How bad is the fraud involved with asylum claims?

05/12/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Really bad! reports immigration lawyer and blogger Jason Dzubow (resume’ below)*.

After Boston we all became more concerned with how easy it is to defraud the US government with a phoney asylum claim. The Tsarnaev family, with their travels back and forth to the country of their persecution, have become the poster family for asylum fraud. Someone asked me just yesterday if I thought Mom and Dad were having welfare checks deposited in a Boston bank and transmitted to Russia. That could be happening, I said!

Although this blog post by Dzubow is from last December, I hadn’t seen it until recently. By the way, Dzubow seems like a fairly level-headed lawyer who works on behalf of immigrants.

LOL! And, here he had some advice for us! Why does he join others in expressing frustration about RRW NOT being “neutral”? Heck, the mainstream media is never neutral, rarely balanced, with its glowing gooey stories about refugees seeing their first snow; so, as I see it, I need to balance them! That is my job! Indeed, if the mainstream media wasn’t so biased and did some serious investigative work, there would be no need for bloggers.

I’ve digressed.

Back to Dzubow’s amazing admission in a post entitled, ‘Lawyers gone wild’ (emphasis mine):

The New York Times reports a major bust involving lawyers, paralegals, and even a church official who were allegedly helping Chinese nationals file fraudulent asylum cases. [There have been many news accounts recently about the large number of Chinese illegally coming across our borders. If caught, they ask for asylum.–ed]

The Times reports that 26 people, including six attorneys, were arrested in Chinatown and Flushing, Queens. They are accused of an elaborate scheme to help Chinese immigrants invent stories about persecution and dupe immigration officials into granting asylum. Some false stories describe persecution based on China’s one-child policy, including forced abortion. Others set forth claims based on religious persecution. Apparently, the asylum seekers aroused suspicion when Asylum Officers noticed that many of the stories were very similar.

In all, the conspiracy involves 10 law firms and as many as 1,900 asylum seekers. The conspiracy also allegedly involved at least one church official, Liying (pronounced “Lying”?) Lin. According to the Times, Ms. Lin, 29, trained asylum seekers in the basic tenets of Christianity. According to the indictment against her, Ms. Lin also helped her “clients” trick the immigration authorities and “trained asylum applicants on what questions about religious belief would be asked during an asylum interview and coached the clients on how to answer.”

This is not the first time that I’ve written about Lawyers and paralegals helping to create false cases, but it is the largest such bust that I’ve heard about. One question is, how pervasive is this type of fraud?

A professor of Asian-American studies and urban affairs at Hunter College in New York, Peter Kwong, told the Times that he believes most Chinese asylum cases in New York City were fraudulent. “This is an industry,” said Prof. Kwong, who has written widely on Chinese immigration. “Everybody knows about it, and these violations go on all the time.” While I would not be surprised if Prof. Kwong is correct, I would also not be surprised if he is over-estimating the number of fraudulent asylum claims.

The reason for the difficulty is that there is no data on false asylum claims.

[….]

Although it is difficult to know the magnitude of the problem, it’s pretty clear that many asylum cases are fraudulent. The situation in New York is only the most recent illustration of the problem. So what’s the solution? I strongly believe that the government can do more to stop these fraudsters. I have seen enough of their work to know that they are not so smart and often not very careful (witness the Chinese case in NY where Asylum Officers detected the fraud when they noticed that many of the applications were suspiciously similar–in other words, the lawyers were too lazy and too cocky to bother making up unique stories for each asylum seeker).

Dzubow goes on to suggest that the feds send in “undercover clients” to smoke out these crooked lawyers. Great idea! Start with whoever did the legal work for the Tsarnaevs.

There is more, visit the whole post. And, keep this story in mind when you read an incredible first hand account of refugee fraud which I will post later today, or in the morning.

*Jason Dzubow’s practice focuses on immigration law, asylum, and appellate litigation. Mr. Dzubow is admitted to practice law in the federal and state courts of Washington, DC and Maryland, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Third, Fourth, Eleventh, and DC Circuits, all Immigration Courts in the United States, and the Board of Immigration Appeals. He is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and the Capital Area Immigrant Rights (CAIR) Coalition. In June 2009, CAIR Coalition honored Mr. Dzubow for his Outstanding Commitment to Defending the Rights and Dignity of Detained Immigrants.In December 2011, Washingtonian magazine recognized Dr. Dzubow as one of the best immigration lawyers in the Washington, DC area; in March 2011, he was listed as one of the top 25 legal minds in the country in the area of immigration law. Mr. Dzubow is also an adjunct professor of law at George Mason University in Virginia.

