More than a dozen governors oppose resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states
Updated: The governors of more than a dozen states have announced their opposition to U.S. resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states following terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday.
Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan and Gov. Robert Bentley of Alabama, who are both Republicans, issued statements saying they would refuse to accept refugees in their state through a U.S. resettlement program, report the Washington Post and Buzzfeed.com. Later on Monday, the Republican governors of Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin also announced that they would oppose allowing Syrian refugees into their states, according to CNBC, Reuters and the New York Times. Gov. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire is the first Democratic governor to say she would oppose accepting Syrian refugees.
Snyder’s statement said he was putting “on hold” efforts to accept the refugees until “a full review of security clearances and procedures.” Bentley said he would “oppose any attempt to relocate Syrian refugees to Alabama through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.”
The Post raises doubts about the governors’ authority to block refugees. “Legally,” the article says, “the states have limited power to control the flow of foreigners into their states, with that authority reserved largely to the federal government under the Constitution.”
The director of World Relief Chicago, a refugee resettlement agency, agreed. “It’s the Department of State who decides whether we’ll take certain kinds of refugees,” John Barcanic told the Times. “Once somebody is in the country, I’m fairly certain that a governor doesn’t have the ability to stop somebody from living in their state simply because of their race.”
One of the Paris attackers had entered Europe through Greece on a Syrian passport, although the Times notes that it is not clear that it was the man’s own passport. French authorities have announced that they believe the mastermind of the attacks was a 27-year-old Belgian man named Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Times reports. The Obama administration has previously announced plans to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees next year.
President Barack Obama, who is at the G-20 summit in Turkey, denounced calls for a religious test for refugees entering the United States, according to CNBC. “That’s not American,” he said. “That’s not who we are. We do not have religious tests to our compassion.”
Since the civil war began in Syria in 2011, more than 250,000 people have been killed, and 11 million have been forced from their homes, reports the BBC. The surrounding countries of Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt have struggled to care for the influx of refugees, and are currently attempting to accommodate more than 4.2 million refugees, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. “The scale of death, injury, and displacement from the conflict that began following the Arab Spring protests of 2011 is unimaginable,” according to the international aid group Doctors Without Borders.
Updated on Nov. 17 to add to the list of governors opposing accepting Syrian refugees.
