Mark Twain once said there are lies, damned lies and statistics. We saw all of these from the Obama administration this week as it desperately tried to defend its foolhardy plan to bring Syrian refugees into the United States without adequately vetting them for ISIS terrorists.
To counter demands by Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates that President Obama drop his plan to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees next year, the Obama administration issued statistics and other information to the press this week to reassure the American people that ISIS cannot use this route to infiltrate the U.S. because these refugees will be carefully screened.
Just under 2,200 Syrian refugees have been admitted to the U.S. since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011. Most were admitted over the last year. The Obama administration told reporters this week that roughly half of all Syrian refugees admitted to date have been children. It claims around 25% are adults over 60 and only 2% have been single males of "combat age." Not surprisingly, the mainstream media published these statistics without questioning them.
Obama officials also said there is a robust vetting process for these refugees that includes biometrics, background checks by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and interviews.
So where did the statistics come from? A U.S. government report? Congressional testimony? No, these numbers were given to the press in a private briefing by three unnamed senior officials. This means there's no way to check the accuracy of this data or to hold these officials accountable for their claims.
The Obama administration doubled down on its Syrian refugee statistics on Thursday by tweeting a chart that said 23,092 Syrian refugees have been referred by the UN to the U.S. since 2011; 7,014 were interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security; 2,034 have been admitted into the U.S. and zero of those admitted have been arrested or removed on terrorism charges.
It is impossible to evaluate these Syrian refugee statistics without seeing all of the data. For example, what percentage of Syrian refugees applying for admittance to the U.S. were men of military age? And if it is true that only 2% of military-age men were admitted over the last year, are there others still being processed? How many were arrested or deported for non-terrorism charges?
We also should assume that the set of refugees admitted over the last year is different from the recent refugee surge, about 72% of which have been men of military age. How will the composition of this new set of refugees change the future number of Syrian military-age men admitted as refugees?
The administration's claims about the refugees screening process are also hard to believe. House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul has called the president's plan to bring in Syrian refugees a "federally sanctioned welcome party" to potential terrorists because the screening process is so inadequate. FBI Director James Comey has said the federal government does not have the ability to conduct thorough background checks on Syrian refugees. |