Washington State reader: 20,000 should be enough

05/12/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Editors note: This is one more in a series of posts on the upcoming, May 15th, US State Department hearing on the “size and scope” of the Refugee Resettlement Program for fiscal year 2014.

For all of our posts and background information on the meeting go to our special category here.

A reader from Washington State shared his views with us after having sent this below to the State Department:

Dear Ms. Spruell,

I am writing to comment on the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for FY 2014.

It is my understanding, backed up by several well-documented sources, that the vast majority (upwards of 90 percent) of the “refugees” resettled under this program have been under no threat of persecution in their home countries, and are simply seeking the economic advantages of living in the U.S. Once resettled here, they frequently make return trips to their countries of origin, undermining any claim that they their safety or freedom had been in danger. They (and their financially-motivated sponsors) are taking advantage of the goodwill and naivety of the American people, who believe their country is engaged in helping people whose lives are under serious threat.

Our nation’s entire immigration system has become corrupted by moneyed interests, and is imposing on the American people displacement levels of immigration that they have not asked for and do not want. We now resettle more than three times the number of refugees as the rest of the industrialized world combined. Numerous small towns, in states like Maine and Minnesota, have been transformed beyond recognition after being targeted as resettlement locations for Somalis and Ethiopians. We have been given virtually no say in these decisions, nor even been told by the government what is actually going on.

In reviewing the Refugee Admissions Program for FY 2014, I ask that you:

· Drastically scale back the total number of refugee admissions granted each year. A ceiling of 20,000 would still leave us as the leading country of resettlement in the world.

· Consult with local and state jurisdictions before a community is chosen for resettlement, always giving them the right of refusal.

· Make clear that resettlement in the U.S. is the option of last resort, with humanitarian efforts focused on helping displaced persons remain in their countries of origin.

Thank you for your attention.

Readers should, from time to time, visit this site where the State Dept. tracks arrivals. So far this year (6 months into the fiscal year) we had resettled 34,243 refugees which means we will likely have a banner year and surpass 70,000 (the largest number of refugees usually arrive at the end of the fiscal year). We are also on target for the largest Somali resettlement numbers in recent years.

Bhutanese resettlement in America surpasses 60,000 headed to 70,000

05/11/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In 2006, then Bush Assistant Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration, Ellen Sauerbrey, announced that the United States would begin to “clean out the [refugee] camps” in Nepal where people of Napali origin had been living since being expelled from Bhutan. She said we would take 60,000 of the 100,000 refugees.

We have resettled over 66,000 and there is no end in sight. In fact, one has to laugh because the camp population appears to be growing.

Some of the Bhutanese are doing well in America, others are not. Type ‘Bhutanese’ into our search function for many reports on how they are faring around the country. One problem that has become apparent is that the Bhutanese have a very high suicide rate.

From UNHCR:

KATHMANDU, Nepal, April 26 (UNHCR) – The resettlement of refugees from Bhutan reached a major milestone this week, with 100,000 people having been referred for resettlement from Nepal to third countries since the programme began in 2007. Nearly 80,000 of them have started their new lives in eight different countries – an important step towards resolving one of the most protracted refugee situations in Asia.

[…..]

The acceptance rate of UNHCR’s referrals in Nepal by resettlement countries is the highest in the world – at 99.4 per cent of total submissions. The United States has accepted the largest number of refugees (66,134), followed by Canada (5,376), Australia (4,190), New Zealand (747), Denmark (746), Norway (546), the Netherlands (326) and the United Kingdom (317).

The math is a little fuzzy here, or is it me? There were 108,000 in the camps originally, 100,000 have been dispersed to the “four winds,” yet 38,100 remain to be resettled?

Of the original population of 108,000 refugees originating from Bhutan and living in Nepal, some 38,100 remain in the Sanischare and Beldangi camps in eastern Nepal. Most of them have expressed an interest in the resettlement programme.

Ellen Sauerbrey, Bush Asst. Secretary for PRM. We have to resettle them to keep them from becoming terrorists.

Controversial decision!

Sauerbrey’s original decision in 2006 was highly controversial, not so much controversial to Americans (most had no clue this was happening) who might question the wisdom of cleaning out refugee camps in the third world (especially where the refugees were in no danger) and adding to our unemployment and welfare rolls, but from a segment of the Bhutanese camp dwellers themselves.

