By Megan Cassella and Doina Chiacu WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives, defying a veto threat by President Barack Obama, overwhelmingly passed Republican-backed legislation on Thursday to intensify security screenings of Syrian refugees and suspend Obama’s program to admit 10,000 of them in the next year. The measure, introduced this week following the Islamic State attacks in Paris last Friday that killed 129 people, was approved on a vote of 289 to 137, with 47 of Obama’s 188 fellow Democrats breaking with the White House to support the bill. The vote followed a testy exchange between lawmakers and State Department official Anne Richard as Republicans responded with incredulity to her assertion that there is only a “very, very small” threat of any of them being a “terrorist.” Some Republicans have asserted that some refugees could be militants bent on carrying out attacks against the United States, noting reports that at least one Paris attacker may have slipped into Europe among migrants registered in Greece.
Source:: Yahoo News
