A proposal to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States has ignited a bitter debate in Washington, but more than 10 times that number of people from the embattled country have quietly come to America since 2012, according to figures obtained by FoxNews.com.
Some 102,313 Syrians were granted admission to the U.S. as legal permanent residents or through programs including work, study and tourist visas from 2012 through August of this year, a period which roughly coincides with the devastating civil war that still engulfs the Middle Eastern country. Experts say any fears that terrorists might infiltrate the proposed wave of refugees from United Nations-run camps should be dwarfed by the potential danger already here.
[…]Numbers obtained from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection show 60,010 Syrian visa holders have entered the U.S. since 2012, including 16,245 this year through August. Additional numbers provided by a Congressional source showed another 42,303 Syrians were granted citizenship or green cards during the same period.
Should we be concerned about letting in so many people from countries with high levels of support for radical Islam? Let’s take a look at some other news stories and get the facts.
Two people have been arrested at a refugee center in the Austrian city of Salzburg on suspicion of being connected to last month’s Paris attacks, the Salzburg prosecutors’ office said on Wednesday.
The two are men who are thought to have provided help to members of the group that carried out the attacks on Nov. 13 in which 130 people were killed, two Austrian newspapers reported.
“Two people who arrived from the Middle East were arrested at the weekend in accommodation for refugees on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organization,” Robert Holzleitner, a spokesman for the Salzburg prosecutor’s office, said.
“As part of the preliminary investigation, evidence suggesting a connection with the Paris attacks is being verified,” he added, declining to comment on the specifics of the newspaper reports.
The men came into contact with the Paris attackers in Austria, local newspaper Salzburger Nachrichten reported, adding that they were found based on information provided by a foreign intelligence service.
National tabloid Kronen Zeitung said they were French, of Algerian and Pakistani origin, and entered Europe through Greece on fake Syrian passports with members of the group that carried out the Paris attacks.
An Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman and a Salzburg police spokeswoman declined to comment.
An article on Breitbart News that listed 30 recent immigrants who were implicated in terrorist attacks.
Here’s are a few: (links to primary sources removed)
A refugee from Uzbekistan was convicted of providing material support and money to a designated foreign terrorist organization. According to the Department of Justice, he also procured bomb-making materials in the interest of perpetrating a terrorist attack on American soil. (August 2015)
An immigrant from India, who applied for and received Lawful Permanent Resident status by virtue of his marriage to an American citizen, was indicted in federal court on charges of conspiring to provide thousands of dollars to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in order to assist them in their global jihad, and on one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. (November 2015)
A second immigrant from India, who is married to a U.S. citizen, and who is the brother of the individual listed above, was also indicted on charges of conspiring to provide thousands of dollars to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in order to assist them in their global jihad, and on one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. (November 2015)
An immigrant from Syria, who applied for and received Lawful Permanent Resident status, and then subsequently applied for and received U.S. citizenship, was charged with smuggling night-vision goggles and rifle scopes from America to a Syrian rebel group that fights alongside and allies itself with an al-Qaeda affiliate. (December 2015)
The Boston Bombers were granted political asylum and were thus deemed legitimate refugees. The younger brother applied for citizenship and was naturalized on September 11th, 2012. The older brother had a pending application for citizenship. (April 2013)
I like skilled immigrants from countries that do not have a significant portion of radicalized Muslims. But the problem is that the Obama administration is too politically correct to filter immigrants by weighing the value they offer us as law-abiding taxpayers against the potential threat they pose. The Obama Department of Homeland Security admits people to the United States without even checking social media to see if they have made public statements in support of radical Islam! And in a recent hearing, a DHS official admitted that she had no idea how many Syrian refugees had been admitted to the US. The Democrats are obsessed with political correctness and leftist blame-America ideology – we simply cannot trust them to protect us from threats.
Consider the Taliban Five, released in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl. Although Obama administration officials initially downplayed the significance of these detainees, intelligence and military officials made it clear that they were high-risk transfers. Michael Leiter, the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center under Obama, said it was “very, very likely” that the five Taliban leaders would return to the fight. Rob Williams, the national intelligence officer for South Asia, who briefed Congress shortly after the transfer, testified that there was a high likelihood that at least four of the five freed detainees, and possibly all of them, would rejoin the fight.
And what about Ibrahim al Qosi?
[…]Was he a “low-level” fighter, as Obama suggested?
He is not. Qosi is now a senior leader in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as well as the group’s public spokesman. AQAP has repeatedly attempted to attack the U.S., while taking over large parts of Yemen. The dossier compiled by U.S. officials for Qosi demonstrates that he served bin Laden in multiple roles because he was so trusted.
A threat assessment of al Qosi prepared by the intelligence officials on the Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) reported that he would present a “high risk” of taking up arms against the United States or its allies if he were freed from the detention facility. “Detainee is an admitted veteran jihadist with combat experience beginning in 1990 and it is assessed he would engage in hostilities against US forces, if released.”
