Paris deaths

[CTTC]

socalmom23’s link (http://m.state.gov/md249613.htm) is very interesting.

Has the question of how a 18-24 month process is going to be shortened to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees into the US in the next fiscal year? Does that mean that process is going to be shortened?

From the link above - “It will require us adapting and flexing”

A lot of things could be covered in those words…

[fractalmstr]

And that to many people - especially the majority of US governors - means they are not worthy of a simple act of human compassion. I say it is a very short leap from “Americans* first” to “Christians first” and even “White people first”.

How about we put Humanity** first?

• This also goes for many, many countries. To think that people are defined by a piece of land they occupy is nothing short of ridiculous. ** Granted the situation is more complicated than I make it seem. But if the people on this forum can come up with a dozen reasonable suggestions on how to adequately - and humanly- deal with the refugee situation, then I don't understand why the US government can't.

For crying out loud, race has nothing to do with it. Are these refugees being profiled? Absolutely, as they should be, given that we have reason to believe some of them may have ties to terrorists organizations. They need to be thoroughly vetted before being allowed into the country.

Would you hire a babysitter who came from downtown Compton, and had no background check?

[NoVADad99]

The refugees are already being screened. It’s been ongoing, but now all of a sudden it’s a political issue for next year’s general election. My cynicism cannot but help noticing the connection.

[TatinG]

For the third time: The FBI Director testified before Congress that the Syrian refugees CANNOT be screened. There is no database in Syria. They have no passports or they have fake passports They could be fingerprinted but unless they have been previously fingerprinted, there is no data to check. How exactly does a government screen an anonymous individual?

[Zeldie]

“As an aside, zeldie, do you think any of the Gulf nations would have a problem if the parents shared their college students’ Amazon accounts?”

There must be a joke buried in there but I am not sure I follow it. Sorry!

[TatinG]

The government does a poor job of background checking even when they have the information, as this report on granting security clearances shows.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/259505-former-officials-process-for-granting-security-clearances-broken

[Cardinal_Fang]

In answer to TatinG’s repeated claim that Syrian refugees don’t have passports and documents and can’t be screened, I’ll excerpt from the link to the briefing from senior administration officials about how Syrian refugees do have passports, can be screened and are screened:

So refugee applicants of all nationalities go through both biographic – that’s name and date of birth and other biographic elements – and also biometric security checks. So we check fingerprints for all refugee applicants. Collecting that information and coordinating those checks is a shared responsibility between the Department of State and DHS. And then, as I mentioned, the – it’s other agencies within the federal government, including the FBI, the Department of Defense, and others, who actually vet the information of the refugee applicants against those other holdings.

MODERATOR’S NOTE: Long quotes from any source are not permitted, so I deleted most of this quote.

[Cardinal_Fang]

Another quote from the briefing:

There are refugee populations who have very minimal documents. Maybe people have been living in refugee camps for generations, or people who fled in a way that they – they – their documents were destroyed or they were stolen or taken from them as they travel.

I would say in contrast to that, Iraqis and Syrians tend to be a very, very heavily documented population. And members of families tend to have passports and family registries and military books, and they have a lot of information in most instances.

http://m.state.gov/md249613.htm

[TatinG]

You quote an adminstration offiicial who supports the administration’s position. The FBI Director said something completely different.

[jym626]

Xig would understand, zeldie.

[Cardinal_Fang]

TatinG, Can you give us a link to the actual testimony given by FBI Director Comey? In particular, the part where he said that refugees are not screened (not that the screening is imperfect-- I’m asking for the part where he said “Syrian refugees CANNOT be screened,” your claim), and where he said they do not have passports.

I have found quotes from Comey saying, "I can’t sit here and offer anybody an absolute assurance that there’s no risk associated with this.” That’s a different matter. Are we so gutless, so limited in our generosity, that we can’t help people in desperate need without a 100% guarantee of safety?

We’re not going to be 100% safe from terrorist attacks from ISIL. Nothing we do will keep us 100% safe.

