Saul Loeb—AFP
Spokesman says certification requirement would give no additional security to American people.
President Barack Obama would veto a Republican bill introduced in the wake of the Paris attacks to toughen the screening process for Syrian refugees, the White House said Wednesday.
The U.S. House of Representatives could vote as early as Thursday on resolution 4038, which aims to block administration plans to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming year. “Given the lives at stake and the critical importance to our partners in the Middle East and Europe of American leadership in addressing the Syrian refugee crisis, if the President were presented with H.R. 4038, he would veto the bill,” the White House said.
Unveiled by House Homeland Security chairman Michael McCaul, the bill aims to strengthen vetting procedures for Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the wake of Friday’s attacks that killed 129, carried out by Syria-linked jihadists.
The plan would require the director of the FBI, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence to certify that each refugee is not a security threat. “This legislation would introduce unnecessary and impractical requirements that would unacceptably hamper our efforts to assist some of the most vulnerable people in the world, many of whom are victims of terrorism, and would undermine our partners in the Middle East and Europe in addressing the Syrian refugee crisis,” the White House said in a statement.
Refugees of all nationalities, including Syrians and Iraqis, currently undergo the most rigorous and thorough security screening of anyone allowed into the United States, “all aimed at ensuring that those admitted do not pose a threat to our country,” the statement said.
The current screening process, it said, involves multiple federal intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies, including the National Counterterrorism Center, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Defense. “The certification requirement at the core of H.R. 4038 is untenable and would provide no meaningful additional security for the American people,” the White House said.