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Syrian Refugees in the United States: Where are they and what happens next?

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Obama calls for more refugees, but U.S. governors stand against plans.

In the wake of the tragic Paris terrorist attacks, that claimed the lives of more than 100 people, many people in the United States are rejecting the idea of accepting more Syrian refugees.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - At least one of the the involved attackers, a suicide bomber, is believed to be a man who disguised himself as a Syrian refugee. Twenty-five-year-old Ahmad al Muhammad was allowed to enter Greece on October third, according to CNN. Fingerprints on a located passport matched Muhammad as one of the three suicide bombers at the Stade de France.

The United States has accepted only a minor fraction of the refugees that have fled the Syrian war. Since the start of the Syrian war, four years ago, only 1,854 Syrian refugees have been welcomed into the United States.


Those admitted have been placed into 130 towns and cities throughout the country. Some make it to big cities, like Houston, but the majority of those taken in are put into smaller "medium-sized" cities. According to the New York Times, Boise, Idaho has accepted more refugees than New York and Los Angeles combined.


Europe has welcomed tens of thousands of migrants into the country just this year, placing what some are calling more pressure on President Obama to accept an increased amount of refugees into our country.

Since 2012, Germany has admitted more than 92,000 Syrian refugees. During the last fiscal year, Syrians made up just two percent of the 70,000 refugees admitted in the United States. The largest refugee groups are from Myanmar, Iraq and Somalia. In response to Europe's openness, Obama has declared the United States will accept at least 10,000 refugees this fiscal year.

However, following the Paris terrorist attacks, at least nine United States governors have stated they will not accept any Syrian refugees into their states. Republican governors from Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Massachusetts and Texas have announced their top priority is the safety of their state's residents.

"I just signed an Executive Order instructing state agencies to take all available steps to stop the relocation of Syrian refugees to LA.," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal tweeted on Monday.

The whole world has been taken aback and many are frightened. Many people are left wondering, what are we supposed to do? What if this happens in our home? President Obama has openly called the rejection of Syrian refugees a "betrayal of our values."

"Slamming the door in their faces would be a betrayal of our values," Obama stated "Our nations can welcome refugees who are desperately seeking safety and ensure our own security. We can and must do both."

"And when I hear folks say that, well, maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims, when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who's fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that's shameful," he said. "That's not American. That's not who we are. We don't have religious tests to our compassion."

In response to Obama's statements, presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R-Tex) stated, "It is one of the saddest things we've seen for seven years, that President Obama has consistently abandoned and alienated our friends and allies and has coddled and appeased our enemies. And that is never more true than with radical Islamic terrorism."

Both President Obama and Hillary Clinton want to define the enemy as some sort of abstract and ill-defined violent extremism. That means they cannot direct a strategy to defeat it because they cannot acknowledge who they're fighting."

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