What Happened to Two Year Vetting Process

Under New U.S. Refugee Surge, Processing Time Reportedly Slashed to 3 Months

Now the State Department says the 18-24 month vetting process is just a "worldwide" average

 We knew this was coming.

In order for the Obama administration to achieve its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S. this year, the so-called vetting process for migrants, which typically takes anywhere from 18 to 24 months, has reportedly been slashed to three months:

“While the resettlement process usually takes 18 to 24 months, under the surge operation this will be reduced to three months, [regional refugee coordinator Gina] Kassem said,” the AP reported Wednesday.

With the fiscal year now more than half over, the number of Syrian refugees admitted as of Wednesday stands at 1,353, according to State Department Refugee Processing Center data.

In order to meet the 10,000 target by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, the AP report said that around 600 Syrian refugees were being interviewed daily at a “resettlement surge center” which was opened in Amman last February.

“The U.N. Refugee Agency prioritizes the most vulnerable cases for resettlement, and then refers them to the U.S. to review, Kassem said. She said that priority is given to high-risk groups such as victims of torture and gender based violence and unaccompanied minors,” the AP reported.

Of course the State Department maintains that security screenings will not be compromised. “All applicants will still be subject to the same stringent security and medical requirements that apply to all applicants for U.S. refugee resettlement,” a State Department official said Thursday.

Yes, because reducing a two-year vetting process -- which already proved to be far from infallible --  to a mere fraction of the time will really ensure "stringent security" takes place. 

“While this surge and other efforts will decrease the overall processing time for individual families, the average processing time worldwide remains 18-24 months,” the State Department official dubiously added. 

Operative word here being: "worldwide." That's a nice bait and switch considering the 18-24 month vetting period was supposed to apply to U.S. immigration, specifically.CNSNews expands on this crucial point: 

Throughout the debate over the potential security implications of President Obama’s plan to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S. in FY2016, the administration has stressed that the application process – which includes vetting and interviews by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services – takes 18-24 months.

Security concerns deepened after the November 13 Paris terrorist attacks stoked fears that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) was using refugee admission programs to infiltrate Western countries.

Four days after the Paris attack, Obama mocked the critics, saying during a visit to the Philippines that the Republican presidential hopefuls talked tough about solving problems but “apparently they’re scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America as part of our tradition of compassion.”

“Understand, under current law, it takes anywhere from, on average, 18 to 24 months to clear a refugee to come into the United States,” the president said. “They are subjected to the most rigorous process conceivable.”

That process, Obama said, included vetting by the U.S. intelligence community and other agencies, as well as biometrics.

“There is an entire apparatus of all of our law enforcement agencies and the center that we use for countering terrorism to check and ensure that a refugee is not admitted that might cause us harm,” he said.

Oddly just last week State Department spokesman John Kirby doubled down on the 18-24 month processing mantra, saying that, "in the main, it takes 18 to 24 months for an individual." He then backpeddled, however, adding, "I can’t dispute the fact that some probably don’t take that long and some probably take longer than 24 months."

That's a pretty enormous disparity, Kirby. But why let past promises spoil the administration's plan to forge ahead off a cliff and take the rest of the nation with it?

As CNS points out, it's also worth noting that of the 1,353 refugees recently admitted to the U.S., a mere 0.6% are Christians. 

We could see this coming from a mile away.