Pres. Obama Reduces Syrian Refugee Screening Process To 3 Months

To reach President Obama’s goal in bringing in at least 10,000 additional Syrian refugees to the U.S. this year the Obama administration has opened up a new resettlement center and has shortened the processing time from around 18-24 months down to just three months.

The new refugee resettlement center located in Amman, Jordan was opened in February and will run until April 28th, 2016. The center interviews around 600 people every day. 1,000 Syrian refugees have already been resettled in the U.S. since October 2015.

According to the regional refugee coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Gina Kassem, Pres. Obama’s “10,000 (figure) is a floor and not a ceiling, and it is possible to increase the number.”

Kassem also told reporters that once they receive the refugee case from the UN Refugee Agency that, “we do not have exclusions or look for families with certain education background, language skills or other socio-economic factors, and we do not cut family sizes.”

After the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks many are concerned that ISIS agents may pose as refugees as a way to enter the U.S. Last year FBI Director, James Comey, expressed concern that the U.S. does not have the ability to thoroughly screen the Syrian refugees for terrorist ties even through the lengthy 18-24-month process.

 The Administration has yet to comment on how a vetting process that took on average 18-24 months could be condensed into a three-month period.

Read more on this story at the Associated Press.