by WorldTribune Staff, November 1, 2016

More than 13,000 Syrian refugees have been resettled in the U.S. in 2016, a 675 percent increase over the same period last year.

Of those, 13,100 (99.1 percent) are Muslims – 12,966 Sunnis, 24 Shi’a, and 110 other Muslims – and 77 (0.5 percent) are Christians. Another 24 (0.18 percent) are Yazidis.

When the Syrian civil war began in March 2011, an estimated 74 percent of the country’s population was Sunni Muslim and an estimated 10 percent was Christian.

Therefore, if the Obama administration admitted Christian Syrian refugees in proportion to the population, roughly 1,260 Christians would have been resettled in the United States in Fiscal Year 2016. Just 68 were.

The surge of Syrian refugee admissions initiated by the Obama administration last February has continued into the new fiscal year, now one month-old: A total of 1,297 were resettled during October – a 593 percent increase over the 187 admitted in October 2015.

Sunni Muslims accounted for 1,263 (97.3 percent) of the October arrivals. Another seven were Shi’a Muslims and 12 were other Muslims. The rest of the October intake comprised 15 (1.1 percent) Christians – eight Orthodox, four Catholics and three refugees self-described simply as Christians.

In March, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the treatment of Christians and other minorities in areas controlled by Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) amounts to genocide.

Since that genocide determination, the Obama administration has resettled a total of 12,743 Syrian refugees in the U.S., but only 74 (0.58 percent) of them are Christians, and only 24 (0.18 percent) of them are Yazidis.

Meanwhile, a new report estimates that the Syrian Christian population has dropped from 1.25 million in 2011 to less than 500,000 this year.

  Christians, Shia, Sunni, Syrian refugees to USA up 675 percent in 2016; 99 percent are Muslims, Syrian refugees up 675 percent in 2016; 99 percent are Muslims, WorldTribune.com, Yazidis