The Obama administration announced Monday that it was poised to reach its goal of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S. this fiscal year amid a five-year civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in Syria and displaced millions of others.
The 10,000th Syrian refugee was expected to arrive Monday afternoon, National Security Advisor Susan Rice said in a prepared statement.
“On behalf of the president and his administration, I extend the warmest of welcomes to each and every one of our Syrian arrivals, as well as the many other refugees resettled this year from all over the world,” Rice said. “We will admit at least 85,000 refugees in total this year, including vulnerable individuals and families from Burma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, El Salvador, Iraq, Somalia, Ukraine, and many other countries.”
Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, 376 Syrians have been relocated to Georgia, federal records show. All of them were resettled in the Atlanta area until this year, when Lutheran Services of Georgia relocated a young five-member family to Savannah.
Thousands of Syrian refugees have arrived in the U.S. following resistance from more than half of the nation’s governors — including Gov. Nathan Deal — in the wake of the Nov. 13 terrorist massacre in Paris. Deal initially sought to block the resettlement of Syrians in Georgia, citing security concerns. He retreated in January after he received a legal opinion that says he had no legal power to stop them from coming.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he wants to stop what he called “the tremendous flow” of Syrian refugees into the U.S. In contrast, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, has called for a sharp increase in the number of Syrian refugees the U.S. accepts to up to 65,000.
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