Refugees from All Countries to Be Allowed in U.S., but There Are New Rules

U.S. administration officials confirmed that the Trump administration would allow refugee admissions to America to continue for all countries, but with new rules meant to improve the examination of the applicants, The Wall Street Journal reports.

According to the new rules, the administration would have to collect more biographical data, including names of family members and places of employment, and it would also have to do more research of the social media posts to see whether the public pronouncements of the refugees are same as the stories in their applications. An unnamed official confirms that the people who work for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency will get new guidance and training so that they could detect fraud on the part of applicants.

The refugee program was put on hold in June for 120 days as part of President Donald Trump’s travel ban, but that period expires today.

The new order says that refugee admissions would resume for all countries, but an unnamed person familiar with the planning stated that people from 11 countries would be subject to additional vetting. That will slow down things for them.

The vetting process can create many problems because the people often don’t have documents for identification and some countries from where the refugees have come don’t want or can’t cooperate. The advocates for the refugees say that the existing vetting process is more than adequate, but Trump painted refugees as a dangerous group in his executive order.

“The United States’ refugee vetting procedures, which include extensive and comprehensive interviews as well as multiple rounds of security vetting with an array of U.S. and international intelligence and law enforcement agencies, are widely recognized as the most stringent in the world,” said a statement last month from the advocacy group Human Rights First.

Obama’s administration also wanted to increase screening of social media, but the efforts of the officials were limited partly because the process is labor intensive.