Democrats in the Senate blocked a bill on Wednesday that would have effectively stalled the resettlement of Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the United States.
The legislation, which sought to impose tighter restrictions on refugee screening, failed to overcome a procedural hurdle by a vote of 55 to 43. The bill – which would have required chiefs at the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and CIA to all certify that each individual refugee from Iraq or Syria had sufficiently cleared a background check – overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives in November on a bipartisan basis.
But Senate Democrats held the line to ensure that the measure did not make it to Barack Obama’s desk, an outcome that would have forced a presidential veto on what has emerged as a contentious national security issue.
The question of refugee admittance has gained particular prominence on the2016 campaign trail, with presidential candidates sharply divided along party lines on whether the US should open up its borders to more of the millions fleeing war-torn Syria and Iraq. All three Republican senators running for president – Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky – returned to Washington to cast a vote in favor of advancing the bill, citing the threat of terrorism as reason for a more stringent vetting process.
Paul said Democrats were “making a big mistake” by blocking the legislation in the current climate.
“I think that if we want to protect our country, we’d have to have more strict scrutiny of those who are coming to visit and of those who are coming as refugees,” Paul told the Guardian after the vote.
“There have been repeated examples of people who pretend to be refugees and turn out to be a danger. I think the same goes for students and for visitors … Unfortunately, we’ve got a long road ahead of us of people wanting to come and attack us, so I think we need more scrutiny.”
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