For Sensible Refugee Resettlement, Look to Japan

President Obama’s lame duck present to America is his accelerated Iraqi and Syrian refugee resettlement program. Refugee vetting has been slashed from the original 18 to 24 months to three. Never mind the opinions of FBI Director James Comey and other national security experts who agree that the refugees can’t be adequately screened no matter how long the time period allocated because no database exists to crosscheck them.

Japan accepts only one percent of refugee applicants.

But Obama doesn’t care what the FBI and National Intelligence Director James Clapper think. Obama promised an additional 10,000 refugees, and he’s going to deliver them, San Bernardino and Orlando notwithstanding.

Instead of stubbornly pressing ahead, ignoring sound, expert advice, and rejecting Americans’ preference for security over a self-serving political agenda, Obama might want to look toward Japan. In 2015, Japan rejected 99 percent of the 7,586 asylum applications, and accepted only 27 refugees. Among them were six Afghanis, three Syrians, three Ethiopians and three Sri Lankans. The 2015 refugee total represented a significant increase over 2014 when Japan admitted only 11 asylees from the 5,000 applicants.

Japan has so few applicants because asylum seekers know that the nation historically accepts only a tiny percentage of refugees, and that their efforts would be better directed toward the U.S. and Western Europe which have higher approval rates.

Noteworthy: Japan’s last terrorist attack occurred in 1995, and was perpetrated by a crazed domestic cult, not foreign-refugees, who used the deadly nerve gas sarin gas to kill 13 people and injure more than 6,000.