U.N. Calls on Western Nations to Shelter Syrian Refugees
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Version 0 of 1. UNITED NATIONS — With Syria’s neighbors increasingly shutting their borders to refugees and thousands trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in search of safety, the war in Syria is creating the worst global refugee crisis in decades, putting new pressure on the United States and other Western countries to open their doors — and in turn, prompting domestic political backlash. Not since the wave of people who fled Southeast Asia after the war in Vietnam have the world’s industrialized countries been under such intense pressure to share the burden of taking in refugees, experts say. Nor has the task of offering sanctuary been so politically fraught. The United States is scheduled to take in its largest group of Syrian refugees to date — up to 2,000 by the fall of this year, compared with a total of about 700 since the civil war in Syria began four years ago, according to the State Department. But the plan is stirring pushback from Republican lawmakers in Congress, who are increasingly vocal about the fear that terrorists may sneak in with the refugees. “In the case of Syrian refugees, our intelligence on the ground is alarmingly slim, making it harder to identify extremists,” said Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. The United Nations high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, has stepped up calls for industrialized countries, including the United States, to shelter 130,000 Syrian refugees over the next two years. The figure is a fraction of the nearly four million refugees who have poured into the countries bordering Syria — chiefly Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey — straining their resources and plunging many displaced people into poverty. So far, the high commissioner’s pleas have not been met. Governments around the world have promised to take in just under two-thirds of what the United Nations is urging, while a great many more Syrians have chosen to make perilous journeys by land and sea in search of asylum in Europe. “The scale of the displacement crisis is enormous and is only going to get worse,” said Alexander Betts, an associate professor of refugee studies at the University of Oxford. “The Syrian crisis places the entire humanitarian system at a crossroads. It requires us to radically rethink how we protect and assist such large numbers of displaced people.” The American decision to accept more refugees reflects how swiftly the Syrian war has morphed into the most pressing humanitarian crisis in recent years. Generally, resettling large numbers of refugees happens long after other options are exhausted, like the possibility of displaced people eventually returning home. While the Republicans have not called for a full-on moratorium on Syrian refugee admissions, they have urged the Obama administration to go slow, until the United States can be assured that all applicants are properly screened. A congressional hearing is due in the coming weeks. “We need to put our foot on the brakes until we have more certainty that terrorist won’t slip through our fingers,” Mr. McCaul said. In February, Mr. McCaul wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry demanding details about refugees who have already been admitted or are in the pipeline, including their ages, ethnicities and religion. He also wanted to know how American officials are screening Syrians. A State Department official said refugees applying for resettlement to the United States are already “the most carefully vetted of all travelers to the United States,” with security checks by a host of American agencies, including the National Counterterrorism Center and the Defense Department. “Accepting refugees is an American tradition with bipartisan support in Congress,” said Simon Henshaw, principal deputy assistant secretary at the State Department. “The question is not whether we take them in, but ensuring that we admit refugees in a way that is safe and consistent with our national security interests.” The United Nations currently has a list of more than 11,000 people who are waiting to be screened by American officials for possible resettlement. The United Nations refugee agency, which does the first round of vetting, says the people on the list are among the most vulnerable, including single mothers and their children, victims of torture and people with special medical needs. But few of them will be accepted anytime soon. Mr. Henshaw said the reason the United States is admitting fewer than 2,000 this year is “to make sure we’ve got the process right.” “We have a really deliberative process for Syrians,” he added. The security requirements are a large part of why it has taken so long to resettle Syrians in the United States. Background checks usually take more than a year. It has taken months for the Department of Homeland Security to issue clear guidelines on exactly who can be admitted into the United States from a war zone, slowing down some applications. Since the beginning of this year, because of security issues in Beirut, Lebanon, American officials have temporarily suspended interviews with prospective refugees living in Lebanon. A State Department official said they may resume later this year. At the same time, the administration is facing pressure from aid groups that want the United States to increase the numbers of refugee admissions significantly, and to let them in much faster. They contend that the United States should take in at least half of the people the United Nations refugee agency wants to resettle in the West, which would amount to about 65,000 Syrians in the next two years. That is the equivalent of nearly all refugees the United States takes in from all countries in an average year. “This is an unprecedented crisis,” said Anna Greene, director of policy and advocacy at the International Rescue Committee. “If the United States doesn’t lead, other countries aren’t going to either.” The slow trickle of Syrian refugees to the United States comes as Syria’s neighbors, who are already heaving with refugees, begin to close their borders and impose a variety of restrictions on Syrians coming across. Turkey was the latest to impose new restrictions. Jordan and Lebanon have for months clamped down on Syrian refugees. In the West, Germany has pledged to resettle the largest batch of Syrian refugees — about 30,000 — while Canada has said it would let in just over 11,000, according to the United Nations. The United States has not given a specific number it will take, though State Department officials have given a range of 1,000 to 2,000 by October, and many more in the coming years. Even without the promise of refugee status, the increasingly dire conditions of Syrians stuck in the region have prompted a surge of people trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe, creating something of a tipping point for the international system for dealing with people fleeing war. “The regime that was set up at the end of World War II is not working the way it was intended,” said Kathleen Newland, a director at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. “It’s not providing safety for refugees. It’s not providing security for the countries involved. It’s been a huge boon to the smuggling industry. It’s creating deaths at sea.” In 2014, roughly 150,000 Syrians filed asylum claims abroad, citing their fear of persecution at home. They were the single largest group of asylum seekers last year, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Most of them sought asylum in Europe. Depending on where they land, some of them are detained in immigration centers until their cases are adjudicated. Doctors Without Borders said this week that as many as 100 people arrive in Greece’s Dodecanese islands by boat each day, most of them Syrians. On one island, it said, more than 200 people, including children and pregnant women, spent a week “crammed into a police station,” with some sleeping in a courtyard. “What we are seeing is a system, in my view, that is unraveling,” said Michael Doyle, a Columbia University political science professor and a onetime adviser to the United Nations secretary general. |