US to take in more refugees in the next two years: Kerry.
By Raif Karerat
The White House released a statement Monday that August saw a drastic increase in the number of children entering the country illegally after those figures fell steadily since the child migrant crisis a year ago.
“We have seen over the last year a precipitous decline in the number of unaccompanied children attempting to enter this country without proper documentation and we have seen just in the last month, in the month of August, a surprising uptick,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, according to Reuters.
Also, in response to the tens of thousands of migrants currently fleeing Syria and elsewhere, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the United States will take in more refugees in the next two years, including 10,000 Syrian asylum seekers in 2016.
“We will now go up to 85,000 with at least 10,000 over the next year in Syria specifically. And in the next fiscal year we will target 100,000,” Kerry said.
In the fiscal year ending September 2015, the world’s biggest economy took in 70,000 refugees, reported Agence France-Presse.
Kerry also stated that Russia’s military backing of the incumbent Syrian regime only risks sending more extremists to the war-torn country and could further hamper any effort at bringing peace.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said Friday that Moscow would consider any request for troops from Assad.
According to the Wall Street Journal, officials in the U.S. and Middle East are reporting that Russia and Iran have stepped up coordination inside Syria as they move to safeguard President Bashar al-Assad’s control over his coastal stronghold, which creates a whole new plethora of complications for Washington’s diplomatic goals.