Many Obstacles Are Seen to U.S. Taking in Large Number of Syrian Refugees
WASHINGTON — In late spring, with the war in Syria grinding into its fifth year amid an ever-deepening humanitarian catastrophe for millions of refugees, 14 United States senators wrote a letter to President Obamaurging that at least 65,000 of the displaced Syrians be allowed to resettle in the United States.
Critics denounced the idea, saying it would open the nation’s borders to potential terrorists, and some even branded the authors of the letter as the “jihadi caucus.”
The criticism, which Obama administration officials say is baseless because of screening procedures asylum seekers undergo, was a powerful measure of the lack of political will and the practical obstacles that have hampered the United States’ ability to intervene more directly in what has become a full-blown migrant crisis in Europe.
Such obstacles, including an American public weary of overseas initiatives after more than a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, remain formidable, even as heart-wrenching photographs of dead children this week focused the American conscience on the Syrian crisis as never before and prompted renewed calls for more aid.
Pleas for more aggressive American-led rescue measures seem all the more futile given the failures to reach a consensus on the country’s own immigration problems, made vivid in the simmering debate over policing the border with Mexico and calls by a leading Republican presidential candidate to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants.
“Even if there were a green light from the Russians and the Chinese, the appetite for yet another military adventure in Syria is very, very limited among the American public,” said Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow and expert on international institutions at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I think in this case, the administration is correct, the situation is so incredibly complex among the combatants, there’s very little evidence that United States or Western intervention would make anything better.
“That choice has certain moral consequences, and those moral consequences include vast suffering of the people in Syria, and now in them striking out, at least in the case of refugees, for Europe,” Mr. Patrick said, adding that the crisis was “largely Europe’s responsibility.”
The United States has long been the world’s largest donor to the international programs that deliver the most direct assistance to refugees, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Refugee Organization, the World Food Program and others.
Experts say that the international system of agencies, largely formed after World War II, still does excellent work but is now overwhelmed by the scale of the problem. Worldwide, some 60 million people are said to have been forcibly displaced, often by war, with some 19 million refugees, according to United Nations statistics.
Each year, the United States grants residency permits to as many as 70,000 refugees from around the world, most referred by the United Nations refugee agency, which helps administer asylum requests. Only a small fraction of those have been Syrians, in part because the process typically takes up to two years, and the numbers of Syrians referred to the United States only began to increase after the start of the war four years ago.
While the State Department has said it plans to increase the number, to perhaps 1,800 by next year, it would be of little more than symbolic value given the more than four million Syrians in need of shelter.
Taking in 65,000 Syrians, as the 14 senators had urged, is virtually impossible under the existing asylum process, which requires lengthy background checks. The small number has opened up the United States to charges of hypocrisy as it has implored European allies to accept more.
But Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, who just returned from a trip to Europe, said he found America’s allies there unable so far to coordinate an effective response.
“It is incumbent on the United States to be of greater assistance, yes, but the Europeans also have a responsibility here,” Mr. Dent said. “Our European partners have a much harder time exercising leadership. They don’t want the refugees. They don’t want the migrants. At the same time, I don’t know what they are prepared to do to bring about greater stability in the countries where there are problems.”
Mr. Dent said he found Europe divided by regional interests.
“Angela Merkel is willing to accept more, but she is unhappy that other countries aren’t willing to accept more,” he said of the German chancellor’s pledge to welcome more refugees. “But what I was hearing in Poland and Lithuania is they aren’t focused on this southern crisis at all. They are completely fixated on the Russian threat.”
Within the Obama administration there has been intense discussion about additional action, including the possibility of a major announcement tied to Pope Francis’ visit to Washington this month. But beyond providing additional funds, experts on refugee issues say, the United States’ options are limited.
The United States Navy’s Sixth Fleet, which has responsibility for the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic and most of Africa, could deploy rescue ships to help ease the perilous crossings that have led to so many deaths at sea.
And there is precedent for the Navy to intervene in the migrant crisis: In 2013, a Navy crew rescued more than 100 Somali migrants from a raft in the central Mediterranean, taking them aboard the amphibious transport dock ship San Antonio. The men were taken to the Maltese Grand Harbor and turned over to the coast guard of Malta.
But in the current circumstances, there is no consensus yet among European nations about where migrants rescued in the Mediterranean should be brought to shore.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, who signed the letter urging Mr. Obama to accept more Syrian refugees, said there was little attention then, other than from critics, but that the photographs of recent days seemed to raise awareness.
“It is horrifying,” Ms. Klobuchar said of the picture of a drowned toddler in Turkey. “But it is something that we anticipated and that’s why we wrote this letter. We knew of the mounting problem for the humanitarian issues, the moral issues.”
Still, she said she understood the political climate. “I am not naïve about this. I don’t know that there is the political will right now to increase the numbers,” she said. “But you never know when it might happen.”
Eric P. Schwartz, a former assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, who is now dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, said presidential leadership would help drive public response.
“The folks who lead our humanitarian work in the government are the best in the world, but you need the president of the United States and the secretary of state, but the president in particular, to speak out about our responsibilities here and to define the challenge,” he said.
Increasing the number of Syrians granted asylum by 50,000 on an emergency basis would also help, he said, by sending “an extremely powerful signal to Europe and to the world.”
Samuel R. Berger, a former national security adviser for President Bill Clinton and now a consultant on international affairs at the Albright Stonebridge Group, said that greater media attention during the Balkan wars of the 1990s had helped raise awareness about the plight of refugees.
THE NEW YORK TIMES