Does this surprise you? It turns out that Obama regularly makes decisions that benefit America’s enemies, and put America’s allies and armed forces in harm’s way. His job is to make us safe, but his ideology prevents him from doing that, apparently. He just doesn’t have a sufficient grasp on reality that he is able to make decisions that produce good results for his clients – the American people. Instead, he wants to do things that make him feel good about himself – “look at me, I’m so merciful and compassionate” – and then when bad consequences occur, he tries to minimize the damage by lying about the harm he’s caused to his gullible followers. As if lying to them about the mess he’s made somehow makes the mess go away. I know that children sometimes do that, but this is the President of the United States. I expect more accountability.
And as for the misleading the American public:
“I am absolutely persuaded, as are my top intelligence and military advisers, that Guantanamo is used as a recruitment tool for organizations like ISIS,” Obama began. “And if we want to fight ’em, then we can’t give ’em these kinds of excuses.”
There is no reason that Obama would need to be “persuaded” of something that can be easily demonstrated. Either Guantanamo is a major recruitment tool or it’s not.
Administration officials have been making this claim for years and it’s not true.
Guantanamo rarely appears in jihadist propaganda, whether ISIS or al Qaeda, and reviews of recent propaganda materials from ISIS and al Qaeda – online videos and audio recordings, glossy magazines, etc. – found very few mentions of the facility.
“Keep in mind that between myself and the Bush administration hundreds of people have been released and the recidivism rate – we anticipate,” Obama said. “We assume that there are going to be – out of four, five, six-hundred people that get released – a handful of them are going to be embittered and still engaging in anti-US activities and trying to link up potentially with their old organizations.”
A handful? Obama is woefully ill-informed or he’s being dishonest. According to the most recent report on Guantanamo recidivism, prepared in September 2015 by James Clapper’s office, Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence, 196 former detainees are either confirmed (117) or suspected (79) of returning to the fight. That’s a recidivism rate of more than 30 percent. Intelligence officials tell THE WEEKLY STANDARD that those numbers are almost certainly low, as they do not include jihadists the United States and its allies are no longer tracking.
How many times have you seen Obama assert that “all the experts agree with me” without naming any? Do you know why he does that? Because no one agrees with him, and that’s why he cannot name any names. The surprising thing is that his gullible supporters believe that, instead of saying “name one person who agrees with you”. We have stopped asking questions, apparently.
This National Review article is a summary of some of the things that we’ve been talking about on the blog over the past year. It’s worth contrasting his confident words with the actual results he’s achieved.
Excerpt: (links removed)
Begin with the continued rise of ISIS and an ISIS-inspired attack on American soil in San Bernardino.
Obama’s widely-panned Sunday evening speech on combating ISIS is fresh in our minds; he’s haunted by the fact that the day of the attack, in an interview with CBS News, he declared, “Our homeland has never been more protected by more effective intelligence and law-enforcement professionals at every level than they are now.” In the weeks between the Paris attack and San Bernardino, Obama told the public there was no known “specific and credible threat” to the U.S. — a point that in retrospect only emphasized how blindsided authorities were by the San Bernardino attack.
[…]It’s easy to forget that in mid November, after the Paris attacks, numerous congressional Democrats started publicly expressing doubts and frustration with the administration’s approach to ISIS. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told reporters that the Obama administration ignored the rise of ISIS in 2012 because it contradicted the narrative of the president’s reelection campaign. More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Commandfiled formal complaints that their reports on ISIS and al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials.Elsewhere in the war on terror, a prisoner released from Guantanamo Bay in 2012 became one of the leaders of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Bowe Bergdahl, the Army soldier that Obama traded for five high-value Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, was charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, did an interview where he compared himself to fictional heroic spy Jason Bourne.
It was a rough year for American national security. In addition to lingering questions about the security of classified and sensitive information on Hillary Clinton’s personal e-mail server, the Office of Personnel Management revealed in June that it suffered two apparently separate breaches of its computer system, meaning the sensitive information of about 21.5 million current and former federal workers is now in the hands of foreign hackers. (The Washington Post reported that the breach forced the CIA to withdraw personnel from China, but Director of National Intelligence James Clapper disputed the report, without going into detail.)
[…]The new Republican-controlled Senate and House failed to repeal Obamacare, but the outlook for the president’s signature domestic legislation grew considerably murkier in 2015. Twelve of the 23 health-insurance co-ops largely funded through Obamacare by federal loans failed; as a result roughly 700,000 Americans were told they needed to get a new insurance plan. In November, UnitedHealth Group, the biggest U.S. health-insurance company, said it had suffered major losses on policies sold on the Obamacare exchanges and would consider withdrawing from them.
The New York Times found that in many states, more than half the plans offered for sale through HealthCare.gov have a deductible of $3,000 or more — leaving many purchasers to conclude they can’t actually afford to go to the doctor despite paying for insurance.
[…]Defenders of the president will be quick to point to the unemployment rate at 5 percent, contending he’s presiding over a roaring economy. This year Democrat Bernie Sanders received some attention for echoing a point made by Republicans during the Obama era: The official unemployment rate excludes those working part time who want full-time work, and those who have stopped searching but if offered a job would take it. Sanders contended the “real” unemployment rate is higher than 10 percent; he pointed out that youth unemployment is particularly high. Wages remain mostly flat; when President Obama took office in January 2009, the average weekly earnings of rank-and-file workers in the private sector was $296.88. The preliminary figure for October 2015 is $306.80 — a 3 percent increase over seven years.
