By Michael Hill
Correspondent
The House voted to have the FBI do background checks on Syrian and Iraqi refugees, and to have the directors of the FBI, Homeland Security Department and national intelligence confirm that each applicant poses no threat if resettled in the U.S.
New Jersey Congressman Leonard Lance says “With the current conflict raging in the Middle East, we cannot be certain that all individuals seeking refuge from that region pose no threat to the American people.”
But, Congressman Bill Pascrell says the House turned its back on American values.
“We’re not going to sacrifice what we, as Americans, are. We’re not going to do this. When women and children, who have nothing on their back, nothing,” Pascrell said.
The U.S. has helped resettle about 2,500 Syrian refugees since the civil war started in 2011. The Obama administration has said about half are children. Roughly two percent are single men of combat age.
Syria’s four-year-old civil war with the Islamic State, in the mix targeting innocent civilians – has chased millions from the country, scattering them across the region.
Refugees seeking resettlement to the U.S. must first apply to the United Nations.
“The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees only refers the most vulnerable cases to the United States for resettlement. That includes unaccompanied children, women at risk, the elderly, people with extreme medical needs,” said Mark Doss, a staff attorney from the International Refugee Assistance Project.
The U.S. Refugee Corps steps in and does interviews as part of lengthy 20-step process to confirm someone’s identity through iris scans, databases that involve the State Department, the National Counterterrorism Center and Department of Homeland Security which currently has the final say as to who’s approved.
In most cases, refugees from around the world get an approval in the field, but Syrian refugees must have their cases sent to Washington, where Homeland does a another security review and ultimately approves or disapproves.
“My concern is there are certain gaps that I don’t want to talk about publicly in the data available to us,” said FBI Director James Comey.
Gaps as in issues with vetting any one from war-torn Syria with jihadists on the rampage and the U.S. not being able to determine who’s an innocent and who’s a terrorist.
“Are we going to ever have exactly all the information on every single person? Of course not. But what we do have is linked databases that we can check, not just against U.S. records, but against other agencies’ intelligence, and that we continue to reassess over that process, that two to three year process, to check any new data. So we have multiple levels of security screenings, and again I point out that the people we’re taking in are people who themselves have fled ISIS terror, they’re people that have witnessed these same horrors. They’re aren’t people coming here to do us harm,” said Philip Wolgin.
At this state homeland training session, one professor says it’s an acceptable risk:
“You take a good hard look at it, you run it through databases, you determine is there a threat or not and if there’s not you welcome them in,” said Seamus Hughes from George Washington University. “There’s always going to be a level of risk when you do these type of things.”
But not for long time immigration critic and state Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll.
“It’s a relatively unintensive process, because the people that are coming from Syria have the kind of records that normally we would expect from people seeking refugee status,” he said. “So they’re doing the best they can, but it’s a very difficult process given the nature of events in Syria over the last couple of years.”
The Paris attacks and reports of some attackers having trained in Syria led to a majority of governors saying no more Syrian refugees and a raging debate about whether the land of immigrants should close its doors now.