Actually it is quite bad for families to get their lives halted for such a long time. Problem is, they are not examined for a year. They are in queue for a year and then examined a week or something.

Background investigations are done as well.

Again, I see no problem with it. I thought they were escaping a dangerous situation? It seems they are now in a safe third country, it's not a big deal they have to wait a year. I have many relatives who came to the US this way.

Of course it's better than the alternative and I am sure they are thankful. But a common scenario is, send a family rep, typically the father on the dangerous journey, a person most likely to succeed. This person then in the receiving country applies for permission to get his family over too. By the time everything is done, children may have been without their father for two years. Everyone is getting kind of traumatized from it. I am all for thorough background checks, but at least in my country, they take a long time not because of thorough checks, but because the system is seriously backlogged. Most of the time could be cut if we had more resources allocated to the task. Alas, reality, budgets and stuff gets in the way...

How do you do a background investigation on someone from Syria?

Well, you can check with your foreign intelligence agencies to see if the person is suspected of any malicious behaviour or connections, and if the person has acquaintances already in the US, you can ask them questions.

I wonder if the queue could be caused by hundreds of refugees and asylum coming to the US every day...

> There's nothing wrong with examining a person for a year before letting them settle in your country. The system has worked well thus far, why bust it up?

The Australian government just got given yet another report telling them that this attitude is dangerous. Most estimates from reviews of Australia's current system (intake is in the tens of thousands, however arrivals by boat are processed offshore in Nauru or PNG) is that the timeframe from someone seeking assylum to being declined/accepted needs to be about three months or less - any longer and mental health takes a serious toll and children end up being behind in education.

That's because they are being kept in internment camps in third-world islands. Not quite the same thing as waiting in Vienna.

> The system has worked well

Has it? Could it have been working much better for all parties? I think that is distinctly possible.

It is 192 per day so not hundreds per day. Additionally many of these refugees are from Iraq and Afghanistan. The actions of the USA prompted many people to seek Asylum, so yeah you need to pick up your game in terms of how long these applications are taking to process.