Anne Richard, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, says the United States will have accepted 2,000 Syrian refugees for permanent resettlement by September and will take “thousands more” next year to help cope with the world’s worst refugee crisis.

In an interview with Al-Monitor July 14, Richard acknowledged that the pace of resettlement has been slower than she had hoped. She said the reason was the extraordinary amount of scrutiny Syrian refugees are required to undergo to make sure that there are no potential or actual terrorists or other criminals among them.

“It takes 18-24 months from a referral [for resettlement in the United States by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees] to a person actually landing at the airport,” Richard said. “They [the Syrians] are the most highly scrutinized and vetted group of travelers to the US. They undergo extensive background checks, security checks and medical checks. A dossier is put together and reviewed by the Department of Homeland Security to determine if their story holds up and they are not terrorists, criminals or liars.”

Critics of the Barack Obama administration’s handling of the issue assert that the United States could be doing much more to address the plight of 4 million Syrian refugees — the worst such crisis in a quarter century. What began as peaceful protests against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in 2011 has deteriorated into a multi-sided civil war that shows no sign of abating as Syria splinters into fragments controlled by what former US intelligence analyst Paul Pillar has called a “smorgasbord” of militant groups.