The State Department admitted 80 Syrian refugees on Tuesday and 225 on Monday, setting a single-day record, as President Obama tries to meet his target of 10,000 approvals this year — renewing fears among security analysts who say the administration is cutting corners to meet a political goal.Officials insist they are moving faster because of improvements in screening and say they are still running all the traps on applicants. But the spike is stunning, with more people accepted Monday alone than in the entire months of January or February.
“The Obama administration is on full throttle to admit as many people as possible before the time clock runs out on them,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies. “This is the classic scenario when political expediency trumps prudence, and someone slips through who shouldn’t have, and tragedy ensues.”
Powerless to stop the civil war in Syria, Mr. Obama has instead offered the U.S. as a haven for some of those fleeing the conflict. He promised to accept 10,000 refugees from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30. As of Tuesday evening, the administration had approved 2,540 — an average of about 10 applications a day.
To meet the 10,000 goal, approvals will have to rise to nearly 60 a day.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency charged with vetting the applications, declined to comment on the surge and referred all questions to the State Department, which gives final approval. Officials there insisted that they can meet Mr. Obama’s goal without sacrificing security.
| They also promised that we could keep our doctors, that the IRS wasn't harassing anyone, and that Benghazi was the fault of a dumb-assed videographer... |
“Increases in processing capacity have improved our capacity to meet the 10,000 target for Syrian refugee admissions for this fiscal year. As such, we expect Syrian refugee arrivals to the U.S. to increase steadily throughout the fiscal year,” an agency official said.
The department says refugees undergo the most checks of anyone applying to enter the U.S. and that Syrians are getting as much scrutiny as possible.
| Define "as possible"... |
“Refugees are victims, not perpetrators, of terrorism,” the Democrats wrote.
| Yes, he's my idiot Senator... |
| Dick doesn't have an opinion about that... |
The Obama administration has repeatedly cited the Iraqi program as evidence that it can safely admit refugees from Syria. But security analysts say the U.S., by dint of the long war in Iraq, has access to government databases and a presence on the ground to help verify refugee applicants’ stories.
The U.S. has no such access in Syria, where it considers the regime an enemy and much of the country is occupied by terrorist forces from the Islamic State.
Critics say the Obama administration is too heavily focused on Muslim refugees and has left hundreds of thousands of Christians behind. Statistics show only a dozen Christian refugees from Syria have been accepted so far — a rate of less than one-half of 1 percent.
More than 97 percent are Sunni Muslims.
| That's because our current administration hates Christians... |