Republican
congressional leaders last year made a big show of opposing President Obama’s
plan to rapidly expand the number of Syrian refugees entering the country, but
they have been markedly silent about a back-door effort announced this week.
The Department of
Homeland Security said Monday that it would extend “temporary protected status”
for Syrians in the United States, allowing them to stay until at least March
2018. The program allows Syrians who came to the United States — legally or
illegally — to be protected from deportation and to get authorization to work
in the country. “Can you truly vet
these people to ensure they’re not going to do us harm?” he said. “At least
through the refugee process, you’re going to have the screening process.”
Currently, more than
8,000 Syrians are living in the United States on temporary protected status
(TPS). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan both loudly
supported a bill last year that
would have required administration officials to personally certify that each
Syrian refugee was not a danger to national security. Neither Ryan nor
McConnell has spoken publicly about the TPS expansion, however, and
representatives from both offices did not immediately respond to inquiries from
LifeZette.
The background checks
run on TPS participants are less stringent even than the screening of
foreigners entering on some types of visas, let alone the multilayered vetting
that refugees receive — procedures that FBI Director James Comey and other top
government officials have said are insufficient to guarantee that terrorists
cannot slip through. Jessica Vaughan,
director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, said Syrians
who sneak across the southern border are eligible to remain under TPS.
"You don't even have to show you've been persecuted," she said.
"You just have to get here."
The TPS program was
designed to provide humanitarian relief to people fleeing war or natural
disasters in their home countries. Currently, people from 13 different
countries are living in the United States under TPS. The government last month
announced an expansion of its Central American Minors program that will allow
TPS participants from three counties to sponsor relatives to come to the United
States.
‘Temporarily’ in the U.S.
|
Granted temporary protected status
|
|
Country
|
Designated
|
Number
|
|
El Salvador
|
2001
|
195K
|
|
Syria
|
2012
|
8.3K
|
|
Honduras
|
1999
|
57K
|
|
Nicaragua
|
1999
|
2.55K
|
|
Guinea
|
2014
|
990
|
|
Liberia
|
2014
|
2.1K
|
|
Sierra Leonne
|
2014
|
1.15K
|
|
Sudan
|
2013
|
450
|
|
South Sudan
|
2016
|
75 to 200
|
|
Yemen
|
2015
|
500 to 2K
|
|
Haiti
|
2011
|
50K
|
|
Nepal
|
2015
|
10-25K
|
|
Somalia
|
2012
|
270
|
Source: U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services
Chris Chmielenski,
director of content and activism for the advocacy group NumbersUSA, said his
organization tends to oppose TPS designations because they rarely are temporary
in practice. "Once you first offer it to a group, you get into situations
like this," he said. "They never revoke it." For instance, TPS
was granted in 1999 to people from Honduras and Nicaragua living in the United
States. The government has repeatedly renewed the designations since. The
current designations run to January 2018.
Chmielenski said
concerns should be heightened for Syrians because of national security
concerns. He said the issues are the same for anyone from the war-torn country
who want to come to the United States — given the fact that the Islamic
State has stated its intentions of infiltrating the refugee program.
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"Can you truly
vet these people to ensure they're not going to do us harm?" he said.
"At least through the refugee process, you're going to have the screening
process." Kyle Shideler,
director of threat assessment for the Center for Security Policy, said the
program gives the Obama administration one more tool to achieve its goal of
taking in Syrian refugees. "They are looking for any method they can to
complete this process," he said.
Vaughan said the TPS
program is drawn more broadly for Syrians than other foreigners. Normally, TPS
is granted only to foreigners who were in the United States on a given date. As
a result, the number of participants dwindles over time. But each time the
government extended the program for Syrians, it has applied to people who
arrived since the original designation.
In 2012, about 2,500
Syrians took advantage of the protected status, and that number doubled when
the government extended it 18 months later. "Literally, if you just
arrived here yesterday, you get the work permit," Vaughan said.
http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/thousands-syrians-get-back-door-amnesty/
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