[And the news is not good! TM]

So far, almost half of America’s governors have demanded a halt to Barack Obama’s plans to admit tens of thousands of refugees from the collapse of Syria. That includes one Democratic governor, New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan, while seven other Democrats are giving the green light to resettlement. However, neither of these positions will end up mattering, at least not legally, as governors have no authority to restrict the federal government’s actions on asylum decisions:

"Under Section 412 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, states do not have the authority to refuse foreign nationals who have been granted asylum or refugee status by the federal government. Additionally, the White House does not need to consult with states on decisions to parole or give refuge to foreign nationals.

“Under the INA, the president must only seek ‘appropriate consultation’ when deciding to admit refugees. The term appropriate consultation is defined to include cabinet level representatives and committees on the Judiciary of the Senate and House. State participation is not referenced in the resettlement process,” Dale Wilcox, executive director of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, told the Washington Examiner.

However, the Office of Refugee Resettlement is required to consult with state and local governments and nonprofit agencies to accept recommendations made by state officials.

Although 26 states do not wish to take in Syrian refugees, seven — Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Washington — have said they will."

Even if these governors had the ability to tell the federal government not to settle refugees in their states, which they don’t, how would they enforce that once the refugees are here? Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that the Obama administration decided to settle all of the Syrian refugees in the state of Washington. What’s to keep them from loading up the family sedan and trekking to Alabama, Texas, or any of the other states that have put up the NO VACANCY sign? The US does not have internal passports or papers checks at state borders (nor do we want any), and in fact we’d have no papers to check.

In other words, these are political protests, not definitive actions. These governors might be able to use the INA to fend off the federal government if they wanted to open a resettlement center in their state, although that might still be ultimately outside their authority. But eventually, refugees who want to live in these states would get there, regardless of these statements, if Obama decided to grant asylum to the refugees. Once they’re in, they’re in, and to stay unless and until they commit an act that would prompt their expulsion. As we saw in Paris, the risk is that will be too late.

Also, it’s not like we’ve shut our doors until now; we have already been offering asylum and have taken in over two thousand refugees so far. One might expect that these would tend toward the Assyrian Christians who have been victimized by the genocides perpetrated by ISIS, but they account for fewer than 3% of those granted asylum in the US, according to CNS News:
"Of 2,184 Syrian refugees admitted into the U.S. since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, only 53 (2.4 percent) have been Christians while 2098 (or 96 percent) have been Muslims, according to State Department statistics updated on Monday.

The remaining 33 include 1 Yazidi, 8 Jehovah Witnesses, 2 Baha’i, 6 Zoroastrians, 6 of “other religion,” 7 of “no religion,” and 3 atheists.

By comparison, Syria’s population breakdown in early 2011, before the civil war’s death toll and refugee exodus roiled the demographics, was 90 percent Muslim (including Sunnis, Shia, Alawites and Druze) and 10 percent Christian, according to the CIA World Factbook."

snip

Ultimately, this refugee crisis is a result of the failure of Obama’s foreign policy and national security strategies, as well as his laughable approach to “degrading and ultimately destroying” ISIS. Let’s not lose sight of that fact in this debate.

Addendum: Their protests can cause headaches for the White House, however, and that seems to have produced a response.

Addendum II: Via Instapundit, Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum warns liberals to knock off the moral preening and answer the legitimate concerns being raised:

"So it doesn’t seem xenophobic or crazy to call for an end to accepting Syrian refugees. It seems like simple common sense. After all, things changed after Paris.

Mocking Republicans over this—as liberals spent much of yesterday doing on my Twitter stream—seems absurdly out of touch to a lot of people. Not just wingnut tea partiers, either, but plenty of ordinary centrists too. It makes them wonder if Democrats seriously see no problem here. Do they care at all about national security? Are they really that detached from reality?

The liberal response to this should be far more measured. We should call for tighter screening. Never mind that screening is already pretty tight. We should highlight the fact that we’re accepting a pretty modest number of refugees. In general, we should act like this is a legitimate thing to be concerned about and then work from there."
Because it is in fact a legitimate concern, and the competence of this administration is another.

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/11/17/ca...e-resettlement/