U.S. & Syrian refugeesHouse votes for an effective ban on Syrian refugees coming to U.S.

The House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a bill which slows down, if not blocks altogether, the resettlement in United States of refugees from Syria and Iraq.

Breaking with their president, dozens of Democrats joined all the Republicans present to pass a bill which requires the directors of the FBI and national intelligence personally to approve the acceptance into the United States of each refugee.

The White House said it would veto the bill, saying it “would unacceptably hamper our efforts to assist some of the most vulnerable people in the world.”

The New York Times reports that the size of the majority voting for the bill — which included forty-seven Democrats — means that in the House the bill is veto-proof.

In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, Republican presidential candidates, governors, and lawmakers highlighted the possibility that ISIS may send some of its followers into the United States disguised as refugees. The governors of thirty-one states — all but one of them Republican — have said they would block refugees from settling in their states.

The Telegraph notes that there little to no evidence to connect terrorism with Syrian and Iraqi refugees trying to come to the United States. DefenseOne notes that officials in charge of current vetting procedures have been unable to cite cases in which a Syrian posing as a refugee was caught entering the United States with malicious intent (see Molly O’Toole, “How Fear Slammed America’s Door on Syrian Refugees,” DefenseOne, 7 October 2015).

The Times notes that only 1,500 Syrian refugees have been accepted into the United States since 2011, but that the Obama administration announced in September that it was planning to allow 10,000 Syrians into the United States next year.

Hillary Clinton, the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, supported the position of the Obama administration, criticizing the domestic response to the Paris attacks and saying this was not the time to score “political points.”

In a speech in New York yesterday, she said that “Many of these refugees are fleeing the same terrorists as us. It would be a cruel irony if ISIS forced these people from their homes, and then forced us to slam the door shut.

“We can get this right. America’s free, open society — described by some as a threat — I see as one of our strengths,” she said.