ICC Note: Amongst all the debate over refugees, the complicated process of applying for resettlement is now being debated on center stage. Yet, very few people really understand the details of the process that often can stretch for years and which frustrates even the most seasoned of experts. Yet, many are searching to find out why so few Christians are represented among the small number of refugees that the US has resettled since the start of the conflict in Syria.

12/20/2015 Syria (The Hill) – Under fire from conservative critics, the United Nations’s refugee agency is insisting that critics have their facts wrong about the small number of Christians fleeing the civil war in Syria.

Against heated criticism from Capitol Hill, officials from the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) maintain that the situation in Syria is much more complicated than its opponents assert.

“The details of resettlement are so detailed and so precise that only a few people in Washington ever care about it,” said Jana Mason, UNHCR’s senior adviser for government relations and external affairs. “Now all of a sudden, everybody on the morning news, the evening news, cable news are talking about it. And because it is so complicated and so multi-step, people get it wrong.”

“What’s caught us by surprise is that it’s being parsed in the public domain without all the detailed understanding being out there.”

Mason and her colleagues attempted to correct some of that “misinformation” in an interview with The Hill on Friday.

Her agency has been trapped in the spotlight by comments from some Republicans, who have criticized the UNHCR and the Obama administration for a seemingly low number of Christian refugees that come to the U.S. from Syria. The U.N. agency provides the first line of screening for most of the refugees that eventually make it to the U.S.

“They appear to be filtering Christians out,” said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa).

According to data from the State Department, just 62 of the 2,550 Syrian refugees that have been resettled in the U.S. since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011 are some denomination of Christian. That 2.4 percent is much lower than the roughly 10 percent of pre-war Syria that was believed to have been Christian.

The disparity is not just in the U.S.

Of the roughly 2 million Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt who have registered with the UNHCR, only 1.2 percent are Christian, Mason said.

Why the discrepancy?
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