![]() ![]() It tells them what they're not allowed to do: a country can't send a refugee back to somewhere where his or her life will be in danger. International refugee law doesn't tell countries what they ought to do. The simplest answer for why the US hasn't done more: It's not obligated to do anything Even if the US could move quickly, it's not clear that it would be willing to. The Syrian refugee crisis has exposed the limitations of what US refugee policy is designed to do, and particularly its failures to take in refugees from the Middle East in the age of the war on terror. One problem for the US is that its refugee system simply isn't built for humanitarian emergencies it is slow in ways that make it hard for the US to respond to crises like what is unfolding currently in Europe and the Middle East. Peter King, who have expressed fear that Syrian refugees will come into the country to commit acts of terrorism. At the same time, it's too many for some Republicans, such as Rep. Ten thousand Syrian refugees is a lot fewer than many congressional Democrats were hoping for they'd been calling for the US to keep up its reputation as a world leader in resettling refugees by taking in 65,000 Syrians. The political battle lines over this are telling. But compared with the 800,000 refugees Germany has promised to take in for asylum - not to mention the 4 million Syrians who've fled their country and are living as refugees around the world - it doesn't look like much: That's many more than the 1,500 it's taken in so far. The federal government's response has indeed done something, announcing Thursday it will take in "at least" 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next fiscal year. So as Europe's refugee crisis has grabbed the world's attention, more and more people have started to ask the US government: Why isn't the US doing more to help Syrian refugees? The US is supposed to be a haven for people fleeing persecution: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses," and all that. ![]()
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