Refugees fret over Trump administration

Guardian:
Refugees settled in the US are in a terrible limbo and fearful of being deported while they wait to see how they will be treated by Donald Trump’s new administration, advocacy groups and experts say.

They told the Guardian that the attacks on refugees during the election campaign had already had a chilling effect and that since Trump’s election win, refugee families had been in contact asking for advice about whether they faced being deported.

One expert said the president could virtually stop new refugees coming to the country amid the continuing Syrian crisis.

Anxieties were heightened on Monday when Kris Kobach, currently secretary of state for Kansas but rumored to be on the shortlist for a cabinet post, possibly as leader of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was photographed going into a meeting with Trump with documents that outlined aggressive proposals to bar the entry of Syrian refugees and reinstate a national registry focused on Muslims.

Although Trump’s team has denied that the president-elect supports a Muslim registry, as a candidate he repeatedly expressed his openness to the idea on the campaign trail. He emphasized the need for a database of Syrian refugees, but refused on multiple occasions to rule out a Muslim registry when presented with the question. On one occasion, he claimed that resettled Syrians might rob their neighbors.

Reports of hate crimes have spiked since the election and newly released FBI data shows that hate crimes against American Muslims rose sharply last year.
...
That statement about hate crimes is misleading in that hate crimes against Jews is significantly greater than that against Muslims and Jews have not been implicated in any terrorist attacks on US citizens.

There is also distrust of the Obama administration's vetting of refugees and their selection.  While the administration acknowledges that Christians in the region have been the subject of genocide only a small fraction of the refugees are Christians.  The Christian refugees have not been implicated in any terrorist attack.


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