(This photo of Syrian refugees is from Forward.com.)Last September, President Obama promised that the United States would accept 10,000 Syrian refugees. That was a rather pathetic goal, since those refugees were created in large part because of American foreign policy and military actions -- but at least we have achieved the goal. White House advisors said the 10,000th Syrian refugee arrived in the U.S. yesterday. About 80% of the arriving refugees have been women and children.
The four states receiving the most refugees from Syria are California, Michigan, Arizona, and Texas. Those last three states all have Republican governors who had declared they would not let the Syrian refugees into their state. Of course, that was nothing but political theater. Those governors knew they did not have the authority to do such a ridiculous thing. They were just playing to the teabaggers that elected them.
Even though the United States has accepted only a fraction of the number of Syrian refugees that other Western nations have admitted, it has been a controversy in this country. That's because the the Republicans (and their presidential candidate) have opted to base their campaigns on fear by trying to demonize the refugees. They claim the United States doesn't have a good vetting process in place to insure the refugees are not terrorists. That is just not true.
Here is the very tough vetting process a refugee must go through before entering the U.S.:
