Tag Archives: Democrat Party

Study: Obama administration is “having trouble” detecting fraud in asylum requests

Neville Chamberlain Obama: peace in our time
Neville Chamberlain Obama: peace in our time

This is an Associated Press article that I found in U.S. News & World Report.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration is having trouble detecting fraud in asylum requests from immigrants seeking to stay in the United States for their protection, according to a government study released Wednesday.

The Government Accountability Office looked at asylum requests from immigrants who have already made it to the United States and are asking to stay to escape persecution. The report doesn’t address the refugee application process, which also is overseen by the Homeland Security Department but involves people not currently in the United States. The refugee process has become an issue in debate over Syrian refugees.

The 96-page report concluded that neither U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services nor the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that oversees immigration courts, conduct regular fraud risk assessments. The GAO recommended that both do so.

At USCIS, a paper filing system that doesn’t capture key fraud-detection information electronically also is a problem, the study says.

The GAO review found that more than 4,500 people were awarded asylum in 2014 despite being associated with lawyers or document preparers arrested that same year in an immigration fraud investigation in New York.

[…]”This new GAO report adds to mounting evidence that the Obama administration refuses to take the steps necessary to crack down on asylum fraud and protect the integrity of our immigration system,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

The Washington Times comments:

GAO investigators found problems at nearly every step of the way: USCIS officers aren’t properly trained to spot fraud; the agency’s fraud-detection unit doesn’t pre-screen applications to weed out potentially bogus ones beforehand; and neither USCIS, which is part of Homeland Security, nor EOIR, which is part of the Justice Department, have a sense for how big a risk fraud is anyway.

More troubling still, the government rarely prosecutes those who commit fraud, so there’s little downside to making an attempt, other than risking being sent back home.

OK, so the government system is broken – that much is clear. But what is the worst that could go wrong if we let a few bad apples in?

Consider this article from National Review.

It says:

Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) want President Obama to release the immigration records of the San Bernardino shooters, arguing they should play a key role in the coming debate over funding the Syrian refugee resettlement& program.

Their request comes as CBS reports that one of the shooting suspects passed the Department of Homeland Security’s “counterterrorism screening as part of her vetting” for a visa. Federal officials maintain that they have a rigorous and effective screening process in place for people from countries such as Syria that have significant jihadist movements, making the immigration records of the San Bernardino shooters a potentially significant piece of the debate over refugee policy.

“We are dealing with an enemy that has shown it is not only capable of bypassing U.S. screening, but of recruiting and radicalizing Muslim migrants after their entry to the United States,” Cruz and Sessions wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

The letter reiterates the lawmakers’ longstanding request for the immigration records of twelve other terror suspects, which the Obama administration has failed to release even as the debate over the Syrian refugee crisis has heated up.

“Congress is days away from consideration of an omnibus year-end funding bill that would set the U.S. on an autopilot path to approve green cards, asylum, and refugee status to approximately 170,000 migrants from Muslim countries during the next year,” Cruz and Sessions wrote. “The security task involved is immense, and Congress must have the requested information if lawmakers are to act as responsible stewards of American immigration policy.”

Look here. If you expect to be able to hold people accountable for failure to perform, that is much easier to do with the private sector than it is with government. There have been plenty of major screw-ups in the Obama administration. Massive security leaks, cover-ups, arms smuggling to Mexican drug cartels, Iran deal side deals, leaking the names of agents and the details of our allies’ plans. And on and on and on. We have to learn from these failures not to put our trust in government promises about how serious they are with national security. Their lack of seriousness about criminal illegal immigrants killed Kate Steinle, for example. The only solution to their stupidity and carelessness is to not let them have the power to do anything.

Senate Republicans vote to defund Planned Parenthood and repeal major parts of Obamacare

Barack Obama and Planned Parenthood
Barack Obama and Planned Parenthood

Life News reports on some very good news for conservatives.

Excerpt:

The Senate voted today for a bill that would de-fund Planned Parenthood after it was caught selling the body parts of aborted babies. Hearings have exposed how the abortion company likely violated federal laws to sell the body parts.

The bill would block, for one year, most federal payments to Planned Parenthood. At least 89% of federal funding of Planned Parenthood would be blocked by this bill. The bill would repeal a number of major components of the Obamacare health law, including two of the major provisions that will lead to rationing of lifesaving care — the “Independent Payment Advisory Board” and the “excess benefits tax.”

Senators voted 52-47 (see below for roll call) for the reconciliation bill which would de-fund Planned Parenthood and repeal major portions of Obamacare.

The bill now goes back to the House and will head to President Barack Obama once the House approves the measure. Though Obama will veto the bill, the vote makes it clear that, under a pro-life president, Congress can get a de-funding bill approved with a majority vote that the president would sign into law.

Now, I actually don’t want to look that far into the future, because as long as Mitch McConnell is Senate Majority Leader, nothing is for sure. However, there are immediate benefits to passing this bill and sending it to the White House in spite of that caution:

  1. We now have all the Democrat senators on record about where they stand with respect to repealing major parts of Obamacare, and de-funding Planned Parenthood. This information can and will be used to defeat them in the 2016 Senate races. Republicans face a major challenge to their Senate majority in 2016, and every little bit helps.
  2. Republican candidates for President will be able to use the veto of health care reform and de-funding Planned Parenthood to distinguish themselves from Democrat presidential candidates. Obamacare and Planned Parenthood funding are both really unpopular. I personally know some Christians who think that Obama is pro-life and who think that Obama is in favor of fixing Obamacare. With this veto on record, Republican presidential candidates will be able to clearly show that a Republican president is required in order to fix health care and defund Planned Parenthood.

