Will some of the Syrian refugees the Obama administration is hustling through a truncated vetting process make their way to Oregon?
In early April, the Associated Press’ Khetam Malkawi reported, “the first Syrian family to be resettled in the U.S. under a speeded-up ‘surge operation’ for refugees left Jordan” for Kansas City, Mo. “While the resettlement process usually takes 18 to 24 months,” Malkawi wrote, “the surge operation will reduce the time to three months.” Its purpose? To help President Barack Obama meet his goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
Between the start of the fiscal year last October and April 1, the State Department reports, 17 Syrian refugees had been resettled in Oregon. Obama’s surge could increase that number suddenly and dramatically — to the detriment, as we’ll see, of many Oregonians. First, however, let’s look at what 10,000 Syrian refugees could mean for the nation as a whole.
In regard to their country of origin, FBI counter-terrorist official Michael Steinbach told Congress last year, “We don’t have systems in place on the ground to collect information to vet ... The dataset, the police, the intel services that normally you would (consult) to seek information” about refugees don’t exist. Consequently, even under the more comprehensive pre-surge vetting, terrorists from Syria could and did slip through the cracks. One prominent example: Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, a Syrian admitted to the United States as a refugee in 2012, returned to his home country and fought for the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam in late 2013 and early 2014. Afterward, eluding State Department screening yet again, he returned to the United States. Under Obama’s dramatically-shortened vetting process, even more Al-Jayabs likely will be able to enter our country.
Granted, not all Syrian refugees would be terrorists. But to the communities in which they settle and to Americans as a whole, they would constitute a significant fiscal burden. “More than 90 percent of recent Mideast refugees draw food stamps and about 70 percent receive free health care and cash welfare,” noted Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. Indeed, the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector estimates that the 10,000 Syrian refugees the administration aims to resettle here, over the course of their lifetimes, likely would cost U.S. taxpayers $6.5 billion.
And now, to Oregon.
Late last year, Gov. Kate Brown said our state “will ... open the doors of opportunity” to Syrian refugees. If she makes good on that, however, she may shut those same doors on some of our most vulnerable fellow citizens.
According to the Oregon Employment Department, some 200,000 Oregon residents are unemployed or underemployed. Indeed, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated recently, more than 16 percent of Oregonians live in poverty. The city of Portland, OPB reported late last year, has a shortage of some 24,000 housing units “affordable to the lowest-income renters” (those available for $750 a month or less); the Washington County housing market, said the county’s Housing Services Department, has recently suffered “a shortage of affordable housing for extremely low-income and low-income households.” And Oregon’s $7.4 billion K-12 school fund for the 2015-17 biennium, a state legislative committee determined last year, was almost $1.8 billion short of the amount needed “to reach the state’s educational goals.” Clearly, some of Oregon’s youngest and poorest would be harmed by an influx of refugees who would compete against them for already-insufficient jobs, shelter and education dollars.
What then, should Brown do?
Federal law 8 U.S.C. 1522 states that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is charged with resettling refugees, “shall consult” with state governments “concerning ... the intended distribution of refugees among the states and localities before their placement.” Among the criteria for such placement: “the availability of (an area’s) employment opportunities, affordable housing, and public and private resources (including educational, health care, and mental health services.)” The law further directs HHS, “to the maximum extent possible,” to “take into account recommendations of the state(s).”
Citing this law, Brown should contact HHS and explain how an influx of Syrian refugees would harm some of her state’s most vulnerable residents. Coming from a Democrat friendly to the president’s overall agenda, her argument could sway the department’s chief refugee-resettlement officials.
Though the governor’s compassion toward refugees is laudable, it is to her fellow Oregonians — those she was elected to serve — that she owes her foremost responsibility. Immediately, she should contact HHS and say: For the sake of our own struggling people, send no more Syrian refugees to Oregon.
Cynthia Kendoll of Salem and Richard F. LaMountain of Cedar Mill are president and vice president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform
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