In the News

by Craig Gilbert

The House voted by a large margin Thursday to increase screening of Syrian and Iraqi refugees before they enter the U.S., a step prompted by last week's terrorist attacks in Paris.

"If our law enforcement and intelligence community cannot verify that each and every person coming here is not a security threat, then they shouldn't be allowed in," Speaker Paul Ryan said before the vote. "Don't you think that common sense dictates we should take a pause and get this right?"

The one-sidedness of the vote, 289-137, was a setback to the White House. All but two Republicans supported the bill. Most Democrats opposed it. But 47 Democrats — about a quarter of the party's House members — sided with Republicans in favor of the measure.

Wisconsin's House Republicans all voted yes. Wisconsin Democrats Gwen Moore and Mark Pocan voted no, but Democrat Ron Kind voted yes.

The White House has already promised to veto the bill, saying it would not improve security but just add "significant delays and obstacles" to the resettlement program. Thursday's vote in the House puts backers of the measure within reach of a veto-proof majority.

An identical bill was introduced Wednesday in the Senate by Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson, chairman of the Governmental Affairs and Homeland Security committee. But Senate Democrats are vowing to block it.

Ryan, the Janesville Republican who was elected speaker Oct. 29, promised a swift legislative response to last week's Paris attacks. The bill that passed Thursday came together in unusually rapid fashion.

It would require that no refugee from Syria or Iraq be admitted unless the FBI director certifies that person's background investigation and — together with the Homeland Security secretary and director of National Intelligence — certifies the individual refugee is not a security threat to the U.S.

It does not formally suspend or halt the resettlement of refugees here, but Ryan said it would effectively "pause" the program because "right now the government can't certify these standards."

Ryan called it a "common sense" step to shore up a process that he contends has gaps in it.

In an interview with a small group of reporters before the vote, Ryan said he was genuinely surprised and baffled by what he called a "strident" position by the White House to veto the measure.

"We invited the Democrats to participate on this. I don't want this to be partisan," said Ryan, who said turning the issue into a "political football" was harmful to the nation's security.

At a Senate hearing chaired Thursday by Johnson, government officials described what they said was a lengthy and robust screening program for refugees.

Léon Rodriguez, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said refugees from Syria undergo more scrutiny than any other group of people entering the U.S.

When Johnson suggested that these bills were "pretty reasonable" efforts to "add a level of control (and) provide that kind of comfort" that people are looking for, Rodriguez said the current process is "essentially equivalent" to what the new bills being debated in Congress are demanding.

The U.S. has admitted about 1,700 refugees from Syria in the past year. Before entry, they have typically gone through 18 to 24 months of vetting by the United Nations, the State Department and the Homeland Security Department. The process includes in-person interviews abroad, biographic checks, fingerprint checks and screening based on law enforcement and intelligence databases, officials said.

"We screen applicants rigorously and carefully," said Anne Richard, assistant secretary for population, refugees and migration at the State Department.

She said 2% of those 1,700 recently admitted refugees were young men (ages 21-30) of military age with no families.

At one point in the hearing, Richard was asked by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) to respond to statements by Wisconsin's Republican governor, Scott Walker, questioning the effectiveness of refugee screening. Walker is among the many GOP governors opposing the entry of refugees into their states.

Richard noted that "governors do not have the ability to block" the settlement of refugees. She said statements such as Walker's send an unfortunate message "to American citizens that we would at all be running a program that is dangerous. We have no desire at all to do that."

Some opponents of the bill said it was a knee-jerk response that sent the wrong signal. Moore, of Milwaukee, said on Twitter that it "was nothing more than election-year pandering/chest thumping."

Senate Democrat Tom Carper of Delaware said he was skeptical that the refugee program is any kind of magnet for terrorists.

"It's hard to imagine if I want to come here to do mischief, I'm going to wait two years to go through that process" and risk detection, said Carper.

Johnson said he agreed that "the whole vetting process of refugees is probably one of the more minimal threats" the U.S. faces, compared to other paths of entry. But Johnson said the legislation would help reassure the American public.

"People have gotten spun up about this," Johnson said. The new legislation helps "give the American public the faith we're not going to short-circuit the process."

Polls are showing public support for a halt to the settlement of Syrian refugees. In a national survey of 628 adults by Bloomberg, 53% said the best approach on refugees fleeing the civil unrest in Syria is to not accept them into the U.S.; 28% said it's best to proceed with current plans to settle 10,000 refugees; and 11% said the U.S. should settle only Christians fleeing Syria. There was a big partisan divide on the issue, with 69% of Republicans but only 36% of Democrats opposed to accepting the refugees.

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