Syrian refugee policy takes focus in US 2016 politics

Washington: The deadly Paris attacks have intensified Republican opposition to letting thousands of Syrian refugees come to the United States.

Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio on Sunday said the United States cannot do so because it’s impossible to know whether people fleeing Syria have links to militants — an apparent shift from earlier statements in which he left open the prospect of refugees being admitted with proper vetting.

“It’s not that we don’t want to, it’s that we can’t,” Rubio said Sunday on ABC’s ‘This Week’. “Because there’s no way to background check someone that’s coming from Syria. Who do you call and do a background check on them?”

The question of admitting Syrian refugees has for months been part of the national security discussion among 2016 candidates that cuts to the heart of the American identity as a refuge.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Sunday told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that the US should admit Syrian Christians, after proper vetting. Other Republican candidates have called for a ban on allowing Syrians into the US. All three Democratic presidential candidates have said they would admit Syrians but only after thorough background checks.

Republican presidential contender Ben Carson, a retired brain surgeon, said that from the viewpoint of the Daesh group, it would be “almost malpractice” not to do everything possible to infiltrate the refugee ranks with militants bent on waging militancy.

A spokesman for President Barack Obama said Sunday that the administration is moving forward with its plan to thoroughly vet and admit as many as 10,000 Syrian refugees.

“What we need to be able to do frankly is sort out that foreign fighter flow, those who have gone into Syria and come out and want to launch attacks or those people who have connections with Daesh in Syria,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said on Fox News Sunday. “At the same time, we have to recognise there’s tragic victims of this conflict, there are women, and children, orphans of this war and I think we need to do our part, along with our allies, to provide them a safe haven.”

In Saturday night’s Democratic presidential debate, all three candidates — former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley — said the US should admit far more than the 10,000 Syrians to which Obama has committed, but only with proper screening.

Rubio on Sunday said that was impossible.

“You can’t pick up the phone and call Syria, and that’s one of the reasons why I said we won’t be able to take more refugees,” Rubio said on ABC.

That is a switch from Rubio’s other statements this fall, in which he voiced scepticism about proper vetting but still left the door open to admitting refugees. In September, he told Boston Herald radio: “We’ve always been a country that’s been willing to accept people who have been displaced. And I would be open to that if it can do it in a way that allows us to ensure that among them are not infiltrated, people who are part of a terrorist organisation.”

Bush said Sunday that the US has a responsibility to “help with refugees after proper screening.”

“And I think or focus ought to be on the Christians who have no place in Syria anymore,” he added in an appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’.

“They’re being beheaded, they’re being executed by both sides,” he said. “And I think we have a responsibility to help.”

GOP presidential hopeful Ben Carson said Syrian refugees should not be brought to the US because it is too easy for militants, intent on “wreaking havoc in this country,” to embed with them. “There’s no reason we should be facilitating such a thing,” he said after a southern Nevada rally Sunday. Instead, he spoke of giving Syrians unspecified help to stay in their country.