The Left, in collusion with the taxpayer-funded refugee resettlement industry, has pulled out all the stops to oppose President Trump’s executive order on refugees. They have promulgated so much misinformation on this subject that it defies description. We have almost universal misreporting by the media, disappointingly including supposedly “conservative” media like the Washington Examiner, which should know better. Relying on emotion rather than facts, the media have joined the dull roar of protest to bewail the treatment of Syrian refugees, and imply those who support Trump are “bigots”, “racists” and “Islamophobes”. Some sane counterpoint is in order.
First, on screening, a Monday DC examiner article (Here’s what refugees go through to resettle in the US, by Karen Jacobsen), claims refugees face 18 — 24 months of ” multiple security screenings and intensive background checks”.
Not really.
DHS screening has not focused so much on vetting as on processing – at least under Obama. As former DHS deputy assistant director A. J. Irwin explained:. “When we send refugee officers over there to interview people, they have a mission and their mission is not to detect fraud or identify terrorists, it’s to process these people and get them into the system.”
President Obama accelerated the process from 18-24 months to 3 months in FY 2016, making errors and omissions even more likely. He jammed 10,000 Syrian refugee applications into the second half of 2016, while only 2,000 were processed in the first 6 months.
Furthermore, there are actually only one or two interviews. The “multiple security screenings” refers to database queries, and as FBI Director Comey and countless others have said, with failed states like Syria, you can query databases “until the cows come home” and you won’t find anything.
We get about 95% of refugee referrals from the U.N. The UN is serially corrupt — a relevant fact virtually never discussed by the media luminaries. Any jihadi wanting to join the refugee stream can do so with proper bribes, and Jordan has estimated that approximately 2 percent those residing in Jordanian refugee camps are jihadis. Be sure that the jihadis know who to pay off. And they have a big incentive to attempt to enter the U.S. through refugee resettlement.
Using the refugee process as opposed to sneaking across the border (which they are also doing) establishes them as legitimate legal permanent residents who will not be scrutinized by law enforcement. They can and will then plot their attacks in relative security. They warned us they would use this vehicle and the State Department acknowledges they are trying to. Furthermore, there is no downside to trying. If they fail whatever vetting process there is, they go back to where they came from, or even try again using different identity documents.
The refugee resettlement/asylum program is rife with fraud. Former INS Assistant Director Jan Ting has testified to this before Congress. This was certainly found to be true in the family reunification program, which was shut down for years after discovering that 80 percent of applications were fraudulent.
Given the widespread horrendous terrorist attacks in Europe and America over the past year, isn’t it time to take some responsible action? Refugee advocates constantly claim that no refugee has killed anyone. But that is a calculated misdirection. There have been plenty who have tried. Since 9-11, there have been 580 terror plots in the U.S. at least 380 were foreign-born and at least 40 were refugees.
Finally, in 2015, then U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres proposed that the U.S. take 65,000 Syrian refugees. As of January 31, 2017, we have taken 19,347. But the big secret no one tells, is that through both immigrant and non-immigrant processes, over 100,000 Syrians are already in the U.S. Furthermore, we can assist 12 refugees in place for every refugee resettled. Donald Trump’s proposal to create safe zones where refugees can remain until conditions allow them to return home is the most compassionate. It is certainly what most of them would prefer.
So why all the wailing and gnashing of teeth? We have already more than met the goal. Just not the way the resettlement industry likes – probably because of the $2,000-$5,000 they receive per-head to resettle and assist refugees.
I think it is quite simple. Democrats cannot accept that they lost. The list of 7 nations temporarily blocked from entry was created by former President Obama in 2011. In that year Obama also temporarily blocked all Iraqis from U.S. entry because two Iraqi refugees were caught planning a terrorist attack. As a result of the ban, one Iraqi who assisted American troops was assassinated because he was unable to escape Iraq. There was no opposition then — no howls of protest, no invasion of airports by Soros-funded communist rioters attacking innocent bystanders. When a reporter asked an anti-Trump protester if Obama’s similar ban bothered her, she responded without irony, “No, I love President Obama, I wish he was still here.”
President Obama created many of the problems President Trump is now trying to correct. To paraphrase what Obama told GOP members of Congress in 2009, “we won, you lost, get over it.”
James Simpson is an economist, businessman and investigative journalist. His latest book is The Red Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration and the Agenda to Erase America. Follow Jim on Twitter & Facebook.