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With ten weeks to go until the end of the fiscal year, the Obama administration continues to admit Syrian refugees at an accelerated pace, and has now exceeded two-thirds of President Obama’s target of 10,000 by September 30.
The proportion of Christians among those resettled continues to languish below half of one percent, while other non-Sunnis account for just over one percent.
As of Monday, 1,515 Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war in their homeland had been admitted since the beginning of July, and a total of 6,726 since FY 2016 began on October 1, according to State Department Refugee Processing Center data.
Of the July arrivals, 1,501 (99.0 percent) were Sunnis, and three (0.19 percent) were Christians. The other 11 (0.72 percent) were other Muslims.
Of the 6,726 total Syrian refugee arrivals since the beginning of FY 2016, 6,625 (98.4 percent) were Sunnis and 23 (0.3 percent) were Christians – including 15 described simply as “Christian,” five Catholics, two Orthodox and one Greek Orthodox adherent.
The remaining 78 (1.1 percent) comprised 49 refugees described in the data simply as “Moslem,” 17 Shi’a Muslims, 10 Yazidis, one of “no religion” and one “other religion.”
To reach its 10,000 target by September 30, the administration will need to admit average of 1,597 each month for July, August and September. With a week of this month to go, and 1,515 admitted as of early Monday, the July target looks to be easily within reach.
Of the 1,515 refugees from Syria admitted since the beginning of July, 363 (23.9 percent) are men between the ages of 14 and 50, another 322 (21.2 percent) are women aged 14-50, and 784 (51.7 percent) are children aged under 14 – 371 boys and 413 girls.
Their ethnic breakdown is: 1,472 Arabs, 22 Kurds, 18 Turkmen and three Armenians.
Of the 6,726 admitted since in FY 2016, 1,661 (24.6 percent) are men 14-50, while 1,537 (22.8 percent) are women aged 14-50. Another 3,240 (48.1 percent) are children aged under 14, made up of 1,658 boys and 1,582 girls.
Of the 6,726, 6,159 are Arabs, 497 are Kurds, 49 are Turkmen, four are Turks, three are Armenian, two are Syriac, one is Assyrian and 11 are “other.”
The 6,726 Syrian refugees have been resettled across the nation, with the largest groups going to Michigan (782), California (603), Arizona (512), Texas (471), Pennsylvania (429), Illinois (421), New York (367), Florida (329), North Carolina (312) and Ohio (305).