BERLIN (AP) – The United States is seeking to ease the Syrian refugee crisis by significantly increasing the number of worldwide refugees it takes in over the next two years, though not by nearly the amount many activists and former officials have urged.
The U.S. will accept 85,000 refugees from around the world next year, up from 70,000, and that total would rise to 100,000 in 2017, according to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in Berlin to meet with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to discuss the mass migration of Syrians fleeing their civil war.
Many, though not all, of the additional refugees would be Syrian, American officials have said. Others would come from strife-torn areas of Africa. The White House had previously announced it intended to take in 10,000 additional Syrian refugees over the next year.
The migrants would be referred by the U.N. refugee agency, screened by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and resettled around the U.S.
“This step is in keeping with America’s best tradition as a land of second chances and a beacon of hope,” Kerry told reporters after the meeting with his German counterpart. Kerry also met with some refugee families on the wooded, lakeside resort-style campus of the foreign ministry’s education center outside Berlin.