U.S. HOUSE:

47 Democrats join Republicans in voting to pause resettlement program

WASHINGTON — The Republican-led House voted overwhelmingly Thursday for emergency legislation intended to pause the nation’s Syrian refugee program and overhaul the rules for screening Iraqis and Syrians fleeing their war-torn nations.

The bipartisan 289-137 vote reflected growing public sentiment and political pressure from candidates in the GOP presidential field raising the alarm over last Friday’s terror attacks in Paris that killed at least 129 people and injured scores of others.

Among the 47 Democrats who joined the Republican majority were five from Texas: Gene Green of Houston, Henry Cuellar of Laredo, Lloyd Doggett of Austin, Filemon Vela of Brownsville and Marc Veasey of Fort Worth. Mercedes Democrat Ruben Hinojosa, who announced his retirement last week, did not vote.

The entire Republican delegation from Texas voted for the bill, with the exception of Roger Williams of Weatherford, who did not vote.

The quick vote in the House now sends a heated debate over refugees and American values to the Senate, where Texas Republican Ted Cruz is seeking to include an “exception” for Christians and other persecuted minorities that he says are facing “genocide.”

President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the bill. He also called Cruz’s measure an “unAmerican” religious test, a charge that Cruz categorically rejected in a Senate speech Thursday.

“Mr. President, it is neither unAmerican nor offensive to believe in rule of law, to believe in standing up to radical Islamic terrorism,” Cruz said.

Administration officials and their Democratic allies in Congress argued that the bill would turn the nation’s back on war victims and upend the current multiyear system for screening Syrian refugees.

“It sends the wrong signal,” said California Democrat Barbara Lee. “It is not consistent with our national security goals, and it’s a betrayal of our fundamental values.”

Republican leaders in the Senate, including Texan John Cornyn, strongly back the House bill. But no vote has been scheduled in the upper chamber on the GOP refu-

gee plan.

The American Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act, authored by Austin Republican Michael McCaul, contains no religious component. It would require the nation’s top security officials — the secretary of Homeland Security, the director of the FBI, and the director of National Intelligence — to certify Syrian or Iraqi refugees before they are admitted into the United States.

“Let me be clear, we are a nation at war,” McCaul said Thursday. “We must take decisive action to show the American people we are doing all we can to protect our country.”

Refugee numbers to grow

Until the new rules are in place, the GOP bill would effectively halt an Obama administration plan to admit as many as 10,000 Syrian war refugees in the coming year.

The United States accepted some 1,700 Syrians fleeing the civil war in the past year. About 90 of them settled last year in Houston, one of the top locations for refugee resettlement in the nation.

Those numbers are expected to grow as a European refugee crisis intensifies and the Obama administration remains committed to

increasing its overall refugee intake from about 70,000 to 100,000 a year by 2017.

While opposition to the House measure came almost entirely from Democrats, party leaders said they did not “whip” the vote, meaning lawmakers were free to vote however they wished.

“Do whatever works for you, for your district,” Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said she told fellow Democrats facing mounting public fears.

Some Democrats, including Doggett, criticized the GOP bill, even as they voted for it.

“Instead of working together to make our families safer, this partisan four-page bill divides,” said Doggett, arguing that the administration is already doing what the GOP bill requires. “Fortunately, it does not halt the refugee resettlement program — it simply requires bureaucrats to file more reports and sign more papers.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan, however, told lawmakers that the process of tightening the nation’s rules for screening refugees would mean putting the current system on hold. “This plan pauses the program,” Ryan said.

In the end, public fears of the global reach of Islamic State ter- rorism saw a significant number of centrist Democrats join Republicans appeals to recalibrate the refugee and asylum process for the sake of national security.

‘It’s a security test’ Republicans expected as much. “I can tell you from the phone calls I’ve been receiving and what I’m hearing from Texans all across the state, they are not interested in a massive refugee population coming to Texas, especially when the federal government cannot guarantee their safety and security by adequate vetting,” Cornyn said on the eve of the House vote.

Some Democrats and immigration advocates argue that McCaul’s measure will disrupt a lengthy screening process for Syrian and Iraqis that is already more rigorous than that faced by any other group of immigrants.

But Republicans counter that many of the current background checks and screening procedures are meaningless for asylum seekers arriving from lawless and chaotic regions like Syria and Iraq where public records are poor or non-existent.

Ryan, calling the vote “an important first step,” said law enforcement and intelligence officials have told Congress they cannot verify that every Syrian seeking refuge is not a security threat. “Right now, the government can’t certify these standards, so this plan pauses the program.”

But amid an emotional debate about upholding American values and welcoming immigrants of all races and religions, Ryan emphasized for the second time in as many days that the GOP bill is not aimed at Muslims.

“It’s a security test — not a religious test,” Ryan said. “This reflects our values. This reflects our responsibilities. And this is urgent. We cannot and should not wait to act — not when our national security is at stake.”

Democratic opponents questioned the urgency of the legislation, noting that it was fashioned by GOP leaders in a matter of days, without any expert testimony or public hearings — all a departure from Ryan’s promise to return the House to an orderly committee process.

It is also unlikely to get a hearing in the Senate in the coming days, as lawmakers prepare for a weeklong Thanksgiving break.

When lawmakers return, they also will face conservative pressure to defund Obama’s refugee program as part of a separate year-end spending bill for 2016.