关于恐怖分子想借难民之名进入美国的一些认识上常识上的误区,前天读了一篇文章,摘几段贴到这里,
希望对坛子里的某些狭隘的偏激的言论能有所启发和触动: Entering the U.S. as refugees would be the hardest way for would-be terrorists
Were any of the Paris attackers refugees?
As of now, none of the Paris attackers have been confirmed as having entered Europe as refugees.
In fact, most of the Paris attackers were European citizens born in France or Belgium. Two of them appear to have entered Europe through Greece although it doesn't appear that they came in through a refugee program.
A Syrian passport found next to one of the attackers' bodies stoked fears that the man had been a refugee. That has not yet been confirmed, although top European officials have suggested the passport was doctored, which raises its own set of questions, but does not confirm the suspected attacker was a refugee. Others have definitively been shown to be European citizens.
Perhaps more importantly, the European refugee admission system is dramatically different from the U.S. system for Syrians, in large part because the U.S. is geographically separated from Syria. The U.S. has the opportunity to do far more vetting before refugees arrive on their shores.
How does a refugee get into the U.S.? Refugees must undergo an 18- to 24-month screening process, minimum, that the United Nations' refugee arm oversees. And that's before individual countries even begin to consider a refugee's application and conduct their own additional interviews and background checks.
The screening process generally includes multiple interviews, background checks and an extensive cross-referencing process that tests refugee's stories against others and accounts from sources on the ground in their home country.
Throughout that process, U.N. officials and local government officials in temporary host countries like Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon look to determine the legitimacy of asylum seekers' claims and ensure that they meet the criteria of a refugee, including that they are not and have not been involved in any fighting or terrorist activities.
Refugees also have their retinas scanned and have their fingerprints lifted.
Christopher Boian, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, called the process "stringent" and "long and complex." So after they go through that process by the U.N., the U.S. does an additional screening?
That's right. After a rigorous screening process and several interviews carried out by the U.N. refugee agency, refugees the U.S. agrees to consider for resettlement have to undergo an additional interview, medical evaluation and security screening.
According to one U.S. government official, there's an additional layer of vetting that's specific to Syrian applicants, including special briefings for interviewers and information from the U.S. intelligence community.
The security screening involves checks against several government agencies' databases and terrorist watch lists using biographic and biometric information. It's a process Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, recently called "the most stringent security process for anyone entering the United States."
And Syrian refugees get an additional, more targeted layer of screening involving the U.S. Intelligence agency, according to a government official.