More than a dozen Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have staked out positions on how to handle Syrian refugees — and those positions are all over the map.
Where the candidates stand on Syrian refugees, in one chart
This chart shows where 15 candidates — three Democrats and 12 Republicans — currently stand on whether to allow Syrian refugees to enter the country. Democratic candidates tend to support keeping or increasing the current policy of accepting refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict. By contrast, all Republican candidates want to further restrict Syrian refugees — either by increasing screening or by limiting refugees to Christians — or stop them from entering entirely.
Candidates compare Syrian refugees to “Trojan horses,” “E. coli”
Rhetoric around the resettlement of Syrian refugees has become intensely heated. Candidates have compared these refugees to everything from “tainted peanuts” to “rabid dogs.” We created this quiz with some of the most striking depictions: Can you match the candidate with his or her characterizations?
No, Obama doesn’t plan to resettle 250,000 Syrian refugees
The United States has pledged to help resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016. But the two Republican frontrunners — Donald Trump and Ben Carson — have tried to argue that the numbers are much higher.
“Our president wants to take in 250,000 from Syria,” Trump claimed. Carson argued that Obama said, “I’m going to bring 100,000 people in here from Syria.”
Ted Cruz got closer to the actual numbers when he said that Obama and Hillary Clinton are proposing to bring “tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees.” And even though the Obama administration has set a goal for 10,000 Syrian refugees to be resettled here, it is lagging severely behind. So far, fewer than 2,000 have settled in the United States.
