Citing Paris, Republican Governors Move to Block Syrian Refugees

Experts: No Legal Basis for Governors to Stop Refugee Settlement

Though EU officials maintain that all of the ISIS attackers involved in Friday’s Paris attacks were European nations, rumors that one of them had snuck into the EU as a refugee were already a loud talking point for TV pundits, predicting a quick move against the refugees for the sake of “national security.”

Predictably, several Republican governors are following suit. Alabama and Michigan’s governors were the first two to announce their intention to block all Syrian refugees from arriving in their states, and by this afternoon at least 23 governors were following the trend, all but one of them Republicans.

Experts are questioning exactly what this means, saying there is really no legal basis for a state governor to block the federal government from allowing refugees already admitted into the country to go to whatever state they want, but did say it would likely create an atmosphere of hostility that might discourage some refugees from arriving.

The US isn’t the only nation facing questions about moving against civilian refugees in the wake of the Paris attack, as Canada’s new PM is also under growing pressure from Conservatives there to roll back plans to accept refugees into the country.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.