State Department Spox on Refugee Vetting Process: Is It Perfect? ‘Probably Not, No.’

 

kirbyState Department spokesman John Kirby defended the Obama administration’s Syrian refugee vetting process Wednesday morning, while allowing for the fact that some mistakes were going to be made.

Kirby agreed with the hosts of Fox & Friends that vetting Syrian refugees was much more difficult given the lack of access to government records. “There’s certainly not the same amount of information you have on individuals there that you would have here,” he said.

But still, he said that U.S. policy was targeted towards the refugees they could be the most confident about. “First of all, they’re only the most vulnerable individuals. 8 out of 10 of the more than 10,000 Syrian refugees that we’ve admitted to the country are women and children. And of the men that make up the remainder, most of them are connected to families,” he said.

“They are going through a very serious inneragency vetting process, the most that any refugee goes through. Is it perfect? Can it be perfect? Can it be foolproof? Well, probably not, no,” Kirby admitted. “But it is very, very serious.”

Watch above, via Fox News.

[Image via screengrab]

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