US to Meet Goal on Number of Syrian Refugees

The United States is on track to meet President Barack Obama’s goal of allowing in 10,000 refugees from Syria for the fiscal year ending in September, officials said on Friday.

“We may exceed 10,000, and for next year we will continue to welcome large numbers of Syrians, but it’s too soon to have a target figure established,” said Anne Richard, the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration.

More than 10 percent of the refugees from Syria have headed to Michigan, which has a significant Arabic-speaking population, especially in Dearborn, the state’s eighth largest city.

Nearly 80 percent of the Syrians accepted this year by the United States are women and children. Of all refugees from Syria who have been screened, seven percent of applicants have been denied approval and 13 percent of the cases have been put on hold, according to government officials.

Highly trained refugee officers screen the applicants to ensure that none are terrorists, said León Rodriguez, the director of U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security.

The screening process, which has faced domestic criticism, is “rigorous and exhaustive,” said Richard.

“Hundreds [from Syria] have been denied,” Rodriguez told reporters in a conference call along with Richard and Robert Carey, director of refugee resettlement for the Department of Health and Human Services.

The U.S. Republican Party nominee for President, Donald Trump, has advocated halting immigration from Syria and proposed a ban on Muslims entering the country. Governors of more than 30 U.S. states have tried to block such refugees from settling in their states, despite no authority to do so, according to legal experts.

More than 99 percent of the Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this year are Muslims, according to the U.S. State Department, which in February moved to cut the processing time in Jordan to screen refugees to three months from a typical 18 to 24 months.

"What we know is that more resources have been put toward the processing of folks who have been pending," Stacie Blake, spokesperson for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, told VOA. "More resources obviously meant that more folks were able to move through the system."

Syria was a topic of a telephone call Friday between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to officials in Moscow. The State Department confirmed the call had taken place but said it had no details on the content of the conversation.

President Barack Obama, following a visit to the Pentagon on Thursday, criticized Russia’s policy in Syria, saying he doubted President Vladimir Putin could be trusted to cooperate on ending the five-year civil war.

The United States is prepared to work with the Russians to try to reduce the violence in Syria and cooperate in the battle against the so-called Islamic State group and al-Qaida. “But Russia has failed to take the necessary steps,” Obama said. “Given the deteriorating situation, it is time for Russia to show it is serious about pursuing these objectives.”

The civil war in Syria has displaced five million people. At the start of the war, in 2011, the United States was only accepting a handful of the refugees.

A conference is to be held by the United Nations General Assembly next month to address the overall Syrian refugee and migration crisis.

“The purpose of the summit is to recruit other countries to join with us and make a real difference in the world’s contribution toward helping refugees,” Richard said.