Russia tried to change the narrative by announcing Assad's regime was ready to talk peace and urged the U.S. and other Western countries to bring Syrian opposition groups to the table for a round of talks. The problem is that Russia wants the West to agree to a peace plan -- one without preconditions -- which isn't likely.
While the U.S. and other Western countries have pledged public support for the forces fighting Assad, they had been so far reluctant to provide weapons to rebel soldiers. In contrast, Assad's army has been regularly receiving large infusions of cash, weapons and manpower from Iran, Russia and the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Complicating matters more are the ongoing congressional conflicts in Washington.
On Thursday, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he would place a hold on the re-nomination of the nation's top military officer, after he and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey had a heated exchange on the country's response in Syria. McCain clashed with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and suggested Dempsey was partly responsible for a lackluster response to the Assad regime's aggression. Dempsey's written response to the committee could help ease that stand-off.
A day earlier, Obama's pick to be the next U.S. ambassador to the U.N. slammed the international organization during her Senate confirmation hearing and said it was unlikely the U.N. would take decisive action any time soon to stop the Syrian civil war.
"The failure of the U.N. Security Council to respond to the slaughter in Syria is a disgrace that history will judge harshly," Samantha Power told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
But not everyone agrees.
According to a June Pew Research Center poll, more than 70 percent of Americans oppose intervening in Syria with the majority saying they don't want to be dragged into another country's conflict.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul has strongly lobbied against American involvement in Syria.
"Any attempt to aid the Syrian rebels would be complicated and dangerous, precisely because we don't know who these people are," Paul wrote in Politico. "To the degree that we do not know who they are, we know that significant numbers of them are associated with Al Qaeda - as many as 10,000 fighters, by some estimates."
He added, "If the United States wants to choose a side in Syria, there is no clear moral choice. More important, there is no clear U.S. national interest in Syria."
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