US plans to accept 10K Syrian refugees in coming budget year

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The United States is making plans to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming budget year, a significant increase from the 1,500 people who have been cleared to resettle in the U.S. since civil war broke out in the Middle Eastern country more than four years ago, the White House said Thursday.

The White House has been under heavy pressure to do more than just provide money to help meet the humanitarian crisis in Europe. Tens of thousands of people from war-torn countries in the Middle East and Africa are risking their lives and dying en masse during desperate attempts to seek safe haven on the continent.

The refugees from Syria, however, would be people who are already in the pipeline and waiting to be let into the United States, not the thousands working their way through eastern Europe and landing in Greece. It was not immediately clear how admitting a larger number of Syrian refugees who are in the processing pipeline would help alleviate the crisis that European countries are grappling with.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said about $4 billion that the administration has provided to relief agencies and others is the most-effective way for the U.S. to help shoulder the crisis, but that President Barack Obama has decided that admitting more Syrian refugees in the budget year that begins Oct. 1 also would help boost the U.S. response.

About 17,000 Syrians have been referred over the past few years to the U.S. for resettlement by the U.N. refugee agency. About 1,500 are in the U.S., with 300 more scheduled to be allowed in this month. That leaves about 15,000 Syrians waiting for the clearance process to conclude, according to the State Department.

Obama would like to admit 10,000 of those, according to Earnest’s announcement.

State Department spokesman John Kirby also said the 10,000 Syrians will come from the pool of 17,000 people referred to the U.S. by the U.N. agency.

Earnest said earlier this week that the administration has been looking at a “range of approaches” for assisting U.S. allies with 340,000 people freshly arrived from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Many are fleeing parts of Iraq that are under the Islamic State group’s control. The 1,500 Syrians who are resettling in the U.S. represent a small percentage of the 11.6 million people who have been chased out of the country or uprooted from their homes due to the civil war in Syria.