Quote:And that's where I'm left scratching my head. Not allowing any more refugees to come over I understand. Restraining refugees to a controlled environment indefinitely I understand, but accelerating the timetable to accept thousands more refugees? It just doesn't make sense.

This is what I found when looking for a way the State Department decides on how many refugees and the cost, etc. The state official does somewhat answer how the process works though it's not a concise answer by any means. Imagine that. It's dated 25 September 2015 so it's fairly recent, but before the bombings in Beruit and attacks in Paris. This is one of many questions asked by Americans through phone calls. Very interesting yet not really informational. There is a question and answer about how they come up with numbers.

 

Background briefing on the United States Refugee Admissions Program

 

<b>QUESTION:</b> Could you tell us, please, what the range of numbers is? You say you want to – the Secretary wants to increase the number of refugees that are admitted, so what is the range you’re looking at and what does that cost? And then it seems that part of the problem is vetting, in that the UN has submitted a list but it takes a long time to vet these people. Are you looking at committing more resources to speed up that vetting process? Thank you.

 

<p style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:'Lucida Grande', Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><b>SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL:</b> The Secretary talked about a range of different numbers, but I will not be sharing them with you today. And there was varying views within the group from the judiciary committees of the House and Senate about how receptive they were to increasing the numbers of refugees coming.

<p style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:'Lucida Grande', Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;font-size:12px;">And the process to bring refugees here is careful and deliberate, and that’s – as a result, it takes a while. It takes between 18 to 24 months between when a refugee is referred to us and when they – if approved, when they end up arriving in the United States. And a big reason for this is the care that’s put into the security vetting for them. It involves several aspects. Part of it is that every refugee has their sort of case file put together with help from organizations that we fund overseas, and then those files and the refugees’ families themselves are interviewed by someone from the Department of Homeland Security, from USCIS. And then we also check their names against a whole series of U.S. Government databases to make sure that they’re not already in there – some sort of derogatory information about them.

<p style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:'Lucida Grande', Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;font-size:12px;">What we’re trying to do is weed out people who are liars, who are criminals, or would-be terrorists. And this is something that slows down the process and it’s taken very seriously by everyone involved in it.

<p style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:'Lucida Grande', Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"> 

<p style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:'Lucida Grande', Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;font-size:12px;">And in the interest of saving some time, wikipedia FWIW.  

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