US House Speaker Ryan slams Obama's refugee program

US House Speaker Paul Ryan has denounced President Barack Obama’s refugee program, citing a lack of adequate screening that puts the country at risk from the Daesh (ISIL) Takfiri terrorism.

“It's clear that ISIL wants to, has planned on attempting to infiltrate refugee populations. This is a problem. If one person gets through who is planning a terrorist attack in our country, that's a problem,” Ryan said on Thursday.

“The administration — whether it's Homeland Security or the FBI, cannot tell us that they can adequately screen people. There isn't really a Syrian to talk to on that end of the equation to vet people, so it is a problem,” he added.

The remarks come as Obama has set a target of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees by September 30, 2016, with the US State Department saying it has fallen behind with the schedule in meeting the president’s goal partly due to a lack of personnel available to interview refugees.

According to Larry Bartlett, the State Department's director of the Office of Refugee Admissions, the Department has assigned more staff, as well as hiring new employees in the Jordanian capital of Amman to focus on processing Syrian refugees.

“By putting more officers in one place we can conduct more interviews. Partly we have a backlog because we don’t have enough officers to interview people,” said Bartlett.

“So part of it is a little bit of shifting. We’ve also done some new hiring, and it was hiring that was timely. Those were people we needed anyway but they came on board in time for this surge operation.”

He added that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has prioritized sending more refugees to the US than other countries.

Reports say about 9,500 Syrians have so far been interviewed in Amman since February 1, and 12,000 interviews should be completed by April 28.

Jordan hosts about 635,000 of the more than 4.7 million Syrians who have registered with the UNHCR after fleeing the conflict in Syria.

The total number of Syrians in Jordan is more than 1.2 million, including those who arrived before the conflict began in 2011.

The United States has resettled only about 1,500 Syrian refugees since 2011, when the conflict began in Syria.

Washington has on different occasions been criticized for not taking more of the refugees fleeing the war-torn country.

The plan to bring in 8,700 more refugees in the next several months has already faced stiff opposition, especially in the upcoming presidential race.

US Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has called for a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants and fellow candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has called for imposing a religious test on refugees.

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