2. We did hear about it, Ted Cruz could not stop talking about it.
3. Refugees are referred to the US by the UNHCR. If their referrals don't reflect the demographics of Syria, that's not something we can directly or easily change.
4. Christians are 10% of Syria, but it's not clear that they would be 10% of refugees. I couldn't immediately find any statistics on that.
> Cruz is rounding up, but he is correct about the percentage of Christians among the Syrian refugees who have resettled in the United States.
> A total of 2,290 Syrian refugees have arrived in the United States since fiscal year 2011, which is when the Syrian civil war began, through Nov. 20, according to the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center. Of those, only 62 were identified in the center’s database as Christian. That’s 2.7 percent, even though the Christian population in Syria is about 10 percent, according to the CIA World Factbook.
All it says is that the UN stacked the pool, and Obama never challenged it.
Is Newsweek part of the Trump train? http://www.newsweek.com/us-bars-christian-not-muslim-refugee... (mid-Sept 2016).
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/is-this-the-end-...
By the way, this article is from one of your reputable news sources.
That is, I'd expect that a Christian in the middle east would be more likely to have citizenship or family in a western nation than your average Syrian.
Now it could be, but 'they are being specifically targeted' doesn't immediately imply to me that 'they should be a disproportionately high number of refugees'.
That story mentions Bishops and priests who are very likely to not be Syrian Citizens, and instead be capable of just flying back to their home countries.
Why would you assume that? These are Syrian Christians who have lived their for centuries. They are no different than other Syrians other than their religious beliefs.
I'm by no means saying that every Christian will be more capable of leaving, or not be a citizen. But if 30% of Christians are citizens elsewhere, and only 3% of Muslims, then you have 70% of 10% of the poopulation as potential Christian refugees, and 97% of 90% of the population as Muslim refugees, which would make 7.4% of asylum seekers Christian, as opposed to 10% of the population.
Shouldn't we prioritize people who are the victims of religious persecution.
If you are a minority (religious, ethnic, political) that is used as evidence of persecution and helps your claim for refugee status.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/27/key-facts-ab...
One should be very careful in ascribing rational motivations to things the Trump administration does - even his rhetoric (vague allusions to the attacks of September 11, 2001) isn't borne out by the executive order. He did not ban immigrants from a single one of the countries of origin of the 19 attackers.
I found this interesting as well
If Christians were de-prioritized, it was done by the UNHCR, not the US. And there is no direct evidence suggesting this happened, the fact that 10% of Syria is Christian does not mean 10% of the refugees would be.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/refugee-musli...
Yeah, he's doing a shitty job communicating it, but what did you expect...
> (b) Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.
> (e) Notwithstanding the temporary suspension imposed pursuant to subsection (a) of this section, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may jointly determine to admit individuals to the United States as refugees on a case-by-case basis, in their discretion, but only so long as they determine that the admission of such individuals as refugees is in the national interest — including when the person is a religious minority in his country of nationality facing religious persecution, when admitting the person would enable the United States to conform its conduct to a preexisting international agreement, or when the person is already in transit and denying admission would cause undue hardship — and it would not pose a risk to the security or welfare of the United States.
> Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-...
This is what he wants, this is what his supporters want. He's not doing a shitty job of communicating at all, he's being very clear and upfront.
As to your specific quotes, the vast majority of refugees from these countries are in the (Muslim) religious majority.
Which religion is the majority in all of these countries?
A terrorist could claim they are a minority to get priority... the prejudice is apparent.