The Obama administration announced Thursday that the United States will take up to 10,000 additional Syrian refugees over the next year. Immigration activist groups and religious organizations are complaining this is woefully inadequate in terms of the need. Administration officials have responded that national security will take precedence over speeding up the process for accepting those fleeing Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Assad regime. Congressional leaders have voiced conditional support for Syrians entering the United States, with the caveat that the screening process must be acceptably vigilant.
Many national security professionals have voiced concern that the Islamic State could use the refugee crisis to infiltrate the United States and hide hundreds of sleeper agents across the country. There are reports that Islamic extremists are already using the crisis to radicalize and recruit refugees in Germany, which has said it will accept up to 800,000 migrants from Syria.
This comes on the heels of a report in the Daily Beast that dozens of U.S. intelligence professionals have complained that the Obama administration is altering intelligence reports on ISIS to make them more palatable to the official White House narrative that ISIS is not as dangerous as made out to be.
If our president and his staff cannot even tell the truth about ISIS and have to alter our own intelligence to make Mr. Obama’s policies seem effective, how can United States citizens be certain that this American government can effectively screen Syrian refugees for terrorists as he allows thousands into the country?
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