D**s
发帖数: 6361 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 Immigration 讨论区 】
发信人: SillyMachine (SillyMachine), 信区: Immigration
标 题: 国土部:10月前,一定完成1万叙利亚难民的引进 (转载)
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Wed Aug 3 14:56:47 2016, 美东)
发信人: brihand (brihand), 信区: USANews
标 题: 国土部:10月前,一定完成1万叙利亚难民的引进
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Wed Aug 3 13:27:05 2016, 美东)
The Obama administration is on track to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees into
the United States before October, the head of the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) said Wednesday.
Jeh Johnson said "over 7,000" Syrian refugees have already arrived in the
country and "there are several thousand who have been approved and are just
awaiting the physical resettlement."
"So I believe we will make the commitment to resettle 10,000 refugees this
fiscal year," Johnson told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by the
Christian Science Monitor in Washington.
That's "a significantly larger number than last year," Johnson noted,
putting the 2015 figure at "about 1,600."
The debate over President Obama's refugee resettlement program has raged
nationwide amid an international crisis that's seen millions of Syrians flee
their country since a civil war began there in 2011.
Most have settled in the neighboring countries of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan
and Iraq, but many thousands more have streamed through Turkey and across
the Mediterranean into Europe, leaving European leaders scrambling for ways
to manage the deluge.
From the left, Obama has been criticized for accepting too few refugees;
from the right, he's been lambasted for expanding the program this year amid
heightened concerns about terrorism.
Some Republican state legislators have pushed new laws attempting to bar any
refugees from entering their states — efforts that have largely been
rejected by the courts.
Hoping to defuse the security concerns, Johnson emphasized Wednesday that
the program's expansion has not come by cutting corners or rushing the
process, but by increasing resources and personnel to handle the greater
number of screenings –– an expanded capability he said he "personally
inspected" during a visit to Turkey in March.
"The process is still a very thorough, time-consuming process for each
refugee applicant. On average, it has been 18 to 24 months, and we have not
shortcut the process," Johnson said. "In fact, we have added security checks
to the process for refugees from certain countries, which I can't really
get into publicly."
He said the refugees are resettled only in communities willing and able to
accept them.
"We don't just dump them someplace in this country," Johnson said. "They are
resettled in communities that are able to absorb refugees, and want to take
in refugees.
"We have traditionally and historically accepted refugees into this country
and we should continue to do so," he added. "It's a part of who we are as a
nation."
The debate over Obama's resettlement program intensified after last November
's terrorist attack in Paris, where at least one attacker had entered Europe
as a refugee. The tragedy led Republicans on Capitol Hill to push
legislation that would have effectively halted the program –– a bill that
passed the House but went no further in the face of a White House veto
threat.
As a fallback measure, bipartisan leaders pushed legislation eliminating
visa-waiver privileges for any foreigners who have visited Iraq, Syria, Iran
or Sudan over the past five years. It passed into law in December as part
of Congress's year-end spending package.
The refugee debate has also extended to the presidential trail, most notably
in Donald Trump's call, after the November Paris attacks, to bar all
Muslims from entering the country.
Johnson on Wednesday declined to weigh in on the presidential race. But he
stressed the importance of outreach and cooperation with Muslim communities
living in the U.S., and warned that attacking those communities would only
make the country less safe.
"I think it's critical to our homeland security mission that we build
bridges to American Muslim communities, that we encourage them to
participate in our homeland security efforts," he said.
"Overheated rhetoric [and] vilification of American Muslims is counter to
those efforts." |
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