http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/world/americas/obama-refugee-united-nations.html 2016-09-19 02:49:10 Obama to Push Refugee Aid at U.N., but Critics Say Effort Is Overdue Even those who praise Mr. Obama’s planned meeting on the refugee crisis wonder why the United States waited so long to mount a global response and why it has taken in so few Syrians. === UNITED NATIONS — Even those who praise Mr. Obama’s plan to host a Moreover, American officials are being criticized for trying to keep out people fleeing the gang violence of Central America, even jailing children who show up at the border without legal papers. Only recently did the White House agree to let a small number of people from the region apply for resettlement from their home countries. That ambivalence was summed up by Elvis García, who fled the notoriously violent city of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, only to find himself locked up in the United States. He was 15 at the time. Mr. García praised Mr. Obama for organizing the meeting. But Mr. García, now 26 and living, legally, in New York, was planning to attend a so-called shadow summit meeting down the street from United Nations headquarters to draw attention to what he considers the refugee crisis on America’s doorstep. “I understand there’s a big crisis in the Middle East, but we can’t forget the thousands of children fleeing Central America,” he said. “There are so many kids today fleeing violence. They can’t get asylum.” International law requires countries to offer protection to those fleeing war and persecution, and only recently did the Obama administration concede that many people who might have valid asylum claims had no way to get to the United States. It announced this summer that it would let some Central Americans apply for refugee status from their home countries. The initiative immediately came under fire from Republicans, who pressed for tougher border controls. “The U.S. has a mixed history: On resettlement it’s strong, but there are certainly many examples where U.S. behavior has not been best practice,” said Jane McAdam, an Australian law professor who closely follows how countries handle refugees. “Very few countries come to this with clean hands,” Ms. McAdam said. There are 21 million refugees worldwide, including five million The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, urged countries worldwide to offer permanent homes to about two million refugees, but his calls fell on deaf ears. Instead, countries flout their legal obligations. Under a Australia detains asylum seekers The United States has long prided itself as a land of refuge. It contributes more money than any other nation to the United Nations refugee agency. Mr. Obama has This year alone, 85,000 refugees from a variety of conflict zones were selected and screened by the government and resettled in the United States. The Obama administration has proposed resettling 110,000 next year. Election-year politics, though, have weighed heavily on the White House’s refugee policies. Republicans have pressed for tougher screening procedures on Syrians, and several Republican governors have sought to keep out Syrian refugees altogether. “What we need to see is a greater commitment around the world to not just shunting this burden off to a handful of countries,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said last week. “The other reality here,” he added, “is that the president’s commitment to ensuring that the United States plays a leading role on this issue is not shared by a lot of people in Congress, including by a lot of people in the Republican majority in Congress, and that has an impact in terms of the resources that are dedicated to this effort.” Slightly more than 10,000 Syrian refugees have been resettled in the United States this year. By comparison, Germany has taken in nearly 500,000 Syrians, and Canada 35,000. The White House has said it wants countries to double the number of slots available for permanent resettlement, to 200,000 (about 1 percent of all refugees worldwide); raise $3 billion in additional humanitarian aid; provide jobs for a million refugees; and offer educational opportunities for a million refugee children. Some money pledged by countries at previous aid conferences has yet to materialize. The White House also plans to announce pledges from private companies to help refugees. Privately, some European diplomats scoff at the notion that the United States is asking the world to do more. Publicly, many Europeans also point out that the United States has the luxury of being far from the world’s hottest war zones. “Europeans make that point frequently — the geography of North America means Canada and the United States are sometimes in a more relaxed environment,” said Elizabeth Collett, the director of the Migration Policy Institute’s Europe office in Brussels. “What they would rather see is solidarity.” T. Alexander Aleinikoff, an American law professor and a former United Nations refugee agency official, commended the efforts of the Obama administration, but he said he was dismayed that it had not mobilized a global conference earlier to respond to Syrian refugees. “What’s really needed is a formal system for responsibility sharing,” Mr. Aleinikoff said. The United States played such a role after the Vietnam War, he pointed out. But those were the Cold War days. The United States resettled more than 200,000 refugees in the early 1980s — more than double the number it has taken in this year. Most of them were from the former Soviet Union. Louise Arbour, a Canadian jurist and a former United Nations high commissioner for human rights, called it “a luxury” for the United States to be able to accept those refugees it so carefully vets. “Resettlement is a very safe way of taking people in,” she said. “It’s a very different thing for Europeans to see people walking in, undocumented.” That is precisely the challenge facing the United States at its southern border. It continues to detain those who show up without legal papers, including children. In August, many countries sought Refugee advocates say the United States, while moving in the right direction, needs to do more to help refugees. “The United States is tremendously committed,” said Eleanor Acer, the legal director of the advocacy group Human Rights First. “But like any country, when it’s a refugee knocking on your door, then it’s harder to live up to your legal obligations and your values.”