Obama 'would veto' GOP bill to slow refugee resettlement

President Barack Obama would veto a Republican bill introduced to toughen the screening process for Syrian refugees, the White House said on Wednesday.

The US 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 in Paris that killed 129, carried out by Syria-linked gunmen and claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

The plan would require the director of the FBI, the secretary of Homeland Security and the director of National Intelligence to personally 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 Defence.

"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.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said on Tuesday that turning away refugees was a matter of "better safe than sorry".

"This is a moment where it is better to be safe than to be sorry, so we think the prudent, the responsible thing is to take a pause in this particular aspect of this refugee programme in order to verify that terrorists are not trying to infiltrate the refugee population," he told reporters.

Republican presidential hopefuls have been among the most vocal against accepting Syrian refugees, with Florida Senator Marco Rubio tweeting on Tuesday that "we won’t be able to take more refugees. It’s not that we aren’t compassionate. But we can’t. No way to background check."

Refugee family rerouted as governors deny access

Meanwhile, a family of Syrian refugees accepted into the United States has been re-routed after the governor of Indiana objected to them coming to his state, officials said. 

A non-governmental resettlement agency had planned to send the family of three, selected from a UN refugee camp in the Middle East and vetted by US security agencies, to start a new life in Indianapolis.

But after Indiana's Governor Mike Pence joined the two dozen state leaders refusing to accept Syrians, the agency re-directed them to Connecticut.

Spokesman John Kirby said the US State Department respected the NGO's decision to re-route the family, but made it clear that the federal government did not agree with state governments blocking refugee settlement.

"Obviously," he said, "we want to uphold our values as an immigrant nation. And we want to see communities around the country - and there are some 180 that routinely welcome refugees - we want to see that continue.

"So, is it optimal to re-route based on concerns expressed by one or other state? No, that's not."

Kirby said the US mood had changed because of a "very strident and in some cases hyperbolic reaction" to last week's Paris attacks, and defended the vetting process that potential refugees undergo.

Some 187 Syrians have been admitted to the United States since the start of the fiscal year on 1 October.

It is also a small fraction of the total US refugee resettlement programme, still the world's largest despite public concern about immigration from the Arab world.

"The programme has admitted 785,000 refugees in the 14 years since 9/11," Kirby said. 

"Of those, only about a dozen have been arrested or removed from the United States due to terrorism concerns that existed prior to their resettlement in the United States. And none of them were Syrian."

Over four million Syrian refugees have fled the country - around a fifth of its population - amid a bloody civil war that has left around a quarter of a million people dead.