The United States (US) House of Representatives, defying a veto threat by President Barack Obama, overwhelmingly passed Republican-backed legislation on Thursday to suspend Obama’s program to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year and then intensify the process of screening them.
The measure, quickly drafted this week following the self-styled Islamic State (IS) attacks in Paris on Friday that killed 129 people, was approved on a vote of 289-137, with 47 of Obama’s 188 fellow Democrats breaking with the White House to support it.
It would require that high-level officials — the FBI director, the director of national intelligence and homeland security secretary — verify that each Syrian refugee poses no security risk.
Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said the bill would pause the program the White House announced in September to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year.
He said it was important to act quickly “when our national security is at stake.” After the House vote, Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, called such screening both impractical and impossible.
“To ask me to have my FBI director or other members of the administration make personal guarantees would effectively grind the program to a halt,” Lynch told reporters at a news briefing with FBI Director James Comey.
The vote result came despite a last-ditch appeal for Democratic votes from Jeh Johnson, Obama’s secretary of homeland security, and Denis McDonough, his chief of staff.
It followed a testy exchange at a House hearing between lawmakers and Anne Richard, the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration.
Republicans responded with incredulity to her assertion there was only a “very, very small” threat of any of the Syrian refugees being a “terrorist”.
Some Republicans have said some refugees could be militants bent on attacking the US, noting reports that at least one Paris attacker may have slipped into Europe among migrants registered in Greece.
The bill, which would create the strictest-ever US screening of refugees from a war-torn nation, passed with the two-thirds majority the House would need to override a presidential veto.
It now goes to the Senate, also controlled by Republicans, where its prospects remained uncertain. If it passes in the Senate, each chamber would have to muster a two-thirds majority to override any Obama veto.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said there was “no way” the House bill would pass in the Senate.
While many Americans see the US historically as welcoming to immigrants, accepting refugees from Syria has raised concerns the newcomers may pose a national security threat in a country where about 3,000 people were killed by al Qaeda militants in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Lawmakers have been receiving an unusually large number of calls on the issue. An aide to Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman said his office got 2,710 calls between Monday and Wednesday opposing resettlement of Syrian/Iraqi refugees in the US, versus only 58 in favour.
SPASM OF RHETORIC:
Speaking in Manila after meeting with Canada’s prime minister, Obama said America had always been open to allowing people from war zones to find refuge in the US, where they become “part of the fabric of American life”.
Denouncing the “spasm of rhetoric” over refugees, Obama said refugees already faced the most vigorous vetting process for anyone admitted to the country.
He added that “the idea that somehow they pose a more significant threat than all the tourists who pour into the US every single day just doesn’t jibe with reality.”
The White House had said Obama would veto the House bill because it would introduce “unnecessary and impractical requirements” that would hamper efforts to help some of the world’s most vulnerable people without providing meaningful additional security for Americans.
“Our position on this piece of legislation has not changed,” an official on board Air Force One, carrying Obama to a Southeast Asian summit in Malaysia on Friday, quoted White House spokesman Josh Earnest as saying.
Comey said there was no credible threat of an attack on US soil similar to the one in Paris, but his agency is monitoring dozens of people it has deemed “high-risk” for copying the attack.
