DUNCAN, S.C. — The worried citizens gathered in the high school cafeteria, about 200 strong. Patriotic songs played on the stereo, a man in a blue blazer from the John Birch Society hovered by a well-stocked literature table, and Lauren L. Martel, a lawyer from Hilton Head, told the crowd that 25 Syrian refugees were already living among them.

“The U.N. calls it ‘refugee resettlement’ — the Muslims call it hijra, migration,” said another speaker, Jim McMillan, a local businessman. “They don’t plan to assimilate, they don’t plan to take on our culture. They plan to change the way of American life.”

The United States government has pledged to increase the number of worldwide refugees allowed in the country each year from 70,000 to 100,000 by the year 2017; earlier this month, the Obama administration said it would take in at least 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year. But the anger and anxiety here show just how hard this might be in some parts of the country.

None of Syria’s four million refugees have been resettled in this part of South Carolina in the last year, according to the State Department. Since May, a Christian nonprofit group, World Relief, has placed 32 refugees in the region, but most of them were Christians fleeing troubled countries like Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo.