STL Today: Durbin says U.S. should take in 100,000 Syrian refugees - Durbin should be roving ambassador to refugee camps of the world. --tma

WASHINGTON • Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is calling for the United States to take in 100,000 Syrian refugees, ten times the amount the administration of President Barack Obama said last month that the United States would try to accept in the coming year.

Durbin did not put a timetable on his call for 100,000, but said he came to the conclusion that the United States needed to do more to relieve the refugee crisis in Europe after visiting refugee camps in the Greek island of Lesbos over the weekend. He and Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., made the trip.

Durbin said Lesbos, normally home to 80,000 Greeks, had been flooded with 400,000 refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. They are arriving in a country already hugely strained from a financial crisis of its own. ...

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/durbin-says-u-s-should-take-in-syrian-refugees/article_146c0124-4f0a-5abf-8251-3632a24046fe.html