Each year, the President determines the maximum number of refugees to be admitted into the United States. The ceiling is 70,000 for the current fiscal year. With Syrians continuing to flee that country’s violence and strife, however, Secretary of State John Kerry pledged that the United States will take in as many as 85,000 refugees, including at least 10,000 from Syria. That ceiling would be raised to 100,000 in 2017. Refugees will also be admitted from parts of Africa that are experiencing similar conflicts.

“This step is in keeping with America’s best tradition as a land of second chances and a beacon of hope,” Kerry said. He added that security restrictions in place after September 11, 2001, put limits on the United States’ ability to process migrants quickly.

In Congress, Senators Lindsey Graham (SC-R) and Patrick Leahy (VT-D) — the top Republican and the top Democrat on the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Subcommittee — have proposed legislation to provide $1 billion in additional humanitarian aid to address the evolving refugee crisis in the Middle East. The proposed assistance would go into the State Department’s Migration and Refugee Assistance Account.

Meanwhile, Senator Richard Durbin (IL-D) has called for the United States to accept 100,000 Syrian refugees, calling 10,000 ”too modest.”

“We have a rich history of responding to these humanitarian crises. We need to do it again,” Durbin said, noting that in the past the United States has accepted refugees from Cuba, Somalia, Bosnia–Herzegovina, and Vietnam, as well as Soviet Jews.

For more background on Syria, see the November 2014 issue of Congressional Digest on The Islamic State and U.S. Policy and the September 2011 issue of International Debates on “Syria Crackdown.”