(MENAFN- Jordan News Agency) Washington, Oct.25 (Petra) -- The Trump administration is expected to begin accepting refugee applications from every country, but will add new rules meant to toughen the vetting process for applicants from 11 countries in particular, a new memo sent to the Congress Tuesday revealed.
According to the memo, most refugee applicants from those countries will be subject to a temporary delay in the processing of their applications. The memo, which was sent to members of Congress by administration officials, read that citizens of 11 "high risk countries" will be subject to the delays. It's unclear which countries the administration has flagged. Those applicants will reportedly undergo increased scrutiny by multiple government agencies that will consider the security threats posed by the refugees.
In his executive order, Trump announced he was restarting general refugee processing after ordering a 120-day pause early in his tenure as part of his "extreme vetting" policy. Officials said they used the 120-day pause to stiffen vetting, demand more personal information from would-be refugees, push fraud investigators into the field to try to spot troublesome applications and boost information-sharing to try to weed out bad candidates.
Refugees' social media will also be scrutinized, officials said.
But 11 countries remain too high-risk to have its citizens be treated as normal refugees, and will be admitted on a limited case-by-case basis, while the administration conducts another 90-day review, officials said.
As of the end of 2016, higher-security screening was required for most adult male nationals of Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, as well as Palestinians who lived in those countries. It was not immediately clear if the 11 countries referred to in Trump's executive order were the same ones.
S Kh
25/10/2017 - 09:05:55 AM
MENAFN2510201701170000ID1095990012
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.