[LakeWashington]

I have been reluctant to post on the question of Syrian refugees because my usual humanitarian instincts are deflated by governments’ typical reliance on short-term quick fix solutions and their obliviousness to critical facts. And frankly, the unfairness of it all bothers me to no end. I watched a program about Cuba last night which reminded me of how starkly unfair my government has treated Haitian refugees, as compared to people who escape from Cuba. And what about the mass of new refugees whom soon will be expelled from the Dominican Republic, people whom have been oppressed and subjected to violence? And neither the G.W. Bush nor Obama administrations were particularly motivated to accept refugees from Iraq, including people who assisted U.S. operations in that country after the fall of Sadam Hussein.

We need a re-set on U.S. policy regarding refugees.

[TatinG]

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/5/syrias-paperwork-crisis.html

Fewer than 30% of the refugees have passports.In 2013 fewer than 30 percent of Syrian refugees arrived in Turkey with a passport. Two years later, it is likely that even fewer people possess valid passports, because they have expired while people live in exile and they cannot request and retrieve new passports, given the raging armed conflict. It is more likely that most Syrians, whether still in Syria or living abroad as refugees, are without any effective documentation.

[zoosermom]

Some other information
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/11/17/senior-obama-officials-have-warned-of-challenges-in-screening-refugees-from-syria/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_evening

[InfinityMan]

For crying out loud, race has nothing to do with it.

@fractalmstr I never said it did. I said that it wouldn’t take much to jump from the understandable “Our citizens first” to “my race first”. Some people feel safer when they are surrounded by other’s who are “like” them. To some, the distinction ends at citizenship; for others, race and religion factor in. Many people in the US don’t want the refugees to come in solely because of their religion, rather than a security concern (as one presidential candidate so disgustingly stated. Anyone who thinks a lot of politicians are not prejudiced against Muslims is deluding themselves. I bet you anything that if that marriage clerk was Muslim, the right wing’s reactions would have been very different. But I digress). And I agree, the rest of the Arab countries and the world should shame the GCC into taking in refugees. Problem is, upset Saudi Arabia and you can say bye to their oil.

[zoosermom]

If religion is a criteria, and it is under the law, we should be taking every Christian and Yazidi, but that’s not happening, either.

[Lergnom]

My feeling is that we should:

1. continue US policy, which has been to admit perhaps 35-40k refugees a year (as opposed to immigrants), of which about 35-40% have typically been children, meaning we try to admit families and try to keep out single young men. Be careful of the data about "refugees" flying around the internet. Much of it is poor quality and much is intentionally distorted one way or another.
2. look specifically to admit as many Syrian and Iraqi Christians as possible because they are actually at risk for violent mass extermination attempts - witness the execution of some 200 or more Christian children in Syria recently. My understanding is the Obama Administration has actually been making it more difficult for Christians to come here, which if true would be a giant black mark against it in history. I would further say it is only Christians who truly have no possibility of going "home". In Iraq for example the government is talking about creating a "Christian region", which would mean the remaining Christians would be pressured out of places like Baghdad into whatever the heck this "region" would be (and they are resisting this). Muslim Syrians and Iraqis while they are currently displaced can in the future go home.

[Cardinal_Fang]

From TatinG’s link:

Because so many fathers have gone missing, died or are fighting in the conflict, hundreds of thousands of refugee families around the region are headed by mothers.

Hundreds of thousands of refugee families are headed by mothers. We should be ready, willing and able to bring some of those mothers and kids here. Even if the kids don’t have passports.

[zoosermom]

Couple of more articles.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-kentucky-us-dozens-terrorists-country-refugees/story?id=20931131

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/11/fake-syrian-passports/416445/

CardinalFang, I agree completely, at least on a temporary basis.

[Cardinal_Fang]

We’re proposing to take such a small proportion of Syrian refugees, and the process is so lengthy, that we ought to have the attitude that the refugees we admit to the US will be establishing a new life here, rather than expecting them to be able to return to Syria at some future date.

Other forms of temporary help are also vital. It’s horrible that millions of refugees, literally millions of real refugees who left their homes because of hellish conditions, are going to be in refugee camps for years. There is no chance that those refugees are going to be able to return to Syria any time soon. This civil war is not going to be over soon no matter what we do.