Mollie Hemingway has an article on Obama’s failures up at The Federalist.
Here’s a snip:
Another claim made repeatedly by the Obama administration was that people were stupid idiots to be worried about terrorists exploiting entry pathways to the country on account of how good our vetting is. When the Republicans in Congress worked on a bill to improve the process of vetting refugees from Syria, the White House issued yet another — yet another! — veto threat. The statement began:
The Administration’s highest priority is to ensure the safety and security of the American people. That is why refugees of all nationalities, including Syrians and Iraqis, considered for admission to the United States undergo the most rigorous and thorough security screening of anyone admitted into the United States…. The current screening process involves multiple Federal intelligence, security, and law enforcement agencies, including the National Counterterrorism Center, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), State, and Defense, all aimed at ensuring that those admitted do not pose a threat to our country.
[I]f poor, vulnerable refugees are vetted this much, surely we must be vetting regular immigrants even more, right? Bad news. One of the San Bernardino murderers came into the country on a fiancé visa. Her tough application included questions such as, and I’m not joking:
“Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization?”
“Have you ever ordered, incited, committed, assisted or otherwise participated in genocide?”
“Have you ever committed, ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated in torture?”
[…]The New York Times further reports that the murderer was openly calling for violence against the U.S., but we totally missed it because of how bad our vetting is:
WASHINGTON — Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., passed three background checks by American immigration officials as she moved to the United States from Pakistan. None uncovered what Ms. Malik had made little effort to hide — that she talked openly on social media about her views on violent jihad. She said she supported it. And she said she wanted to be a part of it… Had the authorities found the posts years ago, they might have kept her out of the country. But immigration officials do not routinely review social media as part of their background checks, and there is a debate inside the Department of Homeland Security over whether it is even appropriate to do so.
ABC News also reported that a “Secret US Policy Blocks Agents From Looking at Social Media of Visa Applicants, Former Official Says.”
[Obama] issued a veto threat after claiming we couldn’t do any better at screening people. Turns out we’re asking them to volunteer information about how bad they are and respecting the “privacy” of their public comments calling for violent jihad.
In his reluctant Dec. 6 Oval Office Address, Obama said things like: “Since the day I took this office, I’ve authorized U.S. forces to take out terrorists abroad precisely because I know how real the danger is.”
Inquiring minds wonder to what effect? How did terrorism’s leadership, which he said was “decimated” in 2012, reconstitute itself so effectively? And why is Obama intellectually incapable of calling Islamic extremists what they are?
He talks of increasing allied air assaults. But we’re 17 months into the assaults. Why does it take new terrorist attacks to ramp up what he said we were already doing? And why do 75% of the sorties return without dropping their ordnance? (Hint: Obama’s strict rules of engagement prohibit collateral casualties and require advance leaflet drop warnings.)
In his weekly remarks Saturday Obama said “Our airstrikes are hitting ISIL harder than ever.” Which wouldn’t take much.
He also stated, accurately, that Special Ops forces are in action, but neglected to mention they total about 250 against an ISIS army estimated at 40,000.
[…]Then, there’s the Iran nuclear deal. You may recall, although you’re not supposed to, the interminable negotiations were touted as preventing the world’s largest national exporter of terrorism from developing nuclear weapons. We now know Iran hasn’t even signed the agreement.
And Iran has violated existing U.N. resolutions in recent weeks by testing not once, but twice, ICBMs capable of carrying nuke warheads. The second test came as the U.N. was still discussing the first violation.
So why is it that so many Americans voted for such a miserable failure?
Here is an illustration. Suppose you have someone who comes from a cultural background that is incompatible with American values. Her culture is much less successful than American culture, because their beliefs are all false. But she is loyal to her failed culture, and cannot bring herself to blame her own people for their failures.
Well, she will have to avoid all evidence that American policies work, such as the evidence from red states succeeding while blue states flounder. She refuses to read anything (e.g. – economics textbook, civics book, American history) that would overturn her misplaced loyalty to the failed values and policies or her community. She only listens to news sources that confirm her desire to blame America for her misfortunes and the misfortunes of the people from her culture.
Who will she vote for when it’s election time? She will vote for someone who blames America for the failures of her community, too. Regardless of whether he is competent to be President or not. The desire to have someone who blames America for the failures of her own culture is so strong that she will not care if she votes for a President who fails horribly at everything he tries.
And that is why a buffoon like Obama can be elected and re-elected as President in America, even though he does such a poor job. There was no reason to believe that Obama could succeed in any of the things he talked about in his speeches. He had no demonstrated ability in any of the areas he campaigned on – no achievements whatsoever. The people who voted for him had no evidence that he was capable or competent.
Instead, they voted for him because it made them feel good about themselves, despite their failures. He blamed others for their failures, and they liked that. They did not want to take responsibility and adopt values and policies that worked – the true values and policies that made America great. They wanted to feel superior to those detestable Christians and those evil patriotic conservatives.
WINTERY KNIGHT 