USA | Refugee quandary: Immigrant legacy vs 9/11-era fears

The Paris attacks are rapidly weakening U.S. support for bringing in thousands more Syrian refugees, as pressure grows in Congress and the Republican presidential campaign to reverse course and governors once open to resettlement try to shut their states’ doors.
President Barack Obama held firm to current plans Monday (early yesterday, Macau time), appealing to Americans to “not close our hearts” to Syria’s victims of war and terrorism and denouncing calls from Republican presidential candidates to favor Syrian Christians over Muslims in the refugee influx. His remarks, at a summit of world leaders in Turkey, seemed aimed at heading off a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment reminiscent of the 9/11 era, as much as keeping open the pathway for refugees.
America’s vision of itself as a welcoming destination for the displaced was colliding with its recent memories of devastation caused by terrorists, all part of a quandary over what to do about the masses of people escaping the brutality of the Syrian conflict, perhaps with radicals in their midst.
On Monday Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered his state’s refugee resettlement program not to accept any more Syrians, and some other Republican governors — including two Republican presidential contenders, Govs. John Kasich of Ohio and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana — announced or suggested they were suspending cooperation with Washington on the program, at least until assured the newcomers were being vetted effectively for security risks. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, also a presidential candidate, said not even “orphans under 5” should be let in because the government can’t be trusted to check people properly.
Republican lawmakers meanwhile called for suspension of the federal Syrian refugee program and threatened to try to stop it in legislation that must pass by Dec. 11 to keep the government running. New House Speaker Paul Ryan neither endorsed nor ruled out that course.
Likewise, other Republican presidential candidates, already skeptical if not hostile to the refugee-welcoming plan before the attacks, stepped up their rhetoric against it. Billionaire Donald Trump said that, rather than allowing refugees into the country, the U.S. should build “a big, beautiful safe zone” in Syria where refugees can wait out their brutal civil war. He’d been among the first to warn that the refugee crisis could represent a “Trojan horse” with terrorists infiltrating the ranks of innocent refugees.
Calls by Republican rivals Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to give preference to Christian refugees from Syria prompted a sharp rebuke from Obama. “Shameful,” he said. “We don’t have a religious test for our compassion.”
Yet Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders expressed support for Obama’s position. “We will not turn our back on refugees,” the Vermont senator said at a campaign event in Cleveland.
At the heart of the debate is the Obama administration’s decision to raise the nation’s annual limit of 70,000 refugees by 10,000, with most of the new slots for Syrians, in the budget year that started Oct. 1.
But indications that at least one of the attackers who killed 129 people in Paris may have crossed into France within the influx of refugees have given critics of Obama’s plan a footing to demand a cutoff.
“Until we can sort out the bad guys, we must not be foolish,” Republican presidential contender Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, said after a Nevada campaign swing Monday. And he said of Syrians already in the U.S., “I would watch them very carefully.” Calvin Woodward, Washington, AP