The St. Paul City Council is poised to make an unusual and largely symbolic request this week to accept more refugees from Syria.

The civil war that began five years ago has created a humanitarian crisis and displaced millions of Syrians, at a time when refugee populations are peaking around the world, according to the council resolution that will be voted upon Wednesday.

“There are more refugees in the world today than at any time since World War II,” states the resolution, sponsored by six of the seven city council members.

The resolution encourages “the resettlement of Syrian refugees in St. Paul” and calls “upon other Minnesota communities to support a stronger national effort to resettle the most vulnerable Syrian refugees.”

The language mirrors similar sentiment expressed by resettlement agencies throughout the state, but it’s unlikely to carry much immediate weight. Of the millions displaced, the numbers of Syrians coming to the United States are relatively limited — about 14,000 since 2011 — and possibly poised to drop.

The International Institute of Minnesota predicts that most Syrians accepted into the U.S. will be placed in Michigan, Texas and California, where they will join established refugee populations.

Council members acknowledge their statement is mostly symbolic, though “there’s no telling what might be debated at the Legislature next year,” said City Council President Russ Stark. “At this point, it is just sort of a reaffirmation of the city of St. Paul’s interest and willingness in having Syrians resettle here.”

Relief agencies have resettled more than 12,500 refugees in the Twin Cities since 2011, but at most two dozen from Syria in any given year, and most of those are children. The Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System reports that 20 Syrian refugees were placed in Minnesota in 2016, and 15 the year before. Of some 40 countries of origin, many more refugees have arrived from Burma and Somalia.

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St. Paul City Council relaxes housing density restrictions near transit corridors “I don’t expect to see a large increase, but sometimes refugees settle in other communities, and they have a hard time finding jobs, and they hear that Minnesota has more employment than there might be in other states,” said Jane Graupman, executive director of the institute, which is based on Como Avenue in St. Paul. “But we’re not seeing an uptick in the number of Syrians coming to Minnesota.”

Even so, refugees of all backgrounds have come to her with growing concerns about their legal status, and “it’s nice to see the city council making a statement, because it makes other refugee populations feel safer,” she added.

The United Nations Refugee Agency hopes to relocate 10 percent of Syrian refugees outside of the general area around the war-torn Middle Eastern nation, but countries such as the United States have been reluctant to welcome large numbers.

Turkey is now hosting almost 3 million Syrian refugees, according to the council resolution, and neighboring countries are hosting another 2 million. Europe is processing the asylum applications of more than 1 million Syrians.

The U.S. has pledged to accept 10,000 Syrians this year, though U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of suspending immigration from Syria entirely and imposing an “extreme vetting” process.

Syria, while diverse, is mostly Arab, and most Syrians follow the Sunni branch of Islam. The government is a secular dictatorship dominated by ethnic Alawites.

Russia and Iran have aligned with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in the civil war, despite his repressive clamp-down on the country’s Sunni Arab majority.

The council resolution is sponsored by Council President Russ Stark and members Amy Brendmoen, Rebecca Noecker, Jane Prince, Dai Thao and Chris Tolbert. Council Member Dan Bostrom is not listed as a sponsor.