The Obama administration is
preparing to announce a plan to admit more refugees over the next two years,
but at this point the numbers being proposed are too small to relieve the
crisis streaming out of Syria.
Wednesday at the White House, the
most senior national security officials will discuss raising the limit on the
number of refugees from around the world allowed to enter the United States --
from 70,000 this year to 85,000 next year and 100,000 in fiscal 2017, three
administration officials told me. If members of the National Security Council
Principals Committee agree on the plan, it will be sent to President Obama’s
desk, and administration sources say he is likely to quickly approve it.
The plan has the strong support of
White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations Samantha Power, whose priorities often differ on the Syria issue.
McDonough is focused on the fight against ISIS. Power wants to confront Syria's
president, Bashar al-Assad, and do more to protect the civilians being killed
by both.
The throngs of desperate migrants
fleeing Syria and the images of children washing up on European shores have
spurred the Obama administration into action, officials said.
The problem with the plan, no matter
how quickly adopted, is how long it will take to have any effect. Migrants
applying for refugee asylum in the United States now will not have their applications
considered until at least 2017 because of a long backlog. And once an
application begins to be considered, the asylum seekers can face a further 18
to 24 months before they are granted or denied asylum.
President Obama spoke about the
refugee crisis Tuesday at the White House alongside the king of Spain. He said
it was important for the U.S. to “take our share” of Syrian refugees and
reinforced his pledge to allow 10,000 more into the country than previously
planned in 2016.
“This is going to require
cooperation with all the European countries and the United States and the
international community in order to ensure that people are safe; that they are
treated with shared humanity; and that we ultimately have to deal with the
source of the problem, which is the ongoing crisis in Syria,” he said.
Last Friday, White House Press
Secretary Josh Earnest said
that the policy process was underway to
determine what exactly the asylum caps would be. He also acknowledged that
whatever was decided, there was little chance that refugees fleeing Syria today
would be able to enter the U.S. any time soon. The U.S. has accepted only 1,500
Syrian refugees since the war began.
“It’s not clear to me that anybody
would be able to make their way through this process before the end of the next
fiscal year if they’re just applying today,” he said.
Last week, Deputy Secretary of State
Tony Blinken and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman
convened a high-level meeting at the State Department to illicit other ideas
for dealing with the mounting refugee crisis.
Human rights experts said that the
United Nations has already referred over 16,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S. for
vetting, and the 10,000 increase would come almost exclusively from the backlog
of Syrians who have already applied, not the people who are fleeing now.
“Becoming a U.S. refugee is not an
immediate protection option,” said Sarah Margon, Washington director for Human
Rights Watch. “These numbers are good, but they are woefully adequate,
unbelievably late, and not a substitute for a policy that would ensure better
protection for Syrians.”
Part of the problem, she said, is
that the U.S. government has not addressed the growing refugee crisis for
several years and is just now rushing to action. In its last budget
request, the administration requested $2.45
billion for migration and refugee assistance -- $600 million less than what
Congress appropriated the year before. The $2.45 billion request is up from
seeking $2.05 billion the year before. If Congress passes a continuing
resolution, the funding would remain flat.
Officials say that there is
resistance inside the government to taking in more refugees. The Department of
Homeland Security and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and
Migration are overstretched already and fear not having enough money and people
to keep up with an asylum expansion.
The politics of increasing refugee
caps, even marginally, are also a problem for the White House. Democrats are asking
the administration to take in significantly higher
numbers of refugees. Top Republican lawmakers and a slew of presidential
candidates have said recently that taking in more Syrian refugees presents a
national security risk.
“I take ISIS at its word when it
said … we’ll use the refugee crisis to infiltrate the West. That concerns me,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul on
ABC’s "This Week." “We don’t have the systems in place on the ground
in Syria to properly vet these individuals. We don’t know who they are.”
Not all Republicans are sounding the
terrorism alarm. Senator Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Senate
Appropriations subcommittee on state and foreign operations, told me he is
working with Senator Patrick Leahy on an emergency appropriations package for
addressing the Syrian refugee crisis.
“If this is not an emergency, I
don’t know what would be. We should take our fair share,” Graham said. “We are
the good guys and gals. We’re supposed to be open minded about this.”
The White House, Democrats and
Republicans all seem to agree that the only real way to solve the refugee
crisis is to solve the Syrian civil war, but there’s no political resolution in
sight and the administration has no intention of pushing the military balance
against the Assad regime. The Syrian refugee crisis is going to continue and
get much worse before it gets better.
The concern is that the White House,
after announcing this new plan, will not try to do more. By announcing a modest
increase over the next two years, and pledging to vet applicants closely, the
president may succeed at navigating the politics of asylum, but the Syrian
refugee crisis will only grow. 844 Comments
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-16/white-house-refugee-plan-overwhelmed-by-syrian-exodus?AID=7236
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