We wrote about the camp conflicts in many posts in the first years of RRW’s existence, but here is a story from 2010 I hadn’t seen in which former GOP candidate for Governor of Maryland explains what happened.

**From Inside the Bay Area:**

“We all expected repatriation but it did not happen,” said Amalraj, a Jesuit priest from India. “Fifteen rounds of talks. Nothing happened. All the countries pressurized. Nothing happened.”

Then came Ellen Sauerbrey. With a few choice words delivered at a United Nations meeting four years ago, the Bush administration official triggered an end to repatriation talks and put the American dream on the minds of thousands of refugee children and their parents.

The United States would take them — up to 60,000 of the more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees stranded in Nepal — and find homes for them in American cities and suburbs. That was the surprise message Sauerbrey brought to a meeting of diplomats in Geneva in fall 2006.

Some in the audience were stunned. Sauerbrey knew her words would put immediate pressure on other wealthy countries to act, but she did not tell many of them in advance.

Like most Americans, the former Republican state legislator from Maryland spent most of her life knowing little about the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, home to fewer than 700,000 people. That changed when President George W. Bush nominated her director of the State Department’s refugee division in 2005, brushing aside Democrats — including then-Sen. Barack Obama — who argued at hearings that Sauerbrey lacked experience for the job. She was appointed in early 2006. Bhutan quickly became a priority.

“I remember saying to some of my heads, some of my offices, we’re going to settle this,” Sauerbrey said in an interview this year. “Next year is going to be the year of Bhutan. We’re going to settle this problem.”

Sauerbrey said getting the refugees to “third countries” — someplace other than Bhutan and Nepal — was the best and only remaining solution to an intractable humanitarian crisis in the Himalayas. Bhutan refused to recognize as citizens those who fled in the early 1990s, arguing their departure was voluntary and permanent. Nepal, one of the world’s poorest countries, did not have the economic capacity to integrate them. The United Nations could not run the camps forever.

Really! The UN could not run camps forever? Isn’t that exactly what the UN is doing with the Palestinians. Why isn’t the UN, after 50-60 years! not dispersing the Palestinians to the four winds? We know why—they must remain right there as a constant thorn in the side of Israel!

Sauerbrey said in 2007, apparently about Muslim refugees, that we had to take them so they wouldn’t become terrorists, here. Below she suggests the largely Hindu and Buddhist Bhutanese/Nepalese might turn to radicalism if we didn’t take them to your cities.

Why are these UN camps our problem? And, with the US’s mighty economic influence, couldn’t we put some pressure on these tiny poor nations to repatriate their people? By the way, Bhutan considered the Nepali people as illegal aliens who were diluting their ethnic population.

Observers also worried the situation in the region might grow dangerous as refugees, frustrated by years living in limbo, looked to radicalism or political violence, Sauerbrey said.

“My perspective became, we could be arguing about who’s to blame for 100 years,” Sauerbrey said. “The U.S., we’re not here trying to make political statements about who’s right or wrong. There’s a big problem, a humanitarian problem, when children are born and raised and have never seen anything but a refugee camp.”

State Department officials predict the U.S., by 2014, will be home to at least 60,000 Bhutanese refugees, more than half the total. Seven other countries, led by Canada and Australia, have accepted the rest. [The US surpassed 60,000 by late 2012.—ed]

“When I made the statement that the U.S. was willing to take 60,000,” Sauerbrey said, “it was with the knowledge that between Canada and Australia and to a small degree, European countries, we could almost clean out the camps.”

“There were a lot of refugees who say for the first time there was a solution,” said Sauerbrey, who resigned at the end of 2007, just as the resettlement began. “There were other refugees who wanted only one solution, which was to return to Bhutan. It started a real debate.”

Violence erupted in camps largely instigated by those who objected to their people being dispersed to the four winds to live “like beggars.”

A contracting agency, the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, was met with resistance when it arrived to the town of Damak to organize the resettlement in 2007. Some refugees enthusiastically took buses into Damak to sign up for resettlement and be interviewed. Other refugees pelted those buses with stones. Families known to harbor thoughts of leaving the camps faced death threats. In one nighttime attack, assailants lobbed small explosives over the gates of the IOM office, injuring no one.

The most influential protests came from refugee political leaders and their allies in Nepal who wanted to keep the pressure on Bhutan to take the refugees back.

