US House passes bill to slow Syrian refugees despite Obama veto threat

US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) holds a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington November 19, 2015. Ryan said that the Syrian refugee bill would be the first of many on security and travel issues. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON - The US House of Representatives, defying a veto threat by President Barack Obama, overwhelmingly passed Republican-backed legislation on Thursday to suspend Obama's program to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year and then intensify the process of screening them.

The measure, quickly drafted this week following the Islamic State attacks in Paris on Friday that killed 129 people, was approved on a vote of 289-137, with 47 of Obama's 188 fellow Democrats breaking with the White House to support it.

It would require that high-level officials - the FBI director, the director of national intelligence and homeland security secretary - verify that each Syrian refugee poses no security risk.

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said the bill would pause the program the White House announced in September to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year. He said it was important to act quickly "when our national security is at stake."

After the House vote, Obama's attorney general, Loretta Lynch, called such screening both impractical and impossible.

"To ask me to have my FBI director or other members of the administration make personal guarantees would effectively grind the program to a halt," Lynch told reporters at a news briefing with FBI Director James Comey.

The vote result came despite a last-ditch appeal for Democratic votes from Jeh Johnson, Obama's secretary of homeland security, and Denis McDonough, his chief of staff.

It followed a testy exchange at a House hearing between lawmakers and Anne Richard, the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. Republicans responded with incredulity to her assertion there was only a "very, very small" threat of any of the Syrian refugees being a "terrorist".

Some Republicans have said some refugees could be militants bent on attacking the United States, noting reports that at least one Paris attacker may have slipped into Europe among migrants registered in Greece.

The bill, which would create the strictest-ever US screening of refugees from a war-torn nation, passed with the two-thirds majority the House would need to override a presidential veto. It now goes to the Senate, also controlled by Republicans, where its prospects remained uncertain.

If it passes in the Senate, each chamber would have to muster a two-thirds majority to override any Obama veto.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said there was "no way" the House bill would pass in the Senate.

While many Americans see the United States historically as welcoming to immigrants, accepting refugees from Syria has raised concerns the newcomers may pose a national security threat in a country where about 3,000 people were killed by al Qaida militants in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Lawmakers have been receiving an unusually large number of calls on the issue. An aide to Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman said his office got 2,710 calls between Monday and Wednesday opposing resettlement of Syrian/Iraqi refugees in the United States, versus only 58 in favor.