Obama’s 10,000 Syrian Refugees

The Obama administration announced this week that President Obama’s November 2015 pledge to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees to this country has been met.

You may remember the Obama administration assured the American people last year not to worry about the risk from these refugees because processing them would take 18 to 24 months or longer.

I wrote in a November 20, 2015 Fox News.com op-ed that processing of the 10,000 Syrian refugees President Obama agreed to admit late last year probably would be sped up to ensure they arrived while he was still in office and to prevent his successor from blocking these refugees.

This is what happened.  The Obama administration lied again.

State Department officials defended the process to vet Obama’s 10,000 refugees and insisted they are “the most thoroughly-screened group of travelers to the U.S.”  So how did the Obama administration resolve the problem expressed by CIA Director John Brennan in June 2016 when he said in testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee that ISIS is training operatives and attempting to enter the U.S. through “refugee flows, smuggling routes and legitimate methods of travel?”

Obama officials are trying to reassure Americans that there is little threat from President Obama’s 10,000 Syrian refugees because they claim 78 percent are women and children.  Given that about 72 percent of Syrian refugees arriving in Europe are military-age males, this is difficult to believe.  I believe the administration is playing statistical games in the way it counts these refugees.  There also could be another group of Syrian adult male refugees that the Obama administration plans to quietly admit later, probably after the election.

Admitting poorly-screened female Syrian refugees could allow male ISIS members to immigrate to the United States through “chain-migration” when these women refugees apply to admit male refugees who they claim are husbands or blood relatives.  Without documentation, it will be extremely difficult to confirm these claims.

I wrote last November that the United States should give priority to admitting Christian and Yazidi Syrian refugees because they have been systematically targeted with brutal persecution and murder by ISIS.  Senators Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton also have called for this.  Unfortunately, President Obama has made the ridiculous claim that this idea amounts to bigotry.  As a result, because of threats to Syrian Christians in refugee camps and President Obama’s ignorance, only 0.51 percent of the 10,000 Syrian refugees Mr. Obama admitted this year are Christian even though Syria’s population is about 10 percent Christian.

This is the story of Barack Obama’s 10,000 Syrian refugees.  It’s a story that will grow even worse if Hillary Clinton wins the 2016 presidential election since she plans to admit 65,000 Syrian refugees per year but has no plan on how to vet them for ISIS or al-Qaeda terrorists posing as refugees.

By contrast Donald Trump, who will announce his detailed immigration plan today, has called for temporarily banning immigration from countries where terrorism is widespread and vetting is poor.  Mr. Trump also wants “extreme vetting” of potential immigrants, including an ideological screening test to weed out those who don’t “share our values and respect our people.”

Obama’s 10,000 Syrian refugees could affect the outcome of the presidential election and is certain to be an issue during the presidential debates.