Here & Now

Closer Look: Reporter Talks About Story On Syrian Refugees

Frederica Freyberg:

For more on people from Syria, the current vetting process and refugees from other countries, we sat down with Scott Gordon, journalist with WisContext who had some reporting on that topic this week. We started by asking about current numbers of Syrian refugees in the U.S. and Wisconsin. What do we know about the current numbers of Syrians coming into the United States as refugees?

Scott Gordon:

Well, in 2016 the U.S. actually surpassed that goal of 10,000 by quite a bit. More than 15,000 refugees from Syria were admitted into the United States. In Wisconsin, so far it’s only been about 130, 135 people. So not a lot resettled here yet, though that obviously could well change in the future.

Frederica Freyberg:

More Syrian refugees continue to be resettled in Wisconsin, I mean, as we speak.

Scott Gordon:

Yes. The last time I pulled up the State Department numbers on that, in January, it was about 11 more people had entered the state from Syria.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, we know that President Trump and Governor Walker voiced strong concerns about the vetting process. What can you tell us about that vetting process?

Scott Gordon:

It is a long and extensive vetting process. How it starts is someone applies to the UN’s refugee agency. There’s some screening that goes on there. The UN says that only about 1% of the world’s refugee population even makes it past that first step. And then on the American side, the State Department and various federal intelligence agencies and other agencies, you know, put the refugees through a pretty extensive screening process.

Frederica Freyberg:

In fact, would it be described as quite a stringent process?

Scott Gordon:

Yes. And there are extra screening steps for people from Syria specifically.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, though, you’re kind of digging deep into another area in this reporting and that has to do with a larger number of refugees coming in from a country in Southeast Asia. Tell us about that.

Scott Gordon:

That would be Burma, and the crisis in Burma has been going on a lot longer than the crisis in Syria. And there are a lot of parallels there where you essentially have a government relentlessly attacking its own people. You know, in Burma there’s been strife among different ethnic groups and religious groups for centuries. It’s essentially a country with a lot of — with multiple civil wars and multiple campaigns by the state that essentially amount to genocide or something very close.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how many refugees are there from Burma in the United States?

Scott Gordon:

More than 166,000. So they’re one of the top five largest refugee groups in the country.

Frederica Freyberg:

And in Wisconsin?

Scott Gordon:

In Wisconsin, a little over 5,000. So they’re currently a much bigger refugee group here than Syrians.

Frederica Freyberg:

And where are they mostly settled here?

Scott Gordon:

Mostly Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Madison and a smaller number in Sheboygan and Eau Claire. There’s also some parallels with the Syrians in that one of the groups coming out of Burma, the Rohingya, are mostly a Muslim group and I spoke with someone from the State Crime Initiative at Queen Mary University in London who is concerned about how anti-Muslim rhetoric from Donald Trump and from other figures in the United States will affect them.