President Barack Obama's intention on Tuesday to seek a new international commitment to deal with the worldwide refugee crisis has become much more problematic domestically following the terrorist attacks over the weekend in Minnesota, New York and New Jersey, The Hill reports.
Obama, who told Americans not to succumb to fear following the attacks, plans to announce at a refugee summit on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York that the U.S., which has accepted 10,000 refugees from Syria, is willing to let in 110,000 refugees from around the world in 2017.
That would be a 30 percent increase from the total the U.S. permitted this year.
Republican nominee Donald Trump has led the charge for Obama to reconsider his position after Islamic State took credit for the Minnesota stabbings and a naturalized Muslim-American citizen from Afghanistan was arrested in connection for the other attacks.
"Hillary Clinton wants to increase what [Obama has] let in," Trump told Fox News. "He's let in thousands and thousands of people. They don't know — they can't be properly vetted, there's no way. Our leaders are — I don't even say weak, I say stupid."
Trump has called for a moratorium on accepting Syrian refugees, as well as extreme vetting and an ideological test for potential immigrants from countries where Islamic extremism festers.
Clinton insists she is for tough vetting, but has called for accepting 65,000 Syrian refugees in 2017, which is more than six times the number the U.S. allowed in this year.
She said those fleeing violence in Syria are not the same type of people who perpetuated the Sept. 11 attacks
"These were not refugees who got into airplanes and attacked our city and our country," she said at a news conference. "So let's not get diverted and distracted by the kind of campaign rhetoric we hear coming from the other side."
With the world facing a refugee crisis on a scale not seen since the end of World War II, Obama has also been criticized by humanitarian groups as not being generous enough to opening the doors to those fleeing violence, especially compared to other countries.
A coalition of 41 nongovernmental organizations called Inter Action have urged him to boost the U.S.'s refugee target for 2017 to 200,000.
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