By Michael Aron
Chief Political Correspondent
Mahmoud Mahmoud of Church World Service has helped four Syrian families resettle in Jersey City this year. He says the vetting process in America is much more rigorous than in Europe.
“The process is a minimum of four years for any individual from the time before they flee the country until the time they come into the United States,” he said. “They would be in a country, so say they would leave Syria, they would be in Jordan. So, they would be in Jordan for the time being with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.”
A national debate has broken out over whether America should take in any more Syrian refugees. So far, the country has taken 1,809 this year; the most, 218, in California, 75 in New Jersey.
But now that one of the Paris attackers is believed to have posed as a migrant from Syria into Europe, 27 governors in the U.S. have said they are closing their borders to Syrian refugees.
Governor Christie joined the fray last night on a radio show. A month ago he was talking about America as a compassionate country that needed to take in its share of refugees, but the Paris attack and its apparent link to the migration crisis has him on the other side now.
“I do not trust this Administration to effectively vet the people who are supposed to be coming in, in order to protect the safety and security of the American people, so I would not permit them in,” Christie said on the Hugh Hewitt Show. When asked about orphans under five he said, “We can come up with 18 different scenarios. The fact is that we need appropriate vetting, and I don’t think orphans under five should be admitted into the United States at this point. They have no family here. How are we going to care for these folks?”
That prompted Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, a Democrat who emigrated here from Cuba at age 10, to issue a statement: “What Governor Christie is saying goes against everything America is about. […] We absolutely must have a thorough vetting process for all refugees, but we also must be better than the governor’s xenophobia.”
Christie sent a letter to President Obama today saying a weak vetting process gives him no choice but to shut the state down to Syrian refugees.
Obama said yesterday he’s sticking with the goal of taking in 10,000 Syrians. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan today took issue with that: “This is a moment where it’s better to be safe than to be sorry. So we think the prudent, the responsible thing is to take a pause in this particular aspect of this refugee program in order to verify that terrorists are not trying to infiltrate the refugee population.”
Refugee advocate Mohmoud says the fear being generated around this issue is unfounded. “I think it’s just politics, and it’s people rallying up their bases and they’re trying to play off of that because we’re in a political campaign season,” he said.
A nation of immigrants grapples with, yet another, immigration conundrum.