President Barack Obama's statement that America has never used "religious tests'' to determine which refugees get passage to the United States is inaccurate, immigration experts say.
Russian and Ethiopian Jews, Armenians Christians and Catholics from Vietnam have all been moved to the front of the line in the past based on their faith, the experts said, citing historians, according to Fox News.
"Clearly, there have been policies that said we will consider certain people from certain religions," said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
The U.S. president made the statement after more than 30 governors and virtually all Republican presidential candidates asked for a moratorium on Syrian refugees amid fears that Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists may have infiltrated the desperate wave of mostly Muslim refugees pouring out of the Middle East, the Fox News report said.
The U.S. plans to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees this year, and Obama had called to expedite the process for their resettlement in the country. But critics say it is impossible to screen all the refugees and that threats to national security are very high.
Others like Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz have proposed a "religious test" to screen out Muslim refugees from countries where terrorist groups have a strong presence and where applicants cannot be properly vetted.
"When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who's fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution—that's shameful,'' Obama said, referring to Cruz. "That's not American. That's not who we are. We don't have religious tests to our compassion."
However, under the 1990 law known as the Lautenberg Amendment, the federal government was said to have initially granted a presumption of refugee eligibility for Jews and Christians fleeing the former Soviet Union and Southeast Asia, the Fox News report said.
The amendment was extended last year by Obama. It prioritises the resettlement of Jews, Christians, Baha'is, and other religious minorities who flee Iran, the report said.
