May 18, 2016

Senate Democrats to Obama: Pick Up the Pace on Syrian Refugee Resettlement

We’re only 15 percent through our goal of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees by September.

Refugees at a railway station in Hungary<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?people_number=&commercial_ok=&search_cat=&searchterm=syrian%20refugees&people_ethnicity=&anyorall=all&searchtermx=&color=&search_tracking_id=XtfAa1xVmsA7x6PNBQMMyw&media_type=images&photographer_name=&search_source=search_form&use_local_boost=1&language=en&lang=en&version=llv1&ref_site=photo&autocomplete_id=&orient=&people_gender=&show_color_wheel=1&people_age=&safesearch=1&prev_sort_method=popular&sort_method=newest&page=1&inline=421388626">Alexandre Rotenberg</a>/Shutterstock

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Last September, President Barack Obama promised to resettle at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States within a year. Seven months have passed since then, but so far, only 1,736 Syrian refugees have been admitted into the country. And it’s not for lack of space. During the same period, we’ve resettled more than 6,000 refugees from Burma and more than 4,000 from Iraq. Canada—with 11 percent of the United States’ population—has managed to fit 26,000 new Syrian refugees into its communities since November.

Obama now has five months to resettle more than 8,000 Syrian refugees if he wants to meet his goal. Twenty-seven Senate Democrats, including the number two Democrat in the Senate Richard Durbin and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, have signed a letter calling on the president to pick up the pace. “In successfully resettling refugees from conflict zones around the world for decades,” they write, “the United States has not be dissuaded by fear and we should not be now.” Read the full text of the letter below.

 

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“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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