Look, if you don’t like Obamacare – higher deductibles, higher premiums, fewer doctors, less health care – then Republicans are the only game in town. And now, everyone has shown whose side they are on with respect to funding abortion, too. Going forward, expect the Republicans to be reminding people about these votes and vetoes over and over again.

CNN: San Bernadino shooter in contact with suspected Islamic terrorists

This article is from the radically leftist CNN, of all places.

I heard CNN trying to blame the shooting on violent video games (“maybe he played too much Call of Duty”) yesterday. But today they decided to do some journalism for a change:

Syed Rizwan Farook — one-half of the couple behind the San Bernardino shooting massacre — was apparently radicalized and in touch with people being investigated by the FBI for international terrorism, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

Farook’s apparent radicalization contributed to his role in the mass shooting, with his wife Tashfeen Malik, of 14 people on Wednesday during a holiday party for the San Bernardino County health department, where Farook worked, sources said.

[…]Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia for several weeks in 2013 on the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are required to take at least once in their lifetime, which didn’t raise red flags, said two government officials. It was during this trip that he met Malik, a native of Pakistan who came to the United States on a “fiancée visa” and later became a lawful permanent resident.

Officials had previously said that neither Farook and Malik were known to the FBI or on a list of potentially radicalized people. Nor had they had any known interactions with police until Wednesday’s deadly shootout that culminated in their deaths.

Yet Farook himself had communicated by phone and via social media with more than one person being investigated for terrorism, law enforcement officials said. A separate U.S. government official said the 28-year-old has “overseas communications and associations.”

Breitbart News reports on Obama’s reaction to these facts:

President Barack Obama says that it’s possible yesterday’s attack in California, where two people killed 14 and injured 17 others, was terrorist related. But he’s also holding out the possibility it was workplace violence.

“It is possible that this is terrorist-related, but we don’t know; it is also possible this was workplace-related,” Obama said, adding, “we don’t know why they did it.”

Obama added that it was important to understand the “nature of the workplace relationship” between the individuals to fully understand the attacks, raising the possibility that it could be “mixed motives” for the attacks.

[…]The president’s remarks show he still hasn’t changed his tone since he first reacted to the event as a another mass shooting in the United States.

Obama thinks it might be “workplace violence” again? That’s what he said about Major Nidal Hasan, who was also in touch with radical Islamic terrorists before his terrorist attack at Fort Hood.

Workplace violence?

Time magazine reports that their house was full of bullets and explosives:

The married couple whose shooting rampage left 14 dead and 21 wounded at a social work centerin San Bernardino, Calif. had filled their home with thousands of bullets and hundreds of tools to make bombs, authorities said Thursday.

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik had enough ammunition to pose a further threat had they not been killed, according to San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan.

“Clearly they were equipped and they could have done another attack,” Burguan said.

The couple had than 1,400 rifle rounds and 200 9-mm handgun bullets with them as police hunted them down. Authorities found 12 pipe bombs and “hundreds of tools” to make more explosives at their home at Redlands.

Investigators also found nearly 5,000 more bullets and several hundred long-rifle rounds at the home, according to police.

[…]The FBI said it’s investigating whether the suspects’ IED designs came from Al-Qaeda’s “Inspire” magazine.

Workplace violence? What planet is Obama living on? And this isn’t the first time that he’s pulled this stupidity, either.

Remember, the Obama administration describes Islamic terrorism as “senseless violence“. Democrats describe shootings my Muslims at army bases as “workplace violence“. Democrats describe attacks on Israeli civilians as “random violence“. Democrats called shooting at Jews in France “random“. Democrats describe investigations about the Benghazi terrorist attack a “sideshow“, after they lied and tried to say the attack was a spontaneous reaction to a video. And this is the party that more than half of our country votes for at election time. The State Departmentsays that radical Islam’s root cause is that we don’t give them “job opportunities“.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are hard at work protecting us from… global warming?

Barack Obama says that fighting global warming is a rebuke to Islamic terrorism
Barack Obama says that fighting global warming is a rebuke to Islamic terrorism

CNS News explains the Democrat response to Islamic terrorism:

Not radical Muslim terrorism, not an unsecured border, not an ever-growing federal debt that now exceeds $18 trillion, not the fact that 109 million live in households on federal welfare programs. These are not the greatest threats facing us today.

“No challenge–no challenge–poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” President Obama declared in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday night.

[…]President Obama then said that the U.S. military is saying that “climate change” is causing immediate risks to our national security–although he did not explain exactly what this meant or how the “Pentagon” had arrived at this conclusion.

“The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security,” said Obama. “We should act like it.”

As Secretary of State in the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton pledged $100 billion a year of American taxpayer money to help other countries combat global warming. That’s the real priority, you understand.

The cost of political correctness

And lest you think that it is harmless when Democrats call people “racist” for pointing out the links between Islam and terrorism, read this article from CBS News: (H/T Sooper Mexican)

Neighbors in Redlands were shocked that the suspects had ties to their area.

“I was in awe that it was happening four houses down from my property,” one neighbor said.

A man who has been working in the area said he noticed a half-dozen Middle Eastern men in the area in recent weeks, but decided not to report anything since he did not wish to racially profile those people.

“We sat around lunch thinking, ‘What were they doing around the neighborhood?’” he said.  “We’d see them leave where they’re raiding the apartment.”

Should we really be trusting Democrats to keep us safe? Are they really capable of calling evil “evil”, or does their ideology force them to call Americans evil, and America’s enemies good?

Related posts