The dome of the US Capitol is seen as a man walks past flags flying at half staff at the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington yesterday. US President Barack Obama issued a proclamation ordering flags to fly at half staff as a mark of respect for victims of the Paris attacks.

Reuters/Washington


Five US governors yesterday said they would not allow Syrian refugees to be settled in their states, joining Alabama and Michigan and contending it is too dangerous to let in people from that war-torn country following Friday’s deadly Paris attacks.
Republican Governors Greg Abbott of Texas, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Mike Pence of Indiana, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Phil Bryant of Mississippi said their states would no longer help support the Obama administration’s goal of accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming years.
“Texas cannot participate in any programme that will result in Syrian refugees - any one of whom could be connected to terrorism - being resettled in Texas,” Abbott said in an open letter to US President Barack Obama yesterday. “Neither you nor any federal official can guarantee that Syrian refugees will not be part of any terroristic activity.”
However, it was unclear what authority governors had to stop admitting refugees into their states, legal experts said.
“The federal government has the power over immigration. If they admit Syrian refugees, they’re here,” said Deborah Anker, a professor of law at Harvard Law School who specialises in immigration issues. “People aren’t going to the (state) border. The federal government is going to bring them in.”
The decisions to stop accepting refugees from Syria came three days after gunmen and suicide bombers believed to be part of the Islamic State militant group killed 129 people in a series of co-ordinated attacks in Paris, the worst such event in France since World War Two.
A Syrian passport found near the body of one of the attackers showed that its holder passed through Greece in October, raising concern that the attackers had entered Europe amid the wave of refugees fleeing that country’s four-year civil war.
The US admitted 1,682 Syrian refugees in the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, a sharp jump from the 105 admitted a year earlier. Texas, California and Michigan accepted the largest number of people fleeing the war.
Secretary of State John Kerry in September said the US would increase the number of refugees it takes in from all nations by 15,000 per year over the next two years, bringing the total to 100,000 a year by 2017.
Some of the charitable groups that work to resettle refugees criticised the moves, saying that the governors are wrongly targeting people who are fleeing violence, not trying to spread it.
“For these governors to falsely assert that the US refugee admissions programme places their states at risk is utterly preposterous,” the Reverend John McCullough, chief executive of the Church World Service, one of nine charitable groups that works with the US’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, said in a statement.
Alabama and Michigan said they would no longer accept Syrian refugees on Sunday.
Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, described his state, which has a large Arab-American population, as “welcoming” but said the risk associated with admitting Syrian refugees was too high.