Myanmar refugees, including Muslim Rohingya, outpace Syrian arrivals in United States
The resettlement of refugees from Middle Eastern countries, particularly Syria, has been the centre of a heated political debate after President Barack Obama last year pledged to resettle at least 10,000 refugees from the war-torn country in the United States.
But refugees from Myanmar, whose leader Aung San Suu Kyi visited Washington last week, have quietly outpaced Syrian arrivals in recent years, even as Syria’s civil war intensifies, with an increasing number coming from the marginalised Rohingya Muslim community, according to State Department figures.
When we are selecting neighbourhoods we have to be very careful about the crime rate and gang recruitment, because ... You either join or you get beaten up
From October 1, 2015 to September 15, 11,902 Myanmar nationals were resettled in the United States, according to figures from the Refugee Processing Centre, operated by the State Department, compared to 11,598 arrivals from Syria over the same time period.
That was out of a total of nearly 79,600 refugees who arrived in the United States in that period. The largest group, numbering just over 15,000, were from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. Arrivals from Syria, where Islamic State and other radical groups are active, are subject to additional screening processes, according to the White House.
State Department figures show the number of Rohingya arrivals from Myanmar jumped from just over 650 in the 2014 fiscal year, to 2,573 last year. This year, 2,173 have arrived as of September 15.
