…Fourteen Democrat senators led by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Amy Klobucher, D-Minn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., believe Obama is being too conservative in the number of Syrians he is willing to accept into the U.S. They have called on the president to up the ante. They want him to bring in at least 65,000 Syrian Muslim refugees. Some refugee lobbying groups such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the International Rescue Committee have called on the U.S. to accept at least 100,000 Syrian refugees…

…Back on Feb. 11, the House Homeland Security Committee heard from FBI counter-terrorism expert Michael Steinbach, and he told the committee the same thing that Comey said Wednesday: The FBI has no reliable data with which to screen the Syrians. Steinbach said the U.S. has no “boots on the ground,” as it did in Iraq, and that Syria is a “failed state” with no intelligence records or law-enforcement records to share with the United States…

…It was further revealed in an Oct. 1 hearing by Sen. Jeff Sessions’ immigration committee that more than 90 percent of Syrians who apply to enter the U.S. as refugees get approved despite little or no data existing on their backgrounds. Testifying was Matthew Emrich, associate director for Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services within the Department of Homeland Security.

Sessions, R-Ala., asked if Emrich’s department had access to even a single database in Syria that could provide solid background records on refugees in order to confirm a refugee is who he says he is. “Can you name a single computer database outside of maybe some of our own very small but valuable intelligence databases for Syria that you can check against? Does Syria have any?” Sessions asked.

“The government does not, no sir,” Emrich answered.

Sessions pointed out from various press reports that Syrian passports can be purchased on the black market for as little as $200, and nearly half of the refugees pouring into Europe are actually from Pakistan, Afghanistan, north Africa and other hotbeds of Islamic terrorism…

…Emrich said his department does not have the ability to send an investigator to Syria but relies on biometric and biographical information.

“I’m sure there are things you can do, but are you saying you can independently verify with positive data on the majority of cases?” Sessions asked. “Can you give me a number? Is it 50 percent, 60 percent, 80 percent?”

“I can’t give you a number, sir,” said Strack.