“Instead of pressurizing Bhutan, which violated our human rights, America initiated the resettlement process,” said Tek Nath Rizal, an exiled Bhutanese politician who now lives in Katmandu and opposes the mass resettlement to the West. “We have to go there like beggars. We cannot live in dignity.”

So when do we start cleaning out the Palestinian camps so as to stop the radicalization?

Lindsey Graham looking for more security screening for certain aliens in S.744

05/10/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an amendment to S.744 that is probably sending the refugee industry into conniption-fits. They don’t want any more security screening that slows the flow of third-worlders into the US. If it fails to pass it will send yet another signal that S.744 will endanger our security.

Graham, Kirk, McCain and Rubio yukking it up in Libya (we did good!) one year before the murder of Americans at Benghazi. Photo perhaps unrelated to this post, but it’s here because it infuriates me!
Photo credit: AP

And, you have to laugh because, should it pass, half the countries we are importing refugees from now would have to be on the list—Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Russia, former Soviet Union countries, even Burma (Rohingya Muslims).

Be sure to see our previous post here about Graham’s other amendment that is clearly in response to the Boston Marathon bomber brothers’ faux asylum claim.

Go here to see the list of all the amendments (hat tip: John). The list now has a notation about which have passed/failed or been withdrawn.

Here is Graham’s amendment #3:

Purpose: To require additional security screening for certain aliens.

Additional Security Screening

The Secretary, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall establish and maintain a list of countries or regions that, in the Secretary’s opinion based upon information related to national security, represents a threat, or contains groups or organizations that represent a threat, to the national security of the United States.

Upon determining that any alien or alien dependent spouse or child is or was a citizen or long-term resident of any such country or region, the Secretary shall conduct an additional security screening to ensure that the alien or alien dependent spouse or child is not a member of or otherwise affiliated with any terrorist or similar group or otherwise presents a threat to the national security of the United States.

We will be watching!

Virginia man sends testimony to US State Department for hearing next Wednesday

05/10/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If you’ve been following our series of posts on the State Department’s meeting next week to help them determine the size and scope of our refugee resettlement program for FY2014, this is one more in a series of statements that readers have sent to me for publication. Unfortunately, the deadline for sending testimony was this past Wednesday. But, heck if you are just seeing this for the first time, send some comments anyway and send a copy to your US Senators and Congressman (instructions here).

Incidentally, anything you send to Congress right now should reference S.744 (The Gang of Eight plus Grover bill), because the bill will provide more refugees and more funding to the federal refugee contractors, here.

Here is the testimony sent this week relating to security screening for refugees. Mr. Tenney appears to have some experience in the matter of how the Tsarnaev brothers went undetected before their terrorist act on April 15th:

Ms. Anne Richard
Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration
US State Department
Washington, DC. 20520

c/o Delicia Spruell
spruellda@state.gov
Fax (202) 453-9393.

Reference Federal Register Public Notice 8241

Dear Ms. Anne Richard,

I am writing to submit written comments on the President’s FY 2014 U.S. Refugee Admissions Program as part of the upcoming May 15 public hearing in Washington, DC. Sadly, the refugee and asylum resettlement programs have become overtly corrupt and harmful to America.

Please accept my comment against further refugee and asylum cases because the US security services are unable to handle even the existing load. Some limitations, in my opinion, of the US security services are pointed out below.

1. US security personnel are often unable to repeat foreign or historical names in an interview
when they are told to them.

2. US security personnel have a limited number of foreign names they know. Even names such as Boris Berezovsky they don’t know.

3. US security personnel can not understand legal cases relating to a foreign country such as US v. Harvard, Shleifer and Hay.

4. US security personnel do not understand the IMF and don’t understand its role or resentments to it
in Russia or Chechnya or in many other countries. US security personnel do not understand that the IMF is often
blamed in countries for austerity policies. Anything the IMF does they blame on the US.

5. They do not understand in practice that in foreign countries such as Chechnya and Russia, the people
consider police, prosecutors to be part of rigging cases to protect government.

6. They do not understand that foreigners carry this attitudes over to the US.

7. They do not understand that foreigners have crossed a mental threshold in their
own country of killing or being killed based on identity not whether a person from another group
is a potential ally.

8. They don’t know about the 1999 apartment bombing case in Moscow or that Chechens view that
case as rigged with police, prosecutors involved in rigging it. They don’t know this
attitude carries over to the US.

