The Obama administration has resettled 13,210 Syrian refugees into
the United States since the beginning of 2016 – an increase of 675
percent over the same 10-month period in 2015.
Of those, 13,100
(99.1 percent) are Muslims – 12,966 Sunnis, 24 Shi’a, and 110 other
Muslims – and 77 (0.5 percent) are Christians. Another 24 (0.18 percent)
are Yazidis.
During the Jan.-Oct. period in 2015, 1,705 Syrian
refugees were admitted, of whom 1,664 (97.5 percent) were Muslims and 29
(1.7 percent) were Christians.
Meanwhile the surge of Syrian
refugee admissions initiated by the administration last February has
continued into the new fiscal year, now one month-old: A total of 1,297
were resettled during October – a 593 percent increase over the 187
admitted in October 2015.
October’s arrivals were once again
dominated by Sunni Muslims, accounting for 1,263 (97.3 percent) of the
total. Another seven were Shi’a Muslims and 12 were other Muslims. The
rest of the October intake comprised 15 (1.1 percent) Christians – eight
Orthodox, four Catholics and three refugees self-described simply as
Christians.
That comes after last fiscal year saw a total of
12,587 Syrian refugees admitted, of whom 12,363 (98.2 percent) were
Sunnis, and 68 (0.5 percent) were Christians, according to State
Department Refugee Processing Center data.
The rest of the Syrian
refugees admitted during FY2016 were 103 other Muslims, 20 Shi’a
Muslims, 24 Yazidis, eight refugees with religion given as “other,” and
one with “no religion.”
Syrians of all religious and ethnic groups
have been victimized in the costly civil war, which has pitted a regime
dominated by Allawites – a sect of Shi’a Islam – and its Shi’a allies
against mostly Sunni rebel groups. A Sunni-majority population and
Christian and other minorities are caught in between, with some
supporting warring groups on either side.
But jihadists among the
rebels, and especially the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL),
have also targeted Christians, Yazidis and other minorities in
particular. Last March 17, Secretary of State John Kerry
announced,
in line with a legislative requirement, that the treatment of
Christians and other minorities in areas controlled by ISIS amounts to
genocide.
Since that genocide determination, the Obama
administration has resettled a total of 12,743 Syrian refugees in the
U.S., but only 74 (0.58 percent) of them are Christians, and only 24
(0.18 percent) of them are Yazidis. The vast majority – 12,637, or 99.16
percent – are Muslims, including 12,516 Sunnis.
According to the
1951 Refugee Convention, the five criteria for considering refugee
status applications are persecution for reasons of religion, race,
nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social
group.
Although religious persecution is one of those five
official vulnerability criteria, administration officials say the U.S.
does not and should not prioritize any particular religious affiliation
when considering Syrians’ applications.
When the civil war began
in March 2011, an estimated 74 percent of the Syrian population was
Sunni Muslim and an estimated 10 percent was Christian.
Therefore
if the U.S. admitted Christian Syrian refugees in proportion to the
population, roughly 1,260 Christians would have been resettled in the
United States in FY2016. Just 68 were.
Estimates of the number of
Christians who have fled their country since 2011 vary, but the
international Christian charity Barnabas Fund estimated some 600,000
earlier this year, the European Parliament said at least 700,000 had
done so, and a Chaldean Catholic bishop from Aleppo last March put the
figure at
at least one million.
One new report
estimates that the Syrian Christian population has dropped from 1.25 million in 2011 to less than 500,000 this year.
The U.S. is not alone in admitting such a small
proportion of Christians and Yazidis. Data in Britain, released as a
result of a freedom of information request, found that
1.9 percent of 2,659 Syrian refugees resettled there between September 2015 and the end of June this year were Christians, and 0.5 percent were Yazidis.
Then-British Prime Minister David Cameron said last fall Britain would take in 20,000 Syrian refugees.
“Whilst
the U.K. government points out that it outsources its selection of
vulnerable refugees to the U.N., its toleration of this level of
discrimination against some of the most vulnerable people in the world
is itself morally wrong,” said the Barnabas Fund when the figures
emerged this month.
“For it to tolerate this when Christians and
Yazidis are actually facing genocide in Syria and Iraq is a national
scandal of historic proportions.”
Like Britain, the U.S. relies
largely on the U.N. refugee agency for initial referral of refugee
applicants. But advocacy and humanitarian groups say many Syrian
Christians fear for their safety in U.N. camps, where accounts of
Christians being targeted by Muslim fellow refugees have been recorded.
As
a result, many tend to avoid registering with the agency, relying
instead on networks of churches or Christian charities in countries
surrounding Syria, especially Lebanon.
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