May 18, 2016

Senate Democrats to Obama: Pick Up the Pace on Syrian Refugee Resettlement

We’re only 15 percent through our goal of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees by September.

Refugees at a railway station in Hungary<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?people_number=&commercial_ok=&search_cat=&searchterm=syrian%20refugees&people_ethnicity=&anyorall=all&searchtermx=&color=&search_tracking_id=XtfAa1xVmsA7x6PNBQMMyw&media_type=images&photographer_name=&search_source=search_form&use_local_boost=1&language=en&lang=en&version=llv1&ref_site=photo&autocomplete_id=&orient=&people_gender=&show_color_wheel=1&people_age=&safesearch=1&prev_sort_method=popular&sort_method=newest&page=1&inline=421388626">Alexandre Rotenberg</a>/Shutterstock

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Last September, President Barack Obama promised to resettle at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States within a year. Seven months have passed since then, but so far, only 1,736 Syrian refugees have been admitted into the country. And it’s not for lack of space. During the same period, we’ve resettled more than 6,000 refugees from Burma and more than 4,000 from Iraq. Canada—with 11 percent of the United States’ population—has managed to fit 26,000 new Syrian refugees into its communities since November.

Obama now has five months to resettle more than 8,000 Syrian refugees if he wants to meet his goal. Twenty-seven Senate Democrats, including the number two Democrat in the Senate Richard Durbin and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, have signed a letter calling on the president to pick up the pace. “In successfully resettling refugees from conflict zones around the world for decades,” they write, “the United States has not be dissuaded by fear and we should not be now.” Read the full text of the letter below.

 

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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