This morning, Foreign Policy featured IRAP in an article highlighting the need for systemic reform to the State Department’s U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. The United States says it is willing to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees, yet the bureaucratic system through which refugee applications are processed is likely to drastically limit the number of Syrians who make it to safety in America. America’s history with refugees fleeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan makes this all the more clear: onerous background checks have prevented tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan refugees from finding sanctuary in the United States. Unless the system is reformed to mitigate these obstacles, it will do little to protect vulnerable Syrians fleeing persecution.
“You can pledge to take in how many people you want, but if you don’t have the systems in place to process them expeditiously, your pledge is empty,” IRAP’s Director, Becca Heller, told Foreign Policy.
Learn more by checking out the full article here, and please share on social media using the hashtags #Syria, #SyrianRefugees, and #RefugeesWelcome to help bring attention to this issue.
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