US moves to speed up intake of Syrian refugees
Administration officials tell Reuters that screening sites for refugees are to be opened in Iraq and Lebanon
The US is planning to increase the number of Syrian refugees it admits, and has opened “screening outposts” in Iraq and Lebanon to facilitate the process, Reuters reported Friday, citing Obama administration officials.
The officials told Reuters that the US will begin screening Syrians at a new facility in Irbil in Iraq, and a reopened site in Beirut.
President Barack Obama promised in September that the United States would admit 10,000 Syrian refugees for resettlement over the next 12 months, after facing criticism that America was not doing enough in the crisis.
The change represents a huge increase in the number of families arriving on US soil. In the more that four years since fighting erupted barely 1,800 Syrians have been welcomed there.
More than four million people have fled the fighting in Syria since 2011 and most are living in camps in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq, where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees registers them.
Some 18,000 of these people — chosen because they are the most vulnerable whether through family circumstances, injury or disability — have been referred to the United States for resettlement.
Once the US State Department receives their case files it employs NGO contractors to pre-screen them for eligibility for refugee status, then they are subjected to health and security checks.
Officers from the Department of Homeland Security fly from Washington to the camps and conduct interviews with candidates, seeking to weed out what a US official called “liars, criminals and terrorists.”
Each case file is reviewed by the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI’s terrorist screening center, the DHS, the Department of Defense and “other agencies” — US intelligence.
“Refugees are subject to the highest level of security checks of any category of traveler to the United States,” another State Department official told reporters.
Meanwhile they receive medical tests and those with communicable diseases, most commonly tuberculosis, are given treatment before they can travel to the United States, often delaying the process.
Currently the procedure takes between 18 and 24 months from the time UNHCR recommends a refugee for resettlement and that person’s flight to America.
