US to take in more refugees

By Nahal Toosi

The United States will take up to 100,000 refugees a year in 2017, a more than 40 percent increase that comes as growing numbers of people flee conflicts in Syria and other parts of the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.
Secretary of State John Kerry announced the plans Sunday in Berlin, where German officials are scrambling to deal with a massive influx of migrants and where he met with some Syrians who had fled their country’s civil war. He said the U.S. cap on refugees would be lifted in stages, going from 70,000 now to 85,000 in 2016 and 100,000 the following year.

The figure applies to all refugees accepted by the U.S. from around the world, and it’s likely many who come will not be from Syria. That could frustrate human rights advocates, as well as some members of Congress, who already are calling on the United States to take in at least 65,000 refugees, or even 100,000, from Syria alone.
Due largely to stringent security checks run on applicants, the U.S. has accepted only around 1,500 Syrian refugees since the conflict in that country began in spring 2011.
President Barack Obama has already pledged to take in an additional 10,000 Syrians over the next year, a target that’s hard to imagine his administration will meet because of the security checks involved. Still, in not making the latest plan Syria-specific, the Obama administration can accomplish multiple objectives.
By accepting more refugees from other parts of the world, the administration can assauge fears raised by some Republican lawmakers that terrorists will be among those coming from Syria, even though such objections will still arise.
The administration’s openness to accepting people beyond Syria also can help ease the burdens shouldered by the United Nations and other groups that shelter refugees by allowing them to shift more resources to focus on Syrians.
The administration’s decision to lift the cap on refugees doesn’t require congressional approval. However, lawmakers hold the purse strings for the program, and those who object to allowing in more refugees could use that as leverage.
Even taking in 100,000 refugees in 2017 will do relatively little to fix what experts say is the biggest migration crisis since World War II. Some are now flooding into Europe, where they’ve been met by both hostility and hospitality. Germany alone expects to take in 800,000 of the migrants this year.