Posted on 11/19/15
| News Source: VIN
Detroit - Over and over, Nedal Al-Hayk and his wife traveled up to three hours by bus from their temporary home in Jordan to an office where U.S. Homeland Security officials put them in separate rooms and asked them many questions in many different ways: Where were you born? Where were your parents born? Were you part of a rebel group? Were you politically outspoken?
Finally, nearly three years after the Syrian couple fled their war-ravaged homeland, they and their two young children arrived in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, ready to start a promising new life in a new country.
“I came here to succeed and have a quality of life, not to be a hindrance to the government and the citizens of America,” said the 28-year-old Al-Hayk, who is working at a factory and studying English with hopes of pursuing the agricultural engineering degree he started in Syria. “Even if I need to start over, I’ll start over.”
As some governors, lawmakers and presidential candidates vow to block the resettlement of more Syrian refugees in the U.S. for fear that terrorists will slip into the country and carry out Paris-style attacks, those who have made it here describe an arduous screening process that they would not have undergone if they didn’t want to make America their permanent home.
“They are human beings and human beings with no home,” said Al-Hayk, who arrived in the U.S. seven months ago. “They ache to come to a country like America because they know the kinds of opportunities it grants to people.”
The Obama administration, which has announced plans to accept about 10,000 Syrians refugees in addition to the 2,500 who have settled here since 2011, disclosed new details this week about how they are investigated.
They must undergo a screening process that can take nearly three years, during which they are fingerprinted and required to submit other biometric information, subjected to criminal and terrorist background checks and put through repeated rounds of questioning about their families, friends and political activities, authorities said.
The process takes so long that experts said it would be unlikely for an extremist group to rely on a refugee program to sneak someone into the U.S. Terrorist organizations could instead send operatives to America as students or tourists or appeal to people already living in the U.S. to carry out attacks.
Still, Al-Hayk said he understands the need for intensive questioning. For Al-Hayk, who has friends who died at sea trying to get to Europe, seeking asylum in the U.S. was far more time-consuming but less dangerous.
“To come to the U.S., you go through a very troublesome process, but it’s justified because these agencies ... are doing their job and doing it very meticulously,” he said, adding that he is “grateful for America, regardless of how long it took” to get here.
In Chicago, 35-year-old Hakam Subh, who also underwent a three-year vetting before coming to the U.S. in April, said he is happy and excited to have made it here with his wife and two young sons.
“I love it here. This is a safe country,” he said. “I decided America is my country.”
Here are a few things to know:
— The U.S. annually accepts 70,000 refugees from around the world. This group includes people fleeing violence, religious persecution and war. The Obama administration announced earlier this year that the number of people invited to move to the U.S. as refugees would be increased to 85,000 in the coming year, including about 10,000 Syrians.
— The U.S. has helped resettle about 2,500 Syrian refugees since the war started in that country in 2011. The Obama administration said about half that group is children, while about 2.5 percent are people over the age of 60 and roughly 2 percent are single men of combat age. The overall group is almost evenly split among men and women.
— Amid questions about background checks and security vetting, the administration for the first time this week disclosed new details about how refugees are investigated. The process is directed by the Homeland Security Department and involves the State Department and U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Refugees submit to in-person interviews overseas, where they provide biographical details about themselves, including their families, friendships, social or political activities, employment, phone numbers, email accounts and more. They also provide biometric information about themselves, including fingerprints. Syrians are subject to additional, classified controls, according to administration officials, who briefed reporters this week on condition that they not be identified by name to publicly discuss confidential details about the process. The Associated Press had been seeking details about the vetting process since September.
— Administration officials have acknowledged that checking the accuracy or authenticity of documents provided by refugee applicants against foreign government records can be especially difficult involving countries that don’t cooperate with the U.S. government, such as Syria. It can also complicate U.S. efforts to check foreign government records for local arrests or lesser bureaucratic interactions, such as bank records, business licenses or civil filings. “We do the best we can with the information we have,” one U.S. official said.
— As for concerns about potential refugees lacking documents to prove who they are, the administration officials said Syrians as a population tend to provide extensive documents involving their day-to-day lives. They often arrive with family histories, military records and other information that can be useful for American authorities investigating them.
— Refugees who spent years waiting for approval to come to the United States said authorities asked detailed questions repeatedly in multiple interviews, including pressing them about their backgrounds and reasons for fleeing Syria. Nedal Al-Hayk, who was resettled in suburban Detroit with his family after a three-year wait, said officials interviewed him and his wife in separate rooms, asking repeatedly and in different ways where they were born, where their parents were born, what they did before and during the war or whether they were armed, part of a rebel group, supportive of the government or even politically outspoken.
— Syrians initially file refugee claims with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which then refers them to the U.S. government. The process has no guarantee of approval and takes so long — Syrians wait nearly three years for approval to come to the U.S. — that experts said it would be a longshot for an extremist group to rely on the refugee program as a way to sneak someone into the United States. The Islamic State group has had far more success appealing to people already living inside the United States to commit or conspire to commit violence. Attorney General Loretta Lynch told lawmakers this week that roughly 70 people have been charged with crimes related to foreign-fighter activity and homegrown violent extremism since 2013.
— House Republicans are proposing changes to the refugee vetting process that would include more background checks from the FBI. The proposed legislation, which could be voted on as early as Thursday, would halt refugee processing while the new protocol is established. The bill would require that the heads of the FBI, Homeland Security Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence certify that each refugee being admitted would not pose a threat. It could have the practical effect of keeping refugees out of the United States entirely.
The White House on Wednesday threated to veto any legislation to toughen the screening process for Syrian refugees.