9. They do not follow high profile legal cases in Moscow and can’t relate those to Chechens.

10. They do not have a basic knowledge of high profile events in Russia in 1990s.

11. They can’t relate Russian history in 1990s to IMF loans to First and Second Chechen wars.

12. They can’t understand Chechen resentments towards US for support of Russia in second Chechen war
as Chechens see it.

13. They are not aware of Dzhokhar Dudayev or that he was born on April 15, 1944 and that April 15, 2013 Boston
Marathon was on anniversary. The Wiki article on Dudayev was not corrected on the birth date of Dudayev
until several days after the bombing, as seen from the history.

14. They take what they are told at face value because they lack the domain knowledge to challenge it
or even discuss it.

15. They are reduced to trying to push or provoke a person to see how they react.

16. Security personnel can become frustrated by their lack of knowledge and inability
to learn the relevant history and names. This leads to them giving up even trying
to do their job.

17. Security personnel are not familiar with historical cases such as Klaus Fuchs, Rosenbergs, etc.
and unable to relate what Russia does today to what they did then.

18. Security personnel do not correlate common plan or method evidence
for Russian actions in past cases to their actions today.

19. Security personnel do not understand or have an interest in the
cooperation between the Russian intelligence service and professors at
Russian universities or Russian profs in US, even ones with joint appointments
in Russia and US simultaneously. These professors often have a deep and extensive
knowledge of US institutions and individuals that is valuable to the Russian
intelligence service. Cooperation between US profs and US security services
is no where as extensive or as deep, and is close to non-existent.

20. US Security personnel are unable to interpret warnings from the Russian government
in light of a knowledge of history in Russia during the last 20 years, or Russia’s
relation to IMF, to Chechen wars or to professors at MIT and Harvard involved
in these events or from Russia.

21. US Security personnel are unable to learn basic information on the links
of Russian government officials, financial firms, academics, IMF and World Bank to each
other or to Chechen history in the last 20 years.

22. US Security personnel are no where near as well informed as Matt Taibbi about Russia and have
no feel for the Russian pulse as indicated in publications like eXile.ru.

23. US security personnel typically do not have community library cards at
local universities and do not use them to gain basic education in these countries.

24. Nor do US security personnel even see why they should.

25. If the rate of violence increased in the US, the security personnel would be
at almost zero learning curve to understand the groups here, their relation
to their home country government, and who in the US they resent and why they would
target them. This includes former US government employees, IMF and World Bank employees
current or past, corporate current or past, and academics.

26. In fact, even current US government employees outside of the security departments
would not receive protection or even the comprehension by the security services
of why particular US government employees would be targets based on resentments
from these countries.

27. The low level of understanding of security personnel forces in US of
these countries, their history, and of the American institutions role in them and
resentments arising from this mean that they are completely unable to do any
threat assessment or protection of current or former US government officials
who may be the target of resentments of people from such countries.

28. Because of their low level of understanding, lack of knowledge of names,
and of history, if there was a rise in such incidents, the security personnel
would not be able to learn or advance up the learning curve to even do threat assessment
of specific employees of the US government, past or present, who might be targets
of foreign individuals or groups in the US because of the current or past actions
of US government, institutions such as IMF and World Bank, or of US corporations.

29. Moreover, the security personnel see no reason why they should even learn
this. If they have tried to learn it they have given up.

30. There is no effective institutional concept in the security services to make such learning
part of their job. there is no high stakes testing for security personnel, simply
an apathy to this aspect of their work.

31. US security personnel are unable to conduct effect interviews of people such
as Tsarnaev because of the ignorance and apathy of the US security personnel to
these countries, their history, their interaction with rivals such as Russia and China,
and their resentments towards US institutions and individuals arising from this.

32. US security personnel believe they can substitute just looking at a person
or facial expressions for knowledge of the people, history and relationships of a country.

33. US security personnel will substitute trying to challenge a person to see
if they react with hostility or fly off the handle. if they don’t, they pass.
US security personnel lack the knowledge to engage the person in a substantive
discussion of their country, its history, its relation to US, to US institutions,
to international institutions such as IMF and World Bank, or to US banks or corporations.

34. US security personnel do not believe they need such knowledge to interview
suspects but can rely solely on street smarts or interview skills completely absent
of any knowledge of these matters. This results in failure for interviews by
us security personnel because of this overconfidence in their interview skills and
complete apathy to learning substantial matters that are the basis of the actions
of people coming to the US.

