WASHINGTON — Khaled fled Aleppo, Syria, with his wife and four you children — two of whom he carried in a backpack.
Their harrowing trek, through the woods, nearly drowning in the ocean in a rubber boat, and over mountains to the border of Serbia, captivated the audience attending a hearing before the Helsinki Commission Tuesday.
Khaled’s story punctuated an appeal from a European Union official at the hearing for the U.S. to make more room for refugees caught up in the flood of migrants that’s overwhelming Europe.
“This is a global crisis. There are some 60 million people displaced globally — 11 million Syrians specifically,” European Union Ambassador to the U.S. David O’Sullivan told the committee. “It’s absolutely clear that Europe cannot offer asylum to all of those people.”
O’Sullivan credited the U.S. for being “a leading donor of human assistance alongside the EU and its member states,” but suggested more needs to be done.
“The United States, I must say does make big efforts at the resettlement of refugees. But we would ask that the U.S. consider whether in this particular context of this new global crisis that we’re facing, they could not also make some additional effort in order to contribute to finding a solution to this problem,” O’Sullivan said.
They are among millions of Syrians fleeing the ever-increasing carnage in Syria. U.S. military officials and Human Rights Watch indicated Wednesday the Russian military is now dropping outlawed cluster bombs in Aleppo and Hama. The development is expected to trigger a greater exodus.
The White House announced in mid-September that the “U.S. expects to admit 70,000 refugees from all over the world this fiscal year.” President Barack Obama has directed his administration to scale up the number of Syrian refugees the U.S. admits next year to 10,000.
Hinting at the need for the U.S. to accept more, O’Sullivan told WTOP however, the EU would make no demands.
“I think it would be most impolite of me to suggest to the U.S. what that number should be. This is for the U.S. government and Congress to decide what they feel is appropriate. We are only asking politely and respectfully that consideration be given to taking even more than you have in the past,” O’Sullivan said.
Also, he asked the U.S. to help persuade its other allies to take in some of the refugees.
The Helsinki Commission, also known as the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe calls the dilemma Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. It consists of nine members from the U.S. House of Representatives, nine members from the United States Senate, and one member each from the Departments of State, Defense and Commerce.
Commission chairman, Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, said at the hearing, “there is real human need and desperation. Refugees are entrusting themselves to smugglers and where there is human smuggling there is a higher risk of human trafficking.”
“There is also the real threat that terrorist groups like ISIS will infiltrate these massive movements of people to kill civilians in Europe and beyond. I am deeply concerned that the screening at many European borders is inadequate and putting lives at risk. All of us must be responsive to the humanitarian needs without compromising one iota on security,” said Smith.
And as the calls grow to bring more refugees into the U.S., concerns about security have grown.
“Many Americans are understandably concerned about the threat posed by inadequate security screening procedures for refugee seeking entry into the United States,” said House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, in a statement in mid-September.
“ISIS themselves have stated their intention to take advantage of the crisis to infiltrate the west. We have to take this threat seriously,” McCaul said.
O’Sullivan acknowledges that there is a risk of that happening, but suggested terrorists are looking for the path of least scrutiny and resistance.
“If you want to smuggle terrorists into Europe, there are easier ways of doing it than sending them as asylum seekers, who have to accept to be fingerprinted and photographed and have a file opened on them. So, I think, in the short term that doesn’t have to be our major concern,” said O’Sullivan.
