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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (1057255)	2/26/2018 12:53:19 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 1574060

Trump Administration Turns Away Iranian ChristiansDespite White House promises and U.S. legal protections for religious minorities, Washington rejects appeal for asylum from more than 100 Iranian Christians. .................. The Iranians applied for visas under a U.S. law known as the Lautenberg Amendment, designed to provide special refugee status to persecuted religious minorities, allowing them to resettle in the United States. The 1989 law was originally written to help Jews in the former Soviet Union and later was expanded to include Christian and other minorities in former Soviet states and Iran. Before President Donald Trump entered office, similar refugee cases under the Lautenberg Amendment had an approval rate of close to 100 percent. Prior to arriving in Vienna, the refugees go through initial screening, and Austria then issues transit visas on request of the State Department. Once in Austria, the refugees are interviewed by U.S. authorities. In the past, the procedure took a matter of weeks or a few months. But the process has ground to a virtual halt under Trump’s tenure, and rights groups say the administration could be violating the U.S. law. The Lautenberg Amendment obliges the U.S. government to explain the reason for a denial of refugee status “to the maximum extent feasible.” But the applicants are being told that the denial is a matter of discretion, rights advocates say. A spokesperson for the State Department told Foreign Policy that the applications for resettlement had been rejected by the Department of Homeland Security but declined to provide a reason or other details. The DHS did not respond to requests for comment. ................ The group of applicants marooned in Vienna include elderly and disabled people, and it was difficult to see any security threat from them, the letter stated. “This sudden change in policy — from almost a hundred percent acceptance rate to nearly complete rejection — makes no sense, even on security grounds,” the congressmen wrote. Moreover, Iranians previously admitted under the program with similar backgrounds have not posed a threat to the United States, it said. Since the Lautenberg Amendment was expanded in 2004 to include Iranians, about 30,000 have resettled in the United States. Apart from Assyrian and Armenian Christians in Iran, members of the Jewish, Mandaean, Zoroastrian, and Bahai communities have also received refugee status and resettled in the United States under the law. ...... foreignpolicy.com