The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) condemns the horrific attacks on Paris and Beirut last week. We must not allow these attacks to prevent vulnerable Syrian refugees from reaching safety; many of these refugees are fleeing from a brutal regime and have themselves suffered horrific attacks by ISIS. We should make these refugees feel welcome and wanted by a community that condemns extremism.
The best way to offer a humanitarian solution for refugees and promote national security is to resettle the most vulnerable refugees through the legal resettlement process, which allows the United States to conduct security checks on refugee applicants.
Refugees resettled to the United States go through the most rigorous security checks of any group of people entering our country.
These thorough checks involve multiple U.S. intelligence agencies including the FBI, the Department of Defense, the National Counterterrorism Center, and others.
For more information on refugee background checks, please see this report from USCRI, recent testimony from USCIS Director Leon Rodriguez, and Human Rights First’s 2015 fact sheet and 2013 backgrounder.
Comments are closed.