White House: LGBT Refugees To Get Priority

The White House has rejected any quota for LGBT Syrian refugees but says their asylum requests will get priority attention due to their status as a persecuted minority. Stand by for Teabagistan to completely lose their shit. Chris Johnson reports at the Washington Blade:

White House Press Josh Earnest explained the administration’s position in response to a question from the Washington Blade following President Obama’s speech in the Oval Office on Sunday focusing on the nation’s commitment to dismantle ISIS. In the address, Obama called ISIS “thugs and killers” and called the organization “part of a cult of death.”

Speaking generally about the widely reported atrocities committed by ISIS, Earnest said the tactics of the terrorist group “have shown a callous disregard for basic human rights.”

“And it is certainly no secret that there are a variety of ways in which they offend those basic rights and trample those rights,” Earnest said. “That’s one of the reasons the president has mobilized such a strong international coalition to destroy them.”

Earnest also rejected calls to set aside 500 slots for LGBT people among the anticipated additional 10,000 incoming refugees Obama has pledged to accommodate from Syria. Instead, he said the administration would make cases of individuals “deemed to be the most vulnerable” a priority.

“When it comes to our refugee resettlement efforts, the United States does not set aside quotas like what you just described,” Earnest said. “But what the United States does do, in terms of resettling refugees, is prioritize the cases of those who are deemed to be the most vulnerable — those who have been subjected to acts of torture, those who have been singled out because of their minority status in one way or another.”

Asked by the Blade to clarify that the “most vulnerable” would include LGBT people facing persecution, Earnest said LGBT people would be among the groups facing persecution that would meet that definition.

There have already been reports that LGBT refugees have faced attacks in refugee housing. Hit the link for the rest of Johnson’s excellent report.