35. Thus even when a foreign country like Russia tips the US security personnel
to a person like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, they lack the knowledge or interest to engage
the person on the history of their country, their beefs with America, their resentments,
or who specifically in the US may be linked to such resentments and thus a potential
target. this includes an inability to protect current or former US government personnel,
or those of international institutions such as IMF and World Bank, private US corporations,
banks, academics or others.

36 Even after an incident occurs, US security personnel are unable to understand
that their overconfidence in their interview skills and lack of basic knowledge
of the country and its interactions with the US led to their failed threat assessments
and past investigative failures.

37. Because US security personnel lack an awareness of this connection and in
fact demonstrate total apathy to such awareness, they are unable to remedy their
lack of basic knowledge.

38. US security personnel after an incident simply believe their street smarts and
interview skills will lead them to avoid a failure in the future without their
ever being aware their prior interviews failed because of their lack of basic
knowledge of the country and its interactions with the US.

39. Thus US security personnel manifest no awareness of their need to learn
the history of Russia and Chechnya in the 1990s, or to understand the role
of IMF loans in funding the Chechen wars as seen by Chechens or resentments
towards those in the US involved in any of this.

40. If the violent incidents increased, the US security personnel lack the basic
awareness of their limitations to even adjust. They simply accept whatever
violence does happen as inevitable and do not see any link between their
lack of basic knowledge and apathy to their failures in preventing these incidents
or their ability to extend protection to current or past US government employees with
roles towards those countries who may be targets of resentment or to international
institutions such as IMF and World Bank or private corporations or individuals.

41. US security personnel rely on dynamics of interviews not substantive knowledge
to assess who is a threat. So for example in the classic buddy interview style,
the lead person engages the suspect. The sidekick is not involved and then manifests
occasionally more antagonistic questions as they are not the focus of attention
of the suspect or lead interviewer. If the suspect is trained in this or
from a country with a natural affinity for chatting up those in authority, they
will not become offended and will instead engage the sidekick in a positive manner.
The result is that the person passes the interview because they pass the
psychodynamics of the buddy interview system.

42. This is the entire extent of the ability of the security services
to interview suspects. This dynamic is what they rely on. For people from
countries where they deal with government authority and learn to chat them up
and be friendly despite such antagonism they automatically pass the interview
and thus are assessed as not a threat.

43. US security personnel can’t win an interview with a suspect who doesn’t react
to being pushed, because they lack substantive knowledge of the person’s country,
history, institutions and their relation to those of the US or international
organizations with offices here.

44. The US security bubble was exposed in Boston. The US security system is
a theatrical system at airports or put on display in the city shutdown. It has
no substance. The apathy that pervades it and the smug overconfidence in their
street smarts and interview skills and techniques means it will continue to
fail. They don’t understand the people or the countries which is why their interviews
fail.

45. As the foreign influx accumulates, what happened in Boston in a week in April 2013
can become the new normal. The security services will simply accept that and never
realize their own faults are to blame and need correction.

46. These attitudes and characteristics arise from the excessive workload for the US
security services. They do not have time to learn or understand. Thus they have to
fall back on just interview skills and street smarts. Because this is the only tool
they have, they come to believe it works, even when it fails. This is the pattern
in the Boston Marathon bombings. This pattern of apathy to the substantive knowledge
of people and their countries and their interaction with those in the US is already
the new normal.

Although a few elite US security personnel may not be as subject to the criticisms
given, this is likely typical of many if not most. Moreover, any expansion in a crisis
would involve those even worse. The State Department may interact with a few elite
security personnel who give them a mistaken impression of the sophistication of US
security personnel. The security personnel who actually interact with suspects
like the Tsarnaevs are not anywhere near this level.

These views represent my opinions only and not those of any organization.

Sincerely yours,

Mark S. Tenney

Honorable James Moran
2252 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4376
Fax: (202) 225-0017

Honorable Mark Warner
475 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-2023
Fax: 202-224-6295

Honorable Tim Kaine
B40C Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-4024
Fax: (202) 228-6363

US Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security.
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510.

House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security.
2138 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, p/202-225-3951.

Readers, it is important to send your testimony to your elected representatives, and I promised to publish statements here at RRW as well because the State Department will be putting these in a drawer somewhere in hopes they never see the light of day. They will however distribute copies of your testimony (if you have given approval) at the hearing on Wednesday, but only those